Annotation
[1] Illinois State Journal, April 9, 1869; NH, I, 9-10. The original document from which the Journal printed this item has not been located. The Nicolay and Hay version differs from the Journal version in a few details which are indicated by brackets in the tabulation of arms and in Hardin's special order as printed below. Lincoln's receipt was presumably written on this special order which he presented to the quartermaster and on which were tabulated the arms as issued:
Special Order No. 7. BEARDSTOWN, April 28, 1832.
The Brigade Inspector having inspected Capt. Abram Lincoln's company, and mustered them into the service, reports that thirty guns are wanting to arm the company completely. Quartermaster General Edwards will furnish the Captain with that number of arms, if to be had in this [his] department[.]
By order of JOHN J. HARDIN, Brig. Major.
Brig. Gen. SAMUEL WHIT[E]SIDE.
Com'dg. B.M.V. Ill.
Governor John Reynolds called on April 16 for the militia to meet at Beardstown on April 22. Lincoln enrolled on April 21, at Richland, nine miles from New Salem; he was elected captain of the local company. When his thirty-day enlistment ended, he re-enlisted on May 27 as a private in Captain Elijah Iles' company of Independent Rangers. On June 16, he re-enlisted for thirty days in the Independent Spy Corps under Captain Jacob M. Early, a Methodist preacher and physician from Springfield who had been a private in the companies of Lincoln and Iles.
The persons whose names appear in the document were as follows: Cyrus Edwards, acting quartermaster general, a leading Madison County Whig; John J. Hardin, inspector general and mustering officer who enrolled Lincoln's company into state service, a Morgan County attorney whose law office was in Jacksonville, and who appears often in Lincoln's subsequent writings; and Samuel Whiteside, brigadier general in charge of volunteers, a Democrat of Madison County whose experience in Indian fighting went back to 1811, when he was captain of one of the ten companies of mounted rangers organized to protect the West from Indians.