Abraham Lincoln from Black Hawk War to State Legislature

Black Hawk War and Abraham Lincoln

At the age of 21, Abraham Lincoln set out on his own and headed for the village of New Salem, Illinois where Abraham Lincoln landed a job as a store clerk. It was a period without direction, or any sense of his great destiny. Abraham Lincoln described himself in these years of his early twenties as a "piece of floating driftwood."

When the store failed, Abraham Lincoln signed up to fight in the Black Hawk War. Black Hawk was a Native American who led several hundred others in a raid to reclaim the land they had lost. Abraham Lincoln saw no fighting in the war except what Abraham Lincoln called the "bloody struggle with the mosquitoes and charges upon the wild onions." But Abraham Lincoln considered it one of the greatest honors of his life that he was elected captain of his company.

Abraham Lincoln running for state legislature in Illinois

After the war, Abraham Lincoln was still searching for a career and an identity. Abraham Lincoln 's friends encouraged him to run for the state legislature, which Abraham Lincoln did and lost. Abraham Lincoln bought his own store, with a partner, but it failed after only a few months. Abraham Lincoln was appointed postmaster of New Salem and tried that for a while; then Abraham Lincoln tried his hand at surveying. Abraham Lincoln was efficient at both, but passionate about neither. Abraham Lincoln proposed marriage to a Kentucky girl named Mary Owens, but that didn't work out either. In her rejection she said Abraham Lincoln was "deficient in those little links which make up the chain of woman's happiness."