A  BRA  JJ AM  LINCOLN. 
3»7 
and  a  corresponding  irascibility.  He  was  for 
that  reason  an  irresistible  mark  for  satire. 
Through  a  long  life  of  somewhat  conspicuous 
public  service,  he  never  lost  a  certain  tone  of 
absurdity  which  can  only  be  accounted  for  by 
the  qualities  we  have  mentioned.  Even  his 
honorable  wounds  in  battle,  while  they  were 
productive  of  great  public  applause  and  po- 
litical success,  gained  him  scarcely  less  ridi- 
cule than  praise.  He  never  could  refrain  from 
talking  of  them  himself,  having  none  of  Cori- 
olanus's  repugnance  in  that  respect,  and  for 
that  reason  was  a  constant  target  for  news- 
paper wits.  Mr.  Prentice  of  Louisville  once 
gravely  said  of  him:  "  It  is  really  wonderful 
that  Shields  survived  that  shot  through  his 
bowels.  Now,  if  it  had  been  through  his  head 
no  one  would  have  expected  any  serious  re- 
sult." After  he  returned  from  the  Mexican  war, 
with  his  laurels  still  green,  and  at  the  close  of 
the  canvass  which  had  made  him  Senator,  he 
wrote  an  incredible  letter  to  Judge  Breese,  his 
principal  competitor,  in  which  he  committed 
the  gratuitous  folly  of  informing  him  that  "  he 
had  sworn  in  his  heart  [if  Breese  had  been 
elected]  that  he  should  never  have  profited  by 
his  success;  and  depend  upon  it,"  he  added, 
in  the  amazing  and  useless  impudence  of  tri- 
umph, "  I  would  have  kept  that  vow,  regard- 
less of  consequences.  That,  however,  is  now 
past,  and  the  vow  is  canceled  by  your  defeat.'' 
He  then  went  on,  with  threats  equally  inde- 
cent, to  make  certain  demands  which  were 
altogether  inadmissible,  and  which  Judge 
Breese  only  noticed  by  sending  this  prepos- 
terous letter  to  the  press.* 
It  may  easily  be  imagined  that  a  man  who, 
after  being  elected  a  Senator  of  the  United 
States,  was  capable  of  the  insane  insolence  of 
signing  his  name  to  a  letter  informing  his  de- 
feated competitor  that  he  would  have  killed 
him  if  the  result  had  been  different,  would  not 
have  been  likely,  when  seven  years  younger, 
to  bear  newspaper  ridicule  with  equanimity. 
His  fury  against  the  unknown  author  of  the 
satire  was  the  subject  of  much  merriment  in 
Springfield,  and  the  next  week  another  letter 
appeared,  from  a  different  hand,  but  adopting 
the  machinery  of  the  first,  in  which  the  widow 
offered  to  make  up  the  quarrel  by  marrying 
the  Auditor,  and  this  in  time  was  followed  by 
an  epithalamium,  in  which  this  happy  com- 
promise was  celebrated  in  very  bad  verses.  In 
the  change  of  hands  all  the  humor  of  the  thing 
had  evaporated,  and  nothing  was  left  but  fem- 
inine mischief  on  one  side  and  the  exaspera- 
tion of  wounded  vanity  on  the  other.  Shields, 
however,  had  talked  so  much  about  the  mat- 
ter that  he  now  felt  imperatively  called  upon 
to  act,  and  he  therefore  sent  General  White- 
side to  demand  from  the  "Journal" the  name 
of  its  contributor.  Mr.  Francis,  the  editor,  was 
in  a  quandary.  Lincoln  had  written  the  first 
letter,  and  the  antic  fury  of  Shields  had  in- 
duced two  young  ladies  who  took  a  lively 
interest  in  Illinois  politics  —  and  with  good 
reason,  for  one  was  to  be  the  wife  of  a  Senator 
and  the  other  of  a  President  —  to  follow  up 
the  game  with  attacks  in  prose  and  verse  which, 
however  deficient  in  wit  and  meter,  were  not 
wanting  in  pungency.    In  his  dilemma  he  ap- 
WILLIAM    H.     HERXDOX.       (FROM     A     PHOTOGRAPH    BY    INGMIRE.  ) 
plied  to  Lincoln,  who,  as  he  was  starting  to 
attend  court  at  Tremont,  told  him  to  give  his 
name  and  withhold  those  of  the  ladies.  As 
soon  as  Whiteside  received  this  information, 
he  and  his  fiery  principal  set  out  for  Tremont, 
and  as  Shields  did  nothing  in  silence,  the  news 
came  to  Lincoln's  friends,  two  of  whom.  Will- 
iam Butler  and  Dr.  Merryman,  one  of  those 
combative  medical  men  who  have  almost  dis- 
appeared from  American  society,  went  oft"  in 
a  buggy  in  pursuit.  They  soon  came  in  sight 
of  the  others,  but  loitered  in  the  rear  until 
evening,  and  then  drove  rapidly  to  Tremont, 
arriving  there  some  time  in  advance  of  Shields; 
so  that  in  the  ensuing  negotiations  Lincoln 
had  the  assistance  of  friends  whose  fidelity 
and  whose  nerve  were  equally  beyond  ques- 
tion. It  would  be  useless  to  recount  all  the 
tedious  preliminaries  of  the  affair.  Shields 
*  "  National  Intelligencer,''  Feb.  2S,  1S40.
58S 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
HOUSE     IN     WHICH     LINCOLN     LIVED     WHEN     HE     WAS     ELECTED     PRESIDENT. 
opened  the  correspondence,  as  might  have  been 
expected,  with  blustering  and  with  threats; 
his  nature  had  no  other  way  of  expressing  it- 
self. His  first  letter  was  taken  as  a  bar  to  any 
explanation  or  understanding,  and  he  after- 
wards wrote  a  second,  a  little  less  offensive  in 
tone,  but  without  withdrawing  the  first.  At 
every  interview  of  the  seconds  General  White- 
side deplored  the  bloodthirsty  disposition  of 
his  principal,  and  urged  that  Mr.  Lincoln 
should  make  the  concessions  which  alone 
would  prevent  lamentable  results.  These  rep- 
resentations seemed  to  avail  nothing,  how- 
ever, and  the  parties,  after  endless  talk,  went 
to  Alton  and  crossed  the  river  to  the  Missouri 
shore.  It  seemed  for  a  moment  that  the  fight 
must  take  place.  The  terms  had  been  left  by 
the  code,  as  then  understood  in  the  West,  to 
Lincoln,  and  he  certainly  made  no  grudging 
use  of  his  privilege.  The  weapons  chosen  were 
"  cavalry  broadswords  of  the  largest  size  "  ; 
and  the  combatants  were  to  stand  on  either 
side  of  a  board  placed  on  the  ground,  each  to 
fight  in  a  limit  of  six  feet  on  his  own  side  of 
the  board.  It  was  evident  that  Lincoln  did 
not  desire  the  death  of  his  adversary,  and  did 
not  intend  to  be  materially  injured  himself. 
The  advantage  morally  was  altogether  against 
him.  He  felt  intensely  the  stupidity  of  the 
whole  affair,  but  thought  he  could  not  avoid 
it  without  degradation  ;  while  to  Shields  such 
a  fracas  was  a  delight.    It  came  to  its  natural 
end  by  the  intervention  of  the  usual  "  gods 
out  of  a  machine,"  the  gods  being  John  J. 
Hardin  and  one  Dr.  English,  and  the  machine 
a  canoe  in  which  they  had  hastily  paddled 
across  the  Mississippi.  Mr.  Shields  suffered 
himself  to  be  persuaded  to  withdraw  his  of- 
fensive challenge.  Lincoln  then  made  the  ex- 
planation he  had  been  ready  to  make  from  the 
beginning ;  avowing  the  one  letter  he  had 
written,  and  saying  that  it  had  been  printed 
solely  for  political  effect,  and  without  any  in- 
tention of  injuring  Shields  personally. 
One  would  think  that,  after  a  week  passed 
in  such  unprofitable  trifling,  the  parties,  prin- 
cipal and  secondary,  would  have  been  will- 
ing to  drop  the  matter  forever.  We  are  sure 
that  Lincoln  would  have  been  glad  to  ban- 
ish it,  even  from  his  memory  ;  but  to  men 
like  Shields  and  Whiteside  the  peculiar  relish 
and  enjoyment  of  such  an  affair  is  its  publicity. 
On  the  3d  of  October,  therefore,  eleven  days 
after  the  meeting,  as  public  attention  seemed 
to  be  flagging,  Whiteside  wrote  an  account  of 
it  to  the  "  Sangamon  Journal,"  for  which  he 
does  not  forget  to  say,  "  I  hold  myself  respon- 
sible !  "  Of  course  he  seizes  the  occasion  to 
paint  a  heroic  portrait  of  himself  and  his  prin- 
cipal. It  was  an  excellent  story  until  the  next 
week,  when  Dr.  Merryman,  who  seems  to 
have  wielded  a  pen  like  a  scalpel,  gave  a  much 
fuller  history  of  the  matter,  which  he  sub- 
stantiated by  printing  all  the  documents,  and,
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
389 
not  content  with  that,  gave  little  details  of  the 
negotiations  which  show,  either  that  Whiteside 
was  one  of  the  most  grotesque  braggarts  of 
the  time,  or  that  Merryman  was  an  admira- 
ble writer  of  comic  fiction.  Among  the  most 
amusing  facts  he  brought  forward  was  that 
Whiteside,  being  a  Fund  Commissioner  of  the 
State,  ran  the  risk  of  losing  his  office  by  en- 
gaging in  a  duel ;  and  his  anxiety  to  appear 
reckless  and  dangerous,  and  yet  keep  within 
the  statute  and  save  his  salary,  was  depicted 
by  Merryman  with  a  droll  fidelity.  He  con- 
cluded by  charging  Whiteside  plainly  with 
"  inefficiency  and  want  of  knowledge  of  those 
laws  which  govern  gentlemen  in  matters  of 
this  kind,"  and  with  "  trying  to  wipe  out  his 
fault  by  doing  an  act  of  injustice  to  Mr. 
