He was unsettled in love and unsettled in religion, though he had been on speaking terms with both. He had loved and lost Ann Rutledge, and he did not love Mary Owens and could not lose her. He was about to begin one of the loneliest periods of his very lonely life. For a year only one woman in Springfield spoke to him, and she would rather not have done so. He did not go to church nor mingle in society, but faced the hard and bitter problems that confronted him in earning a living, making some small payments on his debt, settling his relations with Mary Owens, and possibly giving some thought to his soul. But this was not a time of one of his spiritual high water-marks. If we had seen Abraham Lincoln as he entered New Salem and again six years later as he left it, we should have found small reason to anticipate very much of what afterward occurred. But looking back upon him in the light of what occurred afterward, we discern the "promise and potency" of the great man he afterward became in the sad young man who already had become a leader of men, and had earned the right to be called "Honest Abe." CHAPTER V THE ENVIRONMENT OF LINCOLN'S LIFE IN SPRINGFIELD ABRAHAM LINCOLN became a resident of Springfield on Wednesday, March 15, 1837, and continued to live there until his removal, Saturday, February 11, 1860, to assume his duties as President of the United States. He was accepted as partner by his friend and former commander, Major John T. Stuart, and shared an office in which politics was the major interest and law was incidentally practiced. His partnership with Stuart continued for four years, from April 27, 1837, until April 14, 1841. His next partnership was with Judge Stephen T. Logan, and extended from April 14, 1841, to September 20, 1843. He then formed a partnership with William H. Herndon which began on the day of the dissolution of the partnership with Judge Logan and was never formally dissolved. Lincoln had a working alliance with some lawyer in almost every county seat which he habitually visited, whereby the local lawyer secured the cases and worked them up, and Lincoln took them in charge as senior counsel when they came to trial.[18] These were not formal partnerships, though they were often so spoken of. This method gave him a large practice, and brought him into contact and collision with the ablest lawyers in central and southern Illinois. In 1838 and again in 1840 he was re-elected to the Legislature, and showed little of the ability which he later manifested, but was a faithful member, and he flung himself with ardor into the noisy campaign of 1840. In 1842 he had his "duel" with James T. Shields, and later had the good sense to be ashamed of it. In 1846 he ran for Congress, and at this third attempt was elected, taking his seat December 6, 1847, and continuing for two years.