Although the economy was booming, the business struggled and Lincoln eventually sold his share. That March he entered politics, running for the Illinois General Assembly, advocating navigational improvements on the Sangamon River. He could draw crowds as a raconteur, but he lacked the requisite formal education, powerful friends, and money, and lost the election.
Lincoln briefly interrupted his campaign to serve as a captain in the Illinois Militia during the Black Hawk War. When he returned to his campaign and first speech, he observed a supporter in the crowd under attack, grabbed the assailant by his "neck and the seat of his trousers" and tossed him. Lincoln finished eighth out of 13 candidates (the top four were elected), though he received 277 of the 300 votes cast in the New Salem precinct.
The Egyptians overran most of Syria and its hinterland with ease. The strongest and only really significant resistance was put up at the port city of Acre. The Egyptian force eventually captured the city after a six-month siege, which lasted from 3 November 1831 to 27 May 1832. Unrest on the Egyptian home front increased dramatically during the course of the siege. Ali was forced to squeeze Egypt more and more in order to support his campaign and his people resented the increased burden.
The Hambacher Festival was a German national democratic festival celebrated from 27 May to 30 May 1832 at Hambach Castle, near Neustadt an der Weinstraße, in present-day Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The event was disguised as a nonpolitical county fair.
Thus began the first Egyptian–Ottoman War (1831–1833), during which the French-trained army of Muhammad Ali Pasha, under the command of his son Ibrahim Pasha, defeated the Ottoman Army as it marched into Anatolia with a great victory, reaching the city of Kütahya within 320 km (200 mi) of the capital, Constantinople.
After the fall of Acre, the Egyptian army marched north into Anatolia. At the Battle of Konya (21 December 1832), Ibrahim Pasha soundly defeated the Ottoman army led by the sadr azam Grand Vizier Reshid Pasha. There were now no military obstacles between Ibrahim's forces and Constantinople itself.
The groundwork of the 1848 uprising was laid as early as the Hambacher Fest of 1832 when public unrest began to grow in the face of heavy taxation and political censorship. The Hambacher Fest is also noteworthy for the Republicans adopting the black-red-gold colors used on today's national flag of Germany as a symbol of the Republican movement and of the unity among the German-speaking people.