Lincoln." 
The  town  was  greatly  diverted  by  these 
pungent  echoes  of  the  bloodless  fight,  and 
Shields  and  Whiteside  felt  that  their  honor 
was  still  out  of  repair.  A  rapid  series  of  chal- 
lenges succeeded  among  the  parties,  princi- 
pals and  seconds  changing  places  as  deftly 
as  dancers  in  a  quadrille.  The  Auditor  chal- 
lenged Mr.  Butler,  who  had  been  very  out- 
spoken in  his  contemptuous  comments  on  the 
affair.  Butler  at  once  accepted,  and  with  a 
grim  sincerity  announced  his  conditions  — 
"to  fight  next  morning  at  sunrising  in  Bob 
Allen's  meadow,  one  hundred  yards'  distance, 
with  rifles."  This  was  instantly  declined,  with 
a  sort  of  horror,  by  Shields  and  Whiteside,  as 
such  a  proceeding  would  have  proved  fatal 
to  their  official  positions  and  their  means  of 
livelihood.  They  probably  cared  less  for  the 
chances  of  harm  from  Butler's  Kentucky  rifle 
than  for  the  certainty  of  the  Illinois  law  which 
cut  off  all  duelists  from  holding  office  in  the 
State.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  so  unreason- 
able is  human  nature  as  displayed  among  poli- 
ticians, General  Whiteside  felt  that  if  he  bore 
patiently  the  winged  words  of  Merryman,  his 
availability  as  a  candidate  was  greatly  dam- 
aged;  and  he  therefore  sent  to  the  witty 
doctor  what  Mr.  Lincoln  called  "  a  quasi-chal- 
lenge,"  hurling  at  him  a  modified  defiance, 
which  should  be  enough  to  lure  him  to  the 
field  of  honor,  and  yet  not  sufficiently  explicit 
to  lose  Whiteside  the  dignity  and  perquisites 
of  Fund  Commissioner.  Merryman,  not  being 
an  office-holder  and  having  no  salary  to  risk, 
responded  with  brutal  directness,  which  was 
highly  unsatisfactory  to  Whiteside,  who  was 
determined  not  to  fight  unless  he  could  do 
so  lawfully ;  and  Lincoln,  who  now  acted  as 
second  to  the  doctor  in  his  turn,  records  the 
cessation  of  the  correspondence  amid  the 
agonized  explanations  of  Whiteside  and  the 
scornful  hootings  of  Merryman,  "  while  the 
town  was  in  a  ferment  and  a  street  fight 
Vol.  XXXIII.— 52. 
somewhat  anticipated."  In  respect  to  the-  last 
diversion  the  town  was  disappointed. 
Shields  lost  nothing  by  the  hilarity  which 
this  burlesque  incident  created.  He  was  re- 
served for  a  career  of  singular  luck  and  glory 
mingled  with  signal  misfortunes.  With  little 
discernible  merit  or  availability  about  him 
except  his  nationality,  he  continued  through- 
out a  long  lifetime  to  be  selected  at  intervals 
for  the  highest  positions,  because  he  was  an 
Irishman.  After  he  ceased  to  be  Auditor  he 
was  elected  a  judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  of 
Illinois ;  while  still  holding  that  position  he 
applied  for  the  place  of  Commissioner  of  the 
General  Land  Office,  and  his  application  was 
successful.  When  the  Mexican  war  broke  out 
he  asked  for  a  commission  as  brigadier-gen- 
eral, although  he  still  held  his  civil  appoint- 
ment, and,  to  the  amazement  of  the  whole 
army,  he  was  given  that  important  command 
before  he  had  ever  seen  a  day's  service.  At  the 
battle  of  Cerro  Gordo  he  was  shot  through  the 
lungs,  and  this  wound  made  him  a  Senator  as 
soon  as  he  returned  from  the  war.  After  he 
had  served  one  term  in  the  Senate,  he  removed 
from  Illinois,  and  was  soon  sent  back  to  the 
same  body  from  Minnesota.  In  the  war  of  the 
rebellion  he  was  again  appointed  a  brigadier- 
general  by  his  old  adversary,  for  the  same 
cogent  ethnological  reasons  to  which  he  owed 
all  his  honors,  and  was  again  wounded  in  a 
battle  in  which  he  defeated  the  redoubtable 
Stonewall  Jackson ;  and  many  years  after 
Lincoln  was  laid  to  sleep  beneath  a  mountain 
of  marble  at  Springfield,  Shields  was  made  the 
shuttlecock  of  contending  demagogues  in  Con- 
gress —  each  striving  to  gain  Irish  votes  by 
giving  public  money  to  the  battered  veteran  — 
until  in  the  impulse  of  that  transient  contro- 
versy, the  State  of  Missouri,  finding  the  gray- 
headed  adventurer  in  her  borders,  for  the  third 
time  sent  him  to  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States  for  a  few  weeks  —  a  history  unparalleled 
even  in  America. 
We  have  reason  to  think  that  the  whole  af- 
fair was  excessively  distasteful  to  Lincoln.  He 
did  not  even  enjoy  the  ludicrousness  of  it,  as 
might  have  been  expected.  He  never  —  so 
far  as  we  can  learn  —  alluded  to  it  afterward, 
and  the  recollection  of  it  died  away  so  com- 
pletely from  the  minds  of  people  in  the  State, 
that  during  the  heated  canvass  of  i860  there 
was  no  mention  of  this  disagreeable  episode 
in  the  opposition  papers  of  Illinois.  It  had 
been  absolutely  forgotten. 
This  was  Mr.  Lincoln's  last  personal  quar- 
rel. Although  the  rest  of  his  life  was  passed 
in  hot  and  earnest  debate,  he  never  again  de- 
scended to  the  level  of  his  adversaries,  who 
would  gladly  enough  have  resorted  to  un- 
seemly wrangling.    In  later  years  it  became
39° 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
his  duty  to  give  an  official  reprimand  to  a 
young  officer  who  had  been  court-martialed 
ibr  a  quarrel  with  one  of  his  associates.  The 
reprimand  is  probably  the  gentlest  recorded 
in  the  annals  of  penal  discourses,  and  it  shows 
in  few  words  the  principles  which  ruled  the 
conduct  of  this  great  and  peaceable  man.  It 
has  never  before  been  published,  and  it  de- 
serves to  be  written  in  letters  of  gold  on  the 
walls  of  even-  gymnasium  and  college. 
"  The  advice  o\  a  father  to  his  son,  '  Beware  pf  en- 
trance to  a  quarrel,  but  being  in,  bear  it  that  the  op- 
posed may  beware  of  thee! '  is  good,  but  not  the  best. 
Quarrel  not  at  all.  No  man  resolved  to  make  the  most 
of  himself  can  spare  time  for  personal  contention.  Still 
less  can  he  afford  to  take  all  the  consequences,  includ- 
ing the  vitiating  of  his  temper  and  the  loss  of  self-con- 
trol. Yield  larger  things  to  which  you  can  show  no 
more  than  equal  right ;  and  yield  lesser  ones  though 
clearly  your  own.  Better  give  your  path  to  a  dog  than 
be  bitten  by  him  in  contesting  for  the  right.  Even 
killing  the  dog  would  not  cure  the  bite." 
THE    CAMPAIGN    OF    1 844. 
In  the  letter  to  Stuart  which  we  have  quoted, 
Lincoln  announced  his  intention  to  form  a 
partnership  with  Judge  Logan,  which  was 
soon  carried  out.  His  connection  with  Stuart 
was  formally  dissolved  in  April,  1841,  and 
one  with  Logan  formed  which  continued  for 
four  years.  It  may  almost  be  said  that  Lincoln's 
practice  as  a  lawyer  begins  from  this  time. 
Stuart,  though  even  then  giving  promise  of 
the  distinction  at  which  he  arrived  in  his  pro- 
fession later  in  life,  was  at  that  period  so  en- 
tirely devoted  to  politics  that  the  business  of 
the  office  was  altogether  a  secondary  matter 
to  him ;  and  Lincoln,  although  no  longer  in  his 
first  youth,  being  now  thirty-two  years  of  age, 
had  not  yet  formed  those  habits  of  close  appli- 
cation which  are  indispensable  to  permanent 
success  at  the  bar.  He  was  not  behind  the 
greater  part  of  his  contemporaries  in  this  re- 
spect. Among  all  the  lawyers  of  the  circuit 
who  were  then,  or  who  afterwards  became,  emi- 
nent practitioners,*  there  were  few  indeed  who 
in  those  days  applied  themselves  with  any  de- 
gree of  persistency  to  the  close  study  of  legal 
principles.  One  of  these  few  was  Stephen  T. 
