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Posted By: marshall barkman

Last post from me in regards to Shields......To all appearances, James Shields was striding tall in the Summer of 1842, since, as State Auditor of Public Accounts, he moved in circles of power and carried considerable clout. He was well paid, single, and could come and go as he pleased. On the surface, he should not have had a care in the world but, in the turbulent world of prairie politics where windstorms could level a house in a few seconds, there was stormy weather ahead. It would involve the temperamental Miss Mary Todd and, her husband to be, Abraham Lincoln, the redoubtable Whig leader. Before the dust finally settled in late September, a chain of events had culminated into a situation where not only was Shields political life imperiled but his mortality as well. By the same token, Lincolns survival was in jeopardy too and, in retrospect, had the scenario played out differently, someone else would have been the sixteenth President of the United States; there might not have been a civil war, and the whole map of America might be different.