The confidence and appreciation of his friends (note that it was not his self-seeking aggressiveness) caused him to believe that he should try to become their representative in the state legislature. He was in the midst of this, his first political campaign, which was at the age of twenty-three, when Black Hawk, the Indian warrior, crossed the Mississippi River, April 6, 1832, with his five hundred followers and began what is known as the Black Hawk War. The white settlers had gradually occupied the Indians' land, and the government by treaties had caused the Indians to be removed to territory west of the Mississippi. Black Hawk, a leader of the Sacs and Foxes, believed the Indians to be mistreated and so resolved to drive the white settlers back to the treaty line. "My reason teaches me," he wrote to the government, "that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon, and cultivate, as far as is necessary for their living; and so long as they occupy and cultivate it they have a right to the soil, but, if they willingly leave it, then any other people have a right to settle on it. Nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away." There are now several social theories based on this idea that the earth belongs to the people who use it. The theory of right things governs the minds of all who think, even of the wild men in the wilderness. When the news arrived that the Indians had declared war against the whites, with the appeal from Governor Reynolds for volunteers, Lincoln dropped his canvass for the legislature in order to enlist for the defense of his country. The man-making incident in this important event was Lincoln's election as captain of his home company. If there had been one thing which Lincoln had not studied, that was the tactics of a soldier. He knew nothing about military orders, and yet the time was coming, all too soon, when he was to be chief of the greatest military organization then in the world. A sawmill owner named Kilpatrick was pushing himself forward to be made captain. This man owed Lincoln two dollars for work and would not pay it. Lincoln got an idea and he said to his friend Greene, "Bill, I believe I can now make Kilpatrick pay that two dollars he owes me. I'll run against him for captain." When it came to the vote, the two candidates stood out in the open, and the men were told to stand up by the man they wanted to be captain. More than three-fourths of them gathered around Lincoln, and he became Captain Lincoln. He tells us himself that he never had any success in life which gave him more satisfaction. It was a vote of confidence in the reality of a man.