Logan.  He  was  more  or  less  a  politician,  as 
were  all  his  compeers  at  the  bar,  but  he  was 
always  more  a  lawyer  than  anything  else.  He 
had  that  love  for  his  profession  which  it  jeal- 
ously exacts  as  a  condition  of  succeeding.  He 
possessed  few  books,  and  it  used  to  be  said  of 
him  long  afterwards  that  he  carried  his  library 
in  his  hat.  But  the  books  which  he  had  he 
never  ceased  to  read  and  ponder,  and  we  heard 
*  They  were  Dan  Stone,  Jesse  B.  Thomas,  Cyrus 
Walker,  Schuyler  Strong,  A.  T.  Bledsoe,  George  For- 
quer,  S.  H.  Treat,  Ninian  W.  Edwards,  Josiah  Lam- 
born,  John  J.  Hardin,  E.  D.  Baker,  and  others. 
him  say  when  he  was  sixty  years  old,  that  once 
every  year  since  he  came  of  age  he  had  read 
" Blackstone's  Commentaries"  through.  He 
had  that  old-fashioned,  lawyer-like  morality 
which  was  keenly  intolerant  of  any  laxity  or 
slovenliness  of  mind  or  character.  His  former 
partner  had  been  Edward  D.  Baker,  but  this 
brilliant,  mercurial,  irascible  spirit  was  not 
congenial  to  Logan ;  Baker's  carelessness  in 
money  matters  was  intolerable  to  him,  and  he 
was  glad  to  escape  from  an  associate  so  gifted 
and  so  exasperating.f  Needing  some  one, 
however,  to  assist  him  in  his  practice,  which 
was  then  considerable,  he  invited  Lincoln  into 
partnership.  He  had,  as  we  have  seen,  formed 
a  favorable  opinion  of  the  young  Kentuckian 
the  first  time  they  had  met.  In  his  subsequent 
acquaintance  with  him  he  had  come  to  recog- 
nize and  respect  his  abilities,  his  unpretending 
common  sense,  and  his  innate  integrity.  The 
partnership  continued  about  four  years,  but  the 
benefit  Lincoln  derived  from  it  lasted  all  his 
life.  The  example  of  Judge  Logan's  thrift,  or- 
der, and  severity  of  morals  ;  his  straightforward 
devotion  to  his  profession  ;  his  close  and  care- 
ful study  of  his  cases,  together  with  the  larger 
and  more  important  range  of  practice  to  which 
Lincoln  was  introduced  by  this  new  associa- 
tion, confirmed  all  those  salutary  tendencies 
by  which  he  had  been  led  into  the  profession, 
and  corrected  those  less  desirable  ones  which 
he  shared  with  most  of  the  lawyers  about 
him.  He  began  for  the  first  time  to  study  his 
cases  with  energy  and  patience ;  to  resist  the 
tendency,  almost  universal  at  that  day,  to  sup- 
ply with  florid  rhetoric  the  attorney's  defi- 
ciency in  law;  in  short,  to  educate,  discipline, 
and  train  the  enormous  faculty,  hitherto  latent 
in  him,  for  close  and  severe  intellectual  labor. 
Logan,  who  had  expected  that  Lincoln's  chief 
value  to  him  would  be  as  a  talking  advocate 
before  the  jury,  was  surprised  and  pleased  to 
find  his  new  partner  rapidly  becoming  a  law- 
yer. "  He  would  study  out  his  case  and  make 
about  as  much  of  it  as  anybody,"  said  Logan, 
many  years  afterwards.  "  His  ambition  as  a 
lawyer  increased  ;  he  grew  constantly.  By 
close  study  of  each  case,  as  it  came  up,  he 
got  to  be  quite  a  formidable  lawyer."  The 
character  of  the  man  is  in  these  words.  He 
had   vast   concerns  intrusted    to    him   in  the 
t  Logan's  office  was,  in  fact,  a  nursery  of  statesmen. 
Three  of  his  partners,  William  L.  May,  Baker,  and 
Lincoln,  left  him  in  rapid  succession  to  go  to  Congress, 
and  finally  the  contagion  gained  the  head  of  the  firm, 
and  the  Judge  was  himself  the  candidate  of  his  party, 
when  it  was  no  longer  able  to  elect  one.  After  he  had 
retired  from  practice,  the  office,  under  his  son-in-law 
and  successor,  Milton  Hay,  retained  its  prestige  for 
cradling  public  men.  Palmer  and  Cullom  left  it  to  be 
Governors  of  the  State,  and  the  latter  to  be  a  Con- 
gressman and  Senator.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
V)* 
course  of  his  life,  and  disposed  of  them  one 
at  a  time  as  they  were  presented.  At  the  end 
of  four  years  the  partnership  was  dissolved. 
Judge  Logan  took  his  son  David  —  afterwards 
a  well-known  politician  and  lawyer  of  Oregon 
—  into  his  office,  and  Lincoln  opened  one  of 
his  own,  into  which  he  soon  invited  a  young, 
bright,  and  enthusiastic  man  named  William 
Henry  Herndon,  who  remained  his  partner  as 
long  as  he  lived. 
The  old  partners  remained  close  and  inti- 
mate friends.  They  practiced  at  the  same  bar 
for  twenty  years,  often  as  associates,  and  often 
as  adversaries,  but  always  with  relations  of 
mutual  confidence  and  regard.  They  had  the 
unusual  honor,  while  they  were  still  compara- 
tively young  men,  of  seeing  their  names  indis- 
solubly  associated  in  the  map  of  their  State 
as  a  memorial  to  future  ages  of  their  friend- 
ship and  their  fame,  in  the  county  of  Logan, 
of  which  the  city  of  Lincoln  is  the  county  seat. 
They  both  prospered,  each  in  his  way.  Lo- 
gan rapidly  gained  a  great  reputation  and 
accumulated  an  ample  fortune.  Lincoln,  while 
he  did  not  become  rich,  always  earned  a  re- 
spectable livelihood,  and  never  knew  the  care 
of  poverty  or  debt  from  that  time  forward. 
His  wife  and  he  suited  their  style  of  living  to 
their  means,  and  were  equally  removed  from 
luxury  and  privation.  They  went  to  live,  imme- 
diately after  their  marriage,  at  a  boarding- 
house*  called  "The  Globe,"  which  was  "  very 
well  kept  by  a  widow  lady  of  the  name  of 
Beck,"  and  there  their  first  child  was  born, 
who  was  one  day  to  be  Secretary  of  War,  and 
for  whom  was  reserved  the  strange  experience 
of  standing  by  the  death-bed  of  two  assassin- 
ated Presidents.  Lincoln  afterwards  built  a 
comfortable  but  unpretending  house  of  wood 
on  the  corner  of  Eighth  and  Jackson  streets, 
where  he  lived  until  he  removed  to  the  Exec- 
utive Mansion. 
Neither  his  marriage  nor  his  new  profes- 
sional interests,  however,  put  an  end  to  his 
participation  in  politics.  Even  that  period  of 
gloom  and  depression  of  which  we  have 
spoken,  and  which  has  been  so  much  exag- 
gerated by  the  chroniclers  and  the  gossip  of 
Springfield,  could  not  have  interrupted  for 
any  length  of  time  his  activity  as  a  member 
of  the  Legislature.  Only  for  a  few  days  was 
he  absent  from  his  place  in  the  House.  On 
the  19th  of  January,  1841,  John  J.  Hardin 
apologized  for  the  delay  in  some  committee 
business,  alleging  Mr.  Lincoln's  indisposition 
as  an  excuse.  On  the  23d  the  letter  to 
Stuart  was  written;  but  on  the  26th  Lincoln 
had  so  far  recovered  his  self-possession  as  to 
resume  his  place  in  the  House  and  the  leader- 
*  This  house  is  still  standing,  opposite  St.  Paul's 
church. 
ship  of  his  party.  The  journals  of  the  next 
month  show  his  constant  activity  and  promi- 
nence in  the  routine  businessof  the  Legislature 
until  it  adjourned.  In  August  Stuart  was  re- 
elected to  Congress.  Lincoln  marie  his  visit 
to  Kentucky  with  Speed,  and  returned  to  find 
himself  generally  talked  of  for  Governor  of 
the  State.  This  idea  did  not  commend  itself 
to  the  judgment  of  himself  or  his  friends,  and 
accordingly  we  find  in  the  "  Sangamon  Jour- 
nal" one  of  those  semi-official  announcements 
so  much  in  vogue  in  early  Western  politics, 
which,  while  disclaiming  any  direct  inspiration 
from  Mr.  Lincoln,  expresses  the  gratitude  of 
his  friends  for  the  movement  in  his  favor,  but 
declines  the  nomination. 
"  His  talents  and  services  endear  him  to  the  Whig 
party;  but  we  do  not  believe  he  desires  the  nomina- 
tion. He  has  already  made  great  sacrifices  in  main- 
taining his  party  principles,  and  before  his  political 
friends  ask  him  to  make  additional  sacrifices,  the  sub- 
ject should  be  well  considered.  The  office  of  Governor, 
which  would  of  necessity  interfere  with  the  practice  of 
his  profession,  would  poorly  compensate  him  for  the 
loss  of  four  of  the  best  years  of  his  life." 
He  served  this  year  as  a  member  of  the 
Whig  Central  Committee,  and  bore  a  promi- 
nent part  in  the  movement  set  on  foot  at  that 
time  to  check  intemperance  in  the  use  of  spirits. 
It  was  a  movement  in  the  name  and  memory 
of  Washington,  and  the  orators  of  the  cause 
made  effective  rhetorical  use  of  its  august  as- 
sociations. A  passage  from  the  close  of  a 
speech  made  by  Lincoln,  in  March,  1842, 
shows  the  fervor  and  feeling  of  the  hour : 
"Washington  is  the  mightiest  name  of  earth  —  long 
since  mightiest  in  the  cause  of  civil  liberty ;  still  might- 
iest in  moral  reformation.  On  that  name  no  eulogy  is 
expected.  It  cannot  be.  To  add  brightness  to  the  sun 
or  glory  to  the  name  of  Washington  is  alike  impossi- 
ble. Let  none  attempt  it.  In  solemn  awe  pronounce 
the  name,  and  in  its  naked,  deathless  splendor  leave 
it  shining  on." 
A  mass  meeting  of  the  Whigs  of  the  dis- 
trict was  held  at  Springfield  on  the  1st  of 
March,  1843,  for  the  purpose  of  organizing 
the  party  for  the  elections  of  the  year.  On 
this  occasion  Lincoln  was  the  most  prominent 
figure.  He  called  the  meeting  to  order,  stated 
its  object,  and  drew  up  the  platform  of  prin- 
ciples, which  embraced  the  orthodox  Whig 
tenets  of  a  protective  tariff,  national  bank, 
the  distribution  of  the  proceeds  of  the  public 
lands,  and,  finally,  the  tardy  conversion  of  the 
party  to  the  convention  system,  which  had 
been  forced  upon  them  by  the  example  of  the 
Democrats,  who  had  shown  them  that  victory 
could  not  be  organized  without  it.  Lincoln 
was  also  chairman  of  the  committee  which 
was  charged  with  the  address  to  the  people, 
and  a  paragraph  from  this  document  is  worth 
quoting,  as  showing  the  use  which  he  made
39- 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
at  that  early  day  of  a  pregnant  text  which 
was  hereafter  to  figure  in  a  tar  more  momen- 
tous connection,  and  exercise  a  powerful  in- 
fluence upon  his  career.  Exhorting  the  Whigs 
to  harmony,  he  says  :  k>  That  union  is  strength 
is  a  truth  that  has  been  known,  illustrated, 
and  declared  in  various  ways  and  forms  in  all 
ages  of  the  world.  That  great  fabulist  and 
philosopher,  ^Esop,  illustrated  it  by  his  fable 
of  the  bundle  of  sticks  ;  and  he  whose  wis- 
dom surpasses  that  of  all  philosophers  has 
declared  that  '  a  house  divided  against  itself 
cannot  stand.'"  He  calls  to  mind  the  victory 
of  1S40,  the  overwhelming  Whig  majority  of 
that  year,  the  ill  success  of  the  party  since, 
and  the  necessity  of  unity  and  concord  that 
the  party  may  make  its  entire  strength  felt. 
Lincoln  was  at  this  time  a  candidate  for  the 
Whig  nomination  to  Congress ;  but  he  was 
confronted  by  formidable  competition.  The 
adjoining  county  of  Morgan  was  warmly  de- 
voted to  one  of  its  own  citizens,  John  J.  Har- 
din, a  man  of  an  unusually  gallant  and  chiv- 
alrous strain  of  character  ;  and  several  other 
counties,  for  reasons  not  worth  considering, 
were  pledged  to  support  any  one  whom  Mor- 
gan county  presented.  If  Lincoln  had  car- 
ried Sangamon  county,  his  strength  was  so 
great  in  Menard  and  Mason,  where  he  was 
personally  known,  that  he  could  have  been 
easily  nominated.  But  Edward  D.  Baker  had 
long  coveted  a  seat  in  Congress,  and  went 
into  the  contest  against  Lincoln  with  many 
points  in  his  favor.  He  was  of  about  the 
same  age,  but  had  resided  longer  in  the  dis- 
trict, had  a  larger  personal  acquaintance, 
and  was  a  much  readier  and  more  pleasing 
speaker.  In  fact,  there  are  few  men  who  have 
ever  lived  in  this  country  with  more  of  the 
peculiar  temperament  of  the  orator  than  Ed- 
ward Dickinson  Baker.  It  is  related  of  him 
that  on  one  occasion  when  the  circumstances 
called  for  a  policy  of  reserve,  he  was  urged 
by  his  friends  to  go  out  upon  a  balcony  and 
address  an  impromptu  audience  which  was 
calling  for  him.  "  No,"  he  replied,  mistrust- 
ing his  own  fluency;  "if  I  go  out  there,  I'll 
make  a  better  speech  than  I  want  to."  He 
was  hardly  capable  of  the  severe  study  and 
care  by  which  great  parliamentary  speakers 
are  bred ;  but  before  a  popular  audience,  and 
on  all  occasions  where  brilliant  and  effective 
improvisation  is  called  for,  he  was  almost  un- 
equaled.  His  funeral  oration  over  the  deadbody 
of  Senator  Broderick  in  California,  his  thrilling 
and  inspiriting  appeal  in  Union  Square,  New 
York,  at  the  great  meeting  of  April,  1861,  and 
his  reply  to  Breckinridge  in  the  Senate  de- 
livered upon  the  impulse  of  the  moment,  con- 
ceived as  he  listened  to  the  Kentuckian's  per- 
oration, leaning  against  the  doorway  of  the 
Chamber  in  full  uniform,  booted  and  spurred, 
as  he  had  ridden  into  Washington  from  the 
camp,  are  among  the  most  remarkable  speci- 
mens of  absolutely  improvised  and  thrilling  elo- 
quence which  our  annals  contain.  He  was  also 
a  man  of  extremely  prepossessing  appearance. 
Born  in  England  of  poor  but  educated  pa- 
rents, and  brought  as  a  child  to  this  country, 
his  good  looks  and  brightness  had  early  at- 
tracted the  attention  of  prominent  gentlemen 
in  the  State,  especially  of  Governor  Edwards, 
who  had  made  much  of  him  and  assisted  him  to 
a  good  education.  He  had  met  with  consider- 
able success  as  a  lawyer,  though  he  always 
relied  rather  upon  his  eloquence  than  his  law, 
and  there  were  few  juries  which  could  resist 
the  force  and  fury  of  his  speech,  and  not  many 
lawyers  could  keep  their  own  equanimity  in 
the  face  of  his  witty  persiflage  and  savage  sar- 
casm. To  all  this  add  a  genuine  love  of  every 
species  of  combat,  physical  and  moral,  and 
we  may  understand  the  name  Charles  Sumner 
—  paraphrasing  a  well-known  epigram — ap- 
plied to  him  in  the  Senate,  after  his  heroic 
death  at  Ball's  Bluff,  "  the  Prince  Rupert  of 
battle  and  debate." 
If  Baker  had  relied  upon  his  own  unques- 
tionable merits  he  would  have  been  reason- 
ably sure  of  succeeding  in  a  community  so 
well  acquainted  with  him  as  Sangamon  county. 
But  to  make  assurance  doubly  sure  his  friends 
resorted  to  tactics  which  Lincoln,  the  most 
magnanimous  and  placable  of  men,  thought 
rather  unfair.  Baker  and  his  wife  belonged  to 
that  numerous  and  powerful  sect  which  has 
several  times  played  so  important  a  part  in 
Western  politics  —  the  Disciples.  They  all 
supported  him  energetically,  and  used  as  ar- 
guments against  Lincoln  that  his  wife  was  a 
Presbyterian,  that  most  of  her  family  were 
Episcopalians,  that  Lincoln  himself  belonged 
to  no  church  and  that  he  had  been  suspected 
of  deism,  and,  finally,  that  he  was  the  candidate 
of  the  aristocracy.  This  last  charge  so  amazed 
Lincoln  that  he  was  unable  to  frame  any  satis- 
factory answer  to  it.  The  memory  of  his  flat- 
boating  days,  of  his  illiterate  youth,  even  of 
his  deer-skin  breeches  shrunken  by  rain  and 
exposure,  appeared  to  have  no  power  against 
this  unexpected  and  baleful  charge.  When  the 
county  convention  met,  the  delegates  to  the 
district  convention  were  instructed  to  cast  the 
vote  of  Sangamon  for  Baker.  It  showed  the 
confidence  of  the  convention  in  the  impertur- 
bable good-nature  of  the  defeated  candidate 
that  they  elected  him  a  delegate  to  the  Con- 
gressional convention  charged  with  the  cause 
of  his  successful  rival.  In  a  letter  to  Speed, 
he  humorously  refers  to  his  situation  as  that 
of  a  rejected  suitor  who  is  asked  to  act  as 
groomsman  at  the  wedding  of  his  sweetheart.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
393 
It  soon  became  evident  that  Baker  could 
not  get  strength  enough  outside  of  the  county 
to  nominate  him.  Lincoln  in  a  letter  to  Speed, 
written  in  May,  said :  "  In  relation  to  our  Con- 
gress matter  here,  you  were  right  in  supposing 
I  would  support  the  nominee.  Neither  Baker 
nor  I,  however,  is  the  man,  but  Hardin,  so  far 
as  I  can  judge  from  present  appearances.  We 
shall  have  no  split  or  trouble  about  the  mat- 
ter ;  all  will  be  harmony."  A  few  days  later 
this  prediction  was  realized.  The  convention 
met  at  Pekin,  nominated  Hardin  with  all  the 
customary  symptoms  of  spontaneous  enthusi- 
asm. He  was  elected  in  August,*  after  a  short 
but  active  canvass,  in  which  Lincoln  bore  his 
part  as  usual.  Hardin  took  his  seat  in  De- 
cember. The  next  year  the  time  of  holding 
elections  was  changed,  and  always  afterwards 
the  candidates  were  elected  the  year  before 
vacancies  were  to  occur.  In  May,  1844,  there- 
fore, Baker  attained  the  desire  of  his  heart 
by  being  nominated,  and  in  August  he  was 
elected,  defeating  John  Calhoun,  while  Lin- 
coln had  the  laborious  and  honorable  post  of 
Presidential  Elector. 
It  was  not  the  first  nor  the  last  time  that  he 
acted  in  this  capacity.  The  place  had  become 
his  by  a  sort  of  prescription.  His  persuasive 
and  convincing  oratory  was  thought  so  useful 
to  his  party  that  every  four  years  he  was  sent, 
in  the  character  of  electoral  canvasser,  to  the 
remotest  regions  of  the  State  to  talk  to  the 
people  in  their  own  dialect,  with  their  own 
habits  of  thought  and  feeling,  in  favor  of  the 
Whig  candidate.  The  office  had  its  especial 
charm  for  him :  if  beaten,  as  generally  hap- 
pened, the  defeat  had  no  personal  signifi- 
cance; if  elected,  the  functions  of  the  place 
were  discharged  in  one  day,  and  the  office 
passed  from  existence.  But  there  was  some- 
thing more  than  the  orator  and  the  partisan 
concerned  in  this  campaign  of  1844.  The 
whole  heart  of  the  man  was  enlisted  in  it  — 
for  the  candidate  was  the  beloved  and  idolized 
leader  of  the  Whigs,  Henry  Clay.  It  is  prob- 
able that  we  shall  never  see  again  in  this 
country  another  such  instance  of  the  personal 
devotion  of  a  party  to  its  chieftain  as  that 
which  was  shown  by  the  long  and  wonderful 
career  of  Mr.  Clay.  He  became  prominent  in 
the  politics  of  Kentucky  near  the  close  of  the 
last  century  at  twenty-three  years  of  age.  He 
was  elected  first  to  the  Senate  at  twenty-nine. 
He  died  a  Senator  at  seventy-five,  and  for 
the  greater  part  of  that  long  interval  he  was 
the  most  considerable  personal  influence  in 
American  politics.  As  Senator,  Representative, 
*  The  opposing  candidate  was  James  A.  McDougal, 
who  was  afterwards,  as  Senator  from  California,  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  and  eccentric  figures  in  Washing- 
ton life. 
Speaker  of  the  House,  and  diplomatist,  he 
filled  the  public  eye  for  half  a  century,  and 
although  he  twice  peremptorily  retired  from 
office,  and  although  he  was  the  mark  of  the 
most  furious  partisan  hatred  all  his  days, 
neither  his  own  weariness  nor  the  malice  of 
his  enemies  could  ever  keep  him  for  any  length 
of  time  from  that  commanding  position  for 
which  his  temperament  and  his  nature  de- 
signed him.  He  was  beloved,  respected,  and 
served  by  his  adherents  with  a  single-hearted 
allegiance  which  seems  impossible  to  the  more 
complex  life  of  a  later  generation.  In  1844,  it 
is  true,  he  was  no  longer  young,  and  his 
power  may  be  said  to  have  been  on  the  decline. 
But  there  were  circumstances  connected  with 
this  his  last  candidacy  which  excited  his  faith- 
ful followers  to  a  peculiar  intensity  of  devo- 
tion. He  had  been,  as  many  thought,  unjustly 
passed  over  in  1840,  and  General  Harrison,  a 
man  of  greatly  inferior  capacity,  preferred  to 
him  on  grounds  of  prudence  and  expediency, 
after  three  days  of  balloting  had  shown  that 
the  eloquent  Kentuckian  had  more  friends 
and  more  enemies  than  any  other  man  in  the 
Republic.  He  had  seemed  to  regain  all  his 
popularity  by  the  prompt  and  frank  support 
which  he  gave  to  the  candidacy  of  Harrison; 
and  after  the  President's  death  and  the  treach- 
ery of  Tyler  had  turned  the  victory  of  the 
Whigs  into  dust  and  ashes,  the  entire  party 
came  back  to  Clay  with  passionate  affection 
and  confidence,  to  lead  them  in  the  desperate 
battle  which  perhaps  no  man  could  have  won. 
The  Whigs,  however,  were  far  from  appre- 
ciating this.  There  is  evident  in  all  their 
utterances  of  the  spring  and  early  summer  of 
1844,  an  ardent  and  almost  furious  conviction, 
not  only  of  the  necessity  but  the  certainty  of 
success.  Mr.  Clay  was  nominated  long  before 
the  convention  met  in  Baltimore.  The  con- 
vention of  the  1st  of  May  only  ratified  the 
popular  will ;  no  other  name  was  mentioned. 
Mr.  Watkins  Leigh  had  the  honor  of  pre- 
senting his  name,  "a  word,"  he  said  "that  ex- 
pressed more  enthusiasm,  that  had  in  it  more 
eloquence,  than  the  names  of  Chatham,  Burke, 
Patrick  Henry,  and,"  he  continued,  rising  to 
the  requirements  of  the  occasion,  "to  us  more 
than  any  other  and  all  other  names  together." 
Nothing  was  left  to  be  said,  and  Clay  was  nom- 
inated without  a  ballot;  and  Mr.  Lumpkin  of 
Georgia  then  nominated  Theodore  Freling- 
huysen  for  Vice-President,  not  hesitating  to 
avow,  in  the  warmth  and  expansion  of  the  hour, 
that  he  believed  the  baptismal  name  of  the 
New  Jersey  gentleman  had  a  mystical  appro- 
priateness to  the  occasion. 
In  the  Democratic  convention  Mr.  Van 
Buren  had  a  majority  of  delegates  pledged  to 
support  him ;  but  it  had  already  been  resolved
394 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
in  the  inner  councils  of  the  party  that  he  should 
be  defeated.  The  Southern  leaders  had  deter- 
mined upon  the  immediate  and  unconditional 
annexation  of  Texas,  and  Mr.  Van  Buren's 
views  upon  this  vital  question  were  too  mod- 
erate and  conservative  to  suit  the  adventurous 
spirits  who  most  closely  surrounded  President 
Tyler.  During  the  whole  of  the  preceding 
year  a  steady  and  earnest  propaganda  of  an- 
nexation had  been  on  foot,  starting  from  the 
immediate  entourage  of  the  President  and 
embracing  a  large  number  of  Southern  Con- 
gressmen. A  letter  had  been  elicited  from 
General  Jackson*  declaring  with  his  usual  ve- 
hemence in  favor  of  the  project,  and  urging  it 
upon  the  ground  that  Texas  was  absolutely 
necessary  to  us,  as  the  most  easily  defensible 
frontier  against  Great  Britain.  Using  the  fa- 
vorite argument  of  Southerners  of  his  school, 
he  said :  "  Great  Britain  has  alreadymade  trea- 
ties with  Texas;  and  we  know  that  far-seeing 
nation  never  omits  a  circumstance  in  her  ex- 
tensive intercourse  with  the  world  which  can 
be  turned  to  account  in  increasing  her  military 
resources.  May  she  not  enter  into  an  alliance 
with  Texas  ?  And,  reserving,  as  she  doubtless 
will,  the  North-western  boundary  question  as 
the  cause  of  war  with  us  whenever  she  chooses 
to  declare  it  —  let  us  suppose  that,  as  an  ally 
with  Texas,  we  are  to  fight  her.  Preparatory 
to  such  a  movement  she  sends  her  20,000  or 
30,000  men  to  Texas;  organizes  them  on  the 
Sabine,  where  supplies  and  arms  can  be  con- 
centrated before  we  have  even  notice  of  her 
intentions ;  makes  a  lodgment  on  the  Missis- 
sippi; excites  the  negroes  to  insurrection;  the 
lower  country  falls,  with  it  New  Orleans ;  and 
a  servile  war  rages  through  the  whole  South 
and  West."  These  fanciful  prophecies  of  evil 
were  privately  circulated  for  a  year  among 
those  whom  they  would  be  most  likely  to  in- 
fluence, and  the  entire  letter  was  printed  in 
1844,  with  a  result  never  intended  by  the 
writer.  It  contributed  greatly,  in  the  opinion 
of  many, f  to  defeat  Van  Buren,  whom  Jackson 
held  in  great  esteem  and  regard,  and  served 
the  purposes  of  the  Tyler  faction,  which  he 
detested.  The  argument  based  on  imaginary 
British  intrigues  was  the  one  most  relied  upon 
by  Mr.  Tyler's  successive  secretaries  of  state. 
Mr.  Calhoun  in  his  dispatch  of  the  12th  of 
August,  1844,  instructed  our  minister  in  Paris 
to  impress  upon  the  Government  of  France  the 
nefarious  character  of  the  English  diplomacy, 
which  was  seeking,  by  defeating  the  annex- 
ation of  Texas,  to  accomplish  the  abolition  of 
slavery  first  in    that    region,  and  afterwards 
*  This  letter  is  dated  at  the   Hermitage,  Feb.    13, 
1843,  and  was  printed  a  year  later  in  the  "National  In- 
telligencer," with  the  date  altered  to   1844. 
t  Benton:  "  Thirty  Years'  View." 
throughout  the  United  States,  "  a  blow  calam- 
itous to  this  continent  beyond  description." 
No  denials  on  the  part  of  the  British  Govern- 
ment had  any  affect ;  it  was  a  fixed  idea  of 
Calhoun  and  his  followers  that  the  designs  of 
Great  Britain  against  American  slavery  could 
only  be  baffled  by  the  annexation  of  Texas. 
Van  Buren  was  not  in  principle  opposed  to 
the  admission  of  Texas  into  the  Union  at  the 
proper  time  and  with  the  proper  conditions, 
but  the  more  ardent  Democrats  of  the  South 
were  unwilling  to  listen  to  any  conditions  or 
any  suggestion  of  delay.  They  succeeded  in 
inducing  the  convention  to  adopt  the  two- 
thirds  rule,  after  a  whole  day  of  stormy  de- 
bate, and  the  defeat  of  Van  Buren  was  secured. 
The  nomination  of  Mr.  Polk  was  received 
without  enthusiasm,  and  the  exultant  hopes  of 
the  Whigs  were  correspondingly  increased. 
Contemporary  observers  differ  as  to  the 
causes  which  gradually,  as  the  summer  ad- 
vanced, changed  the  course  of  public  opinion 
to  such  an  extent  as  to  bring  defeat  in  Novem- 
ber upon  a  party  which  was  so  sure  of  victory 
in  June.  It  has  been  the  habit  of  the  anti- 
slavery  Whigs  who  have  written  upon  the  sub- 
ject to  ascribe  the  disaster  to  an  indiscretion 
of  the  candidate  himself.  At  the  outset  of  the 
campaign  Mr.  Clay's  avowed  opinion  as  to  the 
annexation  of  Texas  was  that  of  the  vast  ma- 
jority of  his  party,  especially  in  the  North. 
While  not  opposing  an  increase  of  territory 
under  all  circumstances,  he  said, — in  a  letter 
written  from  Raleigh,  N.  C,  two  weeks  before 
his  nomination, — "I  consider  the  annexation 
of  Texas,  at  this  time,  without  the  consent  of 
Mexico,  as  a  measure  compromising  the  na- 
tional character,  involving  us  certainly  in  war 
with  Mexico,  probably  with  other  foreign  pow- 
ers, dangerous  to  the  integrity  of  the  Union, 
inexpedient  in  the  present  financial  condition 
of  the  country,  and  not  called  for  by  any  ex- 
pression of  public  opinion."  He  supported 
these  views  with  temperate  and  judicious  rea- 
sons which  were  received  with  much  gratifica- 
tion throughout  the  country.  Of  course  they 
were  not  satisfactory  to  every  one,  and  Mr. 
Clay  became  so  disquieted  by  letters  of  inquiry 
and  of  criticism  from  the  South,  that  he  was  at 
last  moved,  in  an  unfortunate  hour,  to  write  an- 
other letter  to  a  friend  in  Alabama,  which  was 
regarded  as  seriously  modifying  the  views  he 
had  expressed  in  the  letter  from  Raleigh.  He 
now  said,  "I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that, 
far  from  having  any  personal  objections  to  the 
annexation  of  Texas,  I  should  be  glad  to  see 
it  —  without  dishonor,  without  war,  with  the 
common  consent  of  the  Union,  and  upon  just 
and  fair  terms.  .  .  .  I  do  not  think  the  subject 
of  slavery  ought  to  affect  the  question  one 
way  or  the  other,  whether  Texas  be  indepen-
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
J9S 
dent  or  incorporated  in  the  United  States.  I 
do  not  believe  it  will  prolong  or  shorten  the 
duration  of  that  institution.  It  is  destined  to 
become  extinct,  at  some  distant  day,  in  my 
opinion,  by  the  operation  of  the  inevitable 
laws  of  population.  It  would  be  unwise  to  re- 
fuse a  permanent  acquisition,  which  will  exist 
as  long  as  the  globe  remains,  on  account  of  a 
temporary  institution."  Mr.  Clay  does  not  in 
this  letter  disclaim  or  disavow  any  sentiments 
previously  expressed.  He  says,  as  any  one 
might  say,  that  provided  certain  impossible  con- 
ditions were  complied  with,  he  would  be  glad 
to  see  Texas  in  the  Union,  and  that  he  was  so 
sure  of  the  ultimate  extinction  of  slavery  that  he 
would  not  let  any  consideration  of  that  tran- 
sitory system  interfere  with  a  great  national  ad- 
vantage. It  might  naturally  have  been  expect- 
ed that  such  an  expression  would  have  given  less 
offense  to  the  opponents  than  to  the  friends 
of  slavery.  But  the  contrary  effect  resulted, 
and  it  soon  became  evident  that  a  grave  error 
of  judgment  had  been  committed  in  writing 
the  letter.  The  principal  opposition  to  annex- 
ation in  the  North  had  been  made  expressly 
upon  the  ground  that  it  would  increase  the 
area  of  slavery,  and  the  comparative  indiffer- 
ence with  which  Mr.  Clay  treated  that  view 
of  the  subject  cost  him  heavily  in  the  canvass. 
Mr. Greeley,  who  should  be  regarded  as  an  im- 
partial witness  \\  such  a  case,  says,*  "The 
*  Liberty  Party, '  so  called,  pushed  this  view  of 
the  matter  beyond  all  justice  and  reason,  insist- 
ing that  Mr.  Clay's  antagonism  to  annexation, 
not  being  founded  in  anti-slavery  conviction, 
was  of  no  account  whatever,  and  that  his  elec- 
tion should,  on  that  account,  be  opposed." 
It  availed  nothing  that  Mr.  Clay,  alarmed  at 
the  defection  in  the  North,  wrote  a  third  and 
final  letter,  reiterating  his  unaltered  objections 
to  any  such  annexation  as  was  at  that  time 
possible.  The  damage  was  irretrievable.  It 
is  not  probable  that  his  letters  gained  or  saved 
him  a  vote  in  the  South  among  the  advocates 
of  annexation.  They  cared  for  nothing  short 
of  their  own  unconditional  scheme  of  immedi- 
ate action.  They  forgot  the  services  rendered 
by  Mr.  Clay  in  bringing  about  the  recognition 
of  Texan  independence  a  few  years  before. 
They  saw  that  Mr.  Polk  was  ready  to  risk 
everything — war,  international  complications, 
even  the  dishonor  of  broken  obligations — to 
accomplish  their  purpose,  and  nothing  the  Whig 
candidate  could  say  would  weigh  anything  in 
the  balance  against  this  blind  and  reckless 
readiness.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Clay's  cau- 
tious and  moderate  position  did  him  irreparable 
harm  among  the  ardent  opponents  of  slavery. 
They  were  not  willing  to  listen  to  the  counsels 
of  caution  and  moderation.  More  than  a  year 
*  "American  Conflict,"  I.  p.  167. 
before,  thirteen  of  the  Whig  anti-slavery  Con- 
gressmen, headed  by  the  illustrious  John 
Quincy  Adams,  had  issued  a  fervid  addn 
the  people  of  the  free  States,  declaiming  in 
language  ofpassionate  force  againstthe  scheme 
of  annexation  as  fatal  to  the  country,  calling  it, 
in  fact, "identical  with  dissolution," and  saying 
that  "it  would  be  a  violation  of  our  national 
compact,  its  objects,  designs,  and  the  great 
elementary  principles  which  centered  in  its 
formation  of  a  character  so  deep  and  funda- 
mental, and  would  be  an  attempt  to  eternize  an 
institution  and  a  power  of  nature  so  unjust  in 
themselves,  so  injurious  to  the  interests  and  ab- 
horrent to  the  feelings  of  the  people  of  the 
free  States,  as  in  our  opinion,  not  only  inev- 
itably to  result  in  a  dissolution  of  the  Union, 
but  fully  to  justify  it ;  and  we  not  only  assert 
that  the  people  of  the  free  States  ought  not  to 
submit  to  it,  but  we  say  with  confidence  they 
would  not  submit  to  it."  To  men  in  a  tem- 
per like  that  indicated  by  these  words,  no  ar- 
guments drawn  from  consideration  of  political 
expediency  could  be  expected  to  have  any 
weight,  and  it  was  of  no  use  to  say  to  them 
that  in  voting  for  a  third  candidate  they  were 
voting  to  elect  Mr.  Polk,  the  avowed  and  eager 
advocate  of  annexation.  If  all  the  votes  cast 
for  Mr.  Birney,  the  "  Liberty  "  candidate,  had 
been  cast  for  Clay,  he  would  have  been  elected, 
and  even  as  it  was  the  contest  was  close  and 
doubtful  to  the  last.  Birney  received  62,270 
votes,  and  the  popular  majority  of  Polk  over 
Clay  was  only  38,801. 
The  attitude  of  the  two  parties  in  relation  to 
this  question  was  perhaps  inevitable,  and  the 
result  was  also  sure,  whatever  the  subordinate 
events  or  incidents  which  may  have  led  to  it. 
It  was  impossible  to  defeat  or  greatly  delay  the 
annexation  of  Texas,  and  it  showed  a  certain 
lack  of  sagacity  on  the  part  of  the  Whigs  not 
to  recognize  this  fact.  Here  was  a  great  em- 
pire offering  itself  to  us — a  state  which  had 
gained  its  independence,  and  built  itself  into 
a  certain  measure  of  order  and  thrift  through 
American  valor  and  enterprise.  She  offered  us 
a  magnificent  estate  of  376,000  square  miles 
of  territory,  all  of  it  valuable,  and  much  of  it 
of  unsurpassed  richness  and  fertility.  Even 
those  portions  of  it  once  condemned  as  desert 
now  contribute  to  the  markets  of  the  world 
vast  stores  of  wool  and  cotton,  herds  of  cattle 
and  flocks  of  sheep.  Not  only  were  these  ma- 
terial advantages  of  great  attractiveness  to  the 
public  mind,  but  many  powerful  sentimental 
considerations  reenforced  the  claim  of  Texas. 
The  Texans  were  not  an  alien  people.  The 
few  inhabitants  of  that  vast  realm  were  mostly 
Americans,  who  had  occupied  and  subdued  a 
vacant  wilderness.  The  heroic  defense  of  the 
Alamo  had  been  made  by  Travis  and  David
396 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
Crockett,  whose  exploits  and  death  form  one  tive  "  fanaticism  which  reappears  from  time 
of  the  most  brilliant  pages  of  our  border  his-  to  time  in  our  politics  with  the  periodicity  of 
torv.   Fannin  and  his  men,  four  hundred  strong,  malarial  fevers,  and  always  to  the  profit  of  the 
when  they  laid  down  their  lives  at  Goliad  *  party  against  which  its  efforts  are  aimed.    It 
had  carried  mourning  into  every  South-western  led  to  great  disturbances  in  several  cities,  and 
State  ;   and  when,  a  few   days  later,  Houston  to  riot  and  bloodshed  in  Philadelphia.    The 
and  his  eight  hundred  raw  levies  defeated  and  Clay  party  were,  of  course,  free  from  any  com- 
destroyed  the  Mexican  army  at  San  Jacinto,  plicity  with  these  outrages,  but  the  foreigners, 
captured  Santa  Anna,  the  Mexican  president,  in  their  alarm,  huddled  together  almost  as  one 
and  with  American  thrift,  instead  of  giving  him  man  on  the  side  where  the  majority  of  them 
the  death  he  merited  for  his  cruel  murder  of  always  voted,  and  this  occasioned  a  heavy  loss 
unarmed  prisoners,  saved  him  to  make  a  treaty  to  the  Whigs  in  several  States.    The  first  ap- 
with,  the  whole  people  recognized  something 
of  kinship  in  the  unaffected  valor  with  which 
these  borderers  died  and  the  humorous  shrewd- 
ness with  which  they  bargained,  and  felt  as  if 
the  victory  over  the  Mexicans  were  their  own. 
Under  these  conditions,  the  annexation,  sooner 
pearance  of  Lincoln  in  the  canvass  was  in  a 
judicious  attempt  to  check  this  unreasonable 
panic.  At  a  meeting  held  in  Springfield,  June 
1 2th,  he  introduced  and  supported  resolutions, 
declaring  that  "  the  guarantee  of  the  rights  of 
conscience  as  found  in  our  Constitution  is  most 
or  later,  was  inevitable.    No  man  and  no  party  sacred  and  inviolable,  and  one  that  belongs  no 
could  oppose  it  except  at  serious  cost.    It  is  less  to  the  Catholic  than  the  Protestant,  and 
not  true  that  schemes  of  annexation  are  always  that  all  attempts  to  abridge  or  interfere  with 
popular.    Several    administrations   have   lost  these  rights  either  of  Catholic  or  Protestant, 
heavily  by  proposing  them.    Grant  failed  with  directly  or  indirectly,  have  our  decided  disap- 
Santo  Domingo;  Seward  with  St. Thomas;  and  probation,  and  shall  have  our  most  effective 
it  required  all  his  skill  and  influence  to  accom- 
plish the  ratification  of  the  Alaska  purchase. 
There  is  no  general  desire  among  Americans  for 
acquiring  outlying  territory,  however  intrinsi- 
cally valuable  it  may  be ;  their  land-hunger  is 
confined  within  the  limits  of  that  of  a  Western 
farmer  once  quoted  by  Mr.  Lincoln,  who  used 
to  say,  "  I  am  not  greedy  about  land ;  I  only 
want  what  jines  mine."  Whenever  a  region 
contiguous  to  the  United  States  becomes  filled 
with  Americans,  it  is  absolutely  certain  to  come 
under  the  American  flag.   Texas  was  as  sure 
opposition. "  Several  times  afterwards  in  his 
life  Lincoln  was  forced  to  confront  this  same 
proscriptive  spirit  among  the  men  with  whom 
he  was  more  or  less  affiliated  politically,  and 
he  never  failed  to  denounce  it  as  it  deserved, 
whatever  might  be  the  risk  of  loss  involved. 
Beginning  with  this  manly  protest  against  in- 
tolerance and  disorder,  he  went  into  the  work 
of  the  campaign  and  continued  in  it  with  un- 
abated ardor  to  the  end.  The  defeat  of  Clay 
affected  him,  as  it  did  thousands  of  others,  as 
a  great  public  calamity  and  a  keen  personal 
to  be  incorporated  into  the  Union  as  are  two    sorrow.    It  is  impossible  to  mistake  the  accent 
drops  of  water  touching  each  other  to  become 
one ;  and  this  consummation  would  not  have 
been  prevented  for  any  length  of  time  if  Clay 
or  Van  Buren  had  been  elected  in  1844.  The 
honorable  scruples  of  the  Whigs,  the  over- 
heated consciences  of  the  "Liberty"  men,  could 
never  permanently  have  prevailed  against  a 
tendency  so  natural  and  so  irresistible. 
Everything    that   year    seemed    to    work 
of  sincere  mourning  which  we  find  in  the  jour- 
nals of  the  time.  The  addresses  which  were 
sent  to  Mr.  Clay  from  every  part  of  the  coun- 
try indicate  a  depth  of  affectionate  devotion 
which  rarely  falls  to  the  lot  of  a  political  chief- 
tain. An  extract  from  the  one  sent  by  the 
Clay  Clubs  of  New  York  will  show  the  ear- 
nest attachment  and  pride  with  which  the 
young  men  of  that  day  still  declared  their  loy- 
against  the  Whigs.   At  a  most  unfortunate  time    alty  to  their  beloved  leader,  even  in  the  midst 
for  them,  there  was  an  outbreak  of  that  "  na-    of  irreparable  disaster. 
*  This  massacre  inspired  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
poems  of  Walt  Whitman,  "Now  I  tell  you  what  I  knew 
of  Texas  in  my  early  youth,"  in  which  occurs  his  de- 
scription of  the  rangers  : 
"They  were  the  glory  of  the  race  of  rangers, 
Matchless  with  horse,  rifle,  song,  supper,  courtship, 
Large,  turbulent,  generous,  handsome,  proud,  and  af- 
fectionate, 
Bearded,    sunburnt,    drest    in    the   free    costume    of 
hunters, 
Not  a  single  one  over  thirty  years  of  age." 
"We  will  remember  you,  Henry  Clay,  while  the 
memory  of  the  glorious  or  the  sense  of  the  good 
remains  in  us,  with  a  grateful  and  admiring  affection 
which  shall  strengthen  with  our  strength  and  shall 
not  decay  with  our  decline.  We  will  remember  you 
in  all  our  future  trials  and  reverses  as  him  whose  name 
honored  defeat  and  gave  it  a  glory  which  victory  could 
not  have  brought.  We  will  remember  you  when  pa- 
triotic hope  rallies  again  to  successful  contest  with  the 
agencies  of  corruption  and  ruin  ;  for  we  will  never 
know  a  triumph  which  you  do  not  share  in  life,  whose 
glory  does  not  accrue  to  you  in  death."* 
*  For  assistance  in  obtaining  illustrations  to  accompany  this  History,  we  are  especially  indebted,  among 
others,  to  General  Fayette  Hewitt,  of  Frankfort,  Ky.,  Judge  A.  M.  Brown,  of  Elizabethtown,  Ky.,  Mr.  John  W. 
Keyes,  of  the  Lincoln  Memorial  Collection  of  Chicago,  and  to  Colonel  Reuben  T.  Durrett,  of  Louisville,  Ky. 
—  Editor  Century.
[BEGUN  IN    THE   NOVEMBER    NUMBER.] 
ABRAHAM    LINCOLN  :     A    HISTORY.* 
BY   JOHN    G.    NICOLAY    AND    JOHN    HAY,    PRIVATE    SECRETARIES    TO    THE    PRESIDENT. 
LINCOLN     IN     CONGRESS. 
ENGRAVED    BY  G.    KRUELL. 
JOHN    TYLER,    PRESIDENT,     1841-45. 
PHOTOGRAPHED    BY    BRADY. 
CAMPAIGN     FOR     CONGRESS. 
IN  the  months  that  remained  of  his  term,  after 
the  election  of  his  successor,  President  Ty- 
ler pursued  with  much  vigor  his  purpose  of 
accomplishing  the  annexation  of  Texas,  re- 
garding it  as  the  measure  which  was  specially 
to  illustrate  his  administration  and  to  preserve 
it  from  oblivion.  The  state  of  affairs,  when 
Congress  came  together  in  December,  1844, 
was  propitious  to  the  project.  Dr.  Anson  Jones 
had  been  elected  as  President  of  Texas ;  the 
republic  was  in  a  more  thriving  condition  than 
ever  before.  Its  population  was  rapidly  in- 
creasing under  the  stimulus  of  its  probable 
change  of  flag;  its  budget  presented  a  less 
Copyright  by  J.  G.  Nicolay  and  John  Hay,  18S6.    All  rights  reserved.
Si6 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 
FROM    DAGUERREOTYPE,    ABOUT    1866, 
3ETER    CARTWRIGHT    AND     HIS    WIFE. 
POSSESSION    OF   L.    C.    PITNER. 
unwholesome  balance;  its  relations  with  Mex- 
ico, while  they  were  no  more  friendly,  had 
ceased  to  excite  alarm.  The  Tyler  Government, 
having  been  baffled  in  the  spring  by  the  rejec- 
tion of  the  treaty  for  annexation  which  they  had 
submitted  to  the  Senate,  chose  to  proceed  this 
winter  in  a  different  way.    Early  in  the  session 
a  joint  resolution  providing  for  annexation 
was  introduced  in  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives, which,  after  considerable  discussion  and 
attempted  amendment  by  the  antislavery 
members,  passed  the  House  by  a  majority  of 
twenty-two  votes.  In  the  Senate  it  encount- 
ered  more   opposition,  as   might  have  been
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
5*7 
expected  in  a  chamber  which 
had  overwhelmingly  rejected 
the  same  scheme  only  a  few 
months  before.  It  was  at  last 
amended  by  inserting  a  sec- 
tion called  the  Walker  amend- 
ment, providing  that  the  Presi- 
dent, if  it  were  in  his  judgment 
advisable,  should  proceed  by 
way  of  negotiation,  instead  of 
submitting  the  resolutions  as 
an  overture  on  the  part  of  the 
United  States  to  Texas.  This 
amendment  eased  the  con- 
science of  a  few  shy  support- 
ers of  the  Administration  who 
had  committed  themselves  very 
strongly  against  the  scheme, 
and  saved  them  from  the  shame 
of  open  tergiversation.  The 
President,  however,  treated 
this  subterfuge  with  the  con- 
tempt which  it  deserved,  by 
utterly  disregarding  theWalker 
amendment,  and  by  dispatch- 
ing a  messenger  to  Texas  to 
bring  about  annexation  on  the 
basis  of  the  resolutions,  the 
moment  he  had  signed  them, 
when  only  a  few  hours  of  his 
official     existence     remained. 
The    measures   initiated   by  Tyler  were,    of    accepted  and  ratified,  and  in  the  last  days  of 
course,  carried  out  by  Polk.    The  work  was    1845  Texas  was  formally  admitted  into  the 
GENERAL     JOHN    J.     HARDIN. 
(AFTER    A    PHOTOGRAPH    FROM   A   DAGUERREOTYPE,    LENT    BY    MRS. 
H.   WALWORTH.) 
pushed  forward  with  equal  zeal  at  Washing- 
ton and  at  Austin.  A  convention  of  Texans 
was  called  for  the  4th  of  July  to  consider  the 
American  propositions ;  they  were  Dromotly 
COLONEL     E.    D.    BAKER.        (ABOUT     l86l. 
(AFTER     A     PHOTOGRAPH     BY     BRADY.) 
Union  as  a  State. 
Besides  the  general  objections  which  the 
antislavery  men  of  the  North  had  to  the  proj- 
ect itself,  there  was  something  especially  offen- 
sive to  them  in  the  pretense  of  fairness  arid 
compromise  held  out  by  the  resolutions  com- 
mitting the  Government  to  annexation.  The 
third  section  provided  that  four  new  States 
might  hereafter  be  formed  out  of  the  Territory 
of  Texas ;  that  such  States  as  were  formed  out 
of  the  portion  lying  south  of  360  30',  the  Mis- 
souri Compromise  line,  might  be  admitted  with 
or  without  slavery,  as  the  people  might  desire ; 
and  that  slavery  should  be  prohibited  in  such 
States  as  might  be  formed  out  of  the  portion 
lying  north  of  that  line.  The  opponents  of 
slavery  regarded  this  provision,  with  good 
reason,  as  derisory.  Slavery  already  existed  in 
the  entire  territory  by  the  act  of  the  early  set- 
tlers from  the  South  who  had  brought  their 
slaves  with  them,  and  the  State  of  Texas  had 
no  valid  claim  to  an  inch  of  ground  north  of 
the  line  of  360  30'  nor  anywhere  near  it;  so  that 
this  clause,  if  it  had  any  force  whatever,  would 
have  authorized  the  establishment  of  slavery 
in  a  portion  of  New  Mexico,  where  it  did  not 
exist,  and  where  it  had  been  expressly  prohib- 
ited by  the   Mexican  law.    Another   serious
5*S 
ABRAHAM  LIXCOLX. 
objection  was  that  the  resolutions  were  taken  as  to  the  annexation  of  Texas,  it  is  nevertheless 
committing  the  United  States  to  the  adoption  certain  that  the  occupation  of  the  left  bank  of 
and  maintenance  of  the  Rio  Grande  del  Norte  the  Rio  Grande^  without   an   attempt  at  an 
as  the  western  boundary  of  Texas.  All  mention  understanding,  would  bring  about  a  collision, 
of  this  was  avoided  in  the  instrument,  and  it  was  The  country  lying  between  the  Nueces  and  the 
ENGRAVED    BY 
FROM   A   PHOTOGRAPH    BY    BRADY. 
JAMES    K.    POLK.       (1845.)       PRESIDENT,     1845-49. 
expressly  stated  that  the  State  was  to  be  formed 
"  subject  to  the  adjustment  by  this  Govern- 
ment of  all  questions  of  boundary  that  may 
arise  with  other  governments,  "but  the  moment 
the  resolutions  were  passed  the  Government 
assumed,  as  a  matter  beyond  dispute,  that  all 
the  territory  east  of  the  Rio  Grande  was  the 
rightful  property  of  Texas,  to  be  defended  by 
the  military  power  of  the  United  States. 
Even  if  Mexico  had  been  inclined  to  submit 
Rio  Grande  was  then  entirely  uninhabited,  and 
was  thought  uninhabitable,  though  subsequent 
years  have  shown  the  fallacy  of  that  belief.  The 
occupation  of  the  country  of  Texas  extended 
no  farther  than  the  Nueces,  and  the  Mexican 
farmers  cultivated  their  corn  and  cotton  in 
peace  in  the  fertile  fields  opposite  Matamoras. 
It  is  true  that  Texas  claimed  the  eastern 
bank  of  the  Rio  Grande  from  its  source  to  its 
mouth-  and    while    the    Texans  held    Santa
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
5'9 
GENERAL    D.    MARIANO    ARISTA.       (FROM     A     PHOTOGRAPH 
IN     POSSESSION     OF    JOHN     W.    FOSTER,    ESQ.) 
GENERAL    D.    JUAN     N.    ALMONTE.       (FROM    A    PHOTOGRAPH 
IN    POSSESSION    OF    JOHN    W.    FOSTER,    ESQ.) 
Anna  prisoner,  under  duress  of  arms  and  the 
stronger  pressure  of  his  own  conscience,  which 
assured  him  that  he  deserved  death  as  a  mur- 
derer, "he  solemnly  sanctioned,  acknowledged, 
and  ratified  "  their  independence  with  what- 
ever boundaries  they  chose  to  claim ;  but  the 
Bustamente  administration  lost  no  time  in  re- 
pudiating this  treaty,  and  at  once  renewed  the 
war,  which  had  been  carried  on  in  a  fitful  way 
ever  since. 
But  leaving  out  of  view  this  special  subject 
of  admitted  dispute,  the  Mexican  government 
had  warned  our  own  in  sufficiently  formal  terms 
that  annexation  could  not  be  peacefully  effect- 
ed. When  Mr.  Upshur  first  began  his  nego- 
tiations with  Texas,  the  Mexican  Minister  of 
Foreign  Affairs,  at  the  earliest  rumors  of  what 
was  afoot,  addressed  a  note  *  to  Waddy 
Thompson,  our  Minister  in  Mexico,  referring 
to  the  reported  intention  of  Texas  to  seek  ad- 
mission to  the  Union,  and  formally  protesting 
against  it  as  "  an  aggression  unprecedented  in 
the  annals  of  the  world,"  and  adding,  "if  it  be 
indispensable  for  the  Mexican  nation  to  seek 
security  for  its  rights  at  the  expense  of  the 
disasters  of  war,  it  will  call  upon  God,  and 
rely  on  its  own  efforts  for  the  defense  of  its  just 
cause."  A  little  while  later  General  Almonte 
renewed  this  notification  at  Washington,  say- 
ing in  so  many  words  that  the  annexation  of 
Texas  would  terminate  his  mission,  and  that 
Mexico  would  declare  war  as  soon  as  it  re- 
ceived intimation  of  such  an  act.  In  June,  1845, 
Mr.  Donelson,  in  charge  of  the  American  Le- 
gation in  Mexico,  assures  the  Secretary  of  State 
that  war  is  inevitable,  though  he  adopts  the  fic- 
tion of  Mr.  Calhoun,  that  it  is  the  result  of  the 
abolitionist  intrigues  of  Great  Britain,  which 
he  credited  with  the  intention  "of  depriving 
*  August  23,  1843. 
both  Texas  and  the  United  States  of  all  claim 
to  the  country  between  the  Nueces  and  the 
Rio  Grande." 
No  one,  therefore,  doubted  that  war  would 
follow,  and  it  soon  came.  General  Zacharv 
Taylor  had  been  sent  during  the  summer  to 
Corpus  Christi,  where  a  considerable  portion 
of  the  small  army  of  the  nation  was  placed 
under  his  command.  It  was  generally  under- 
stood to  be  the  desire  of  the  Administration 
that  hostilities  should  begin  without  orders, 
by  a  species  of  spontaneous  combustion ;  but 
the  coolness  and  prudence  of  General  Taylor 
made  futile  any  such  hopes,  if  they  were 
entertained,  and  it  required  a  positive  order 
to  induce  him,  in  March,  1846,  to  advance 
GENERAL     PEDRO    DE    AMPIDIA.       (FROM     A     PHOTOGRAPH 
IN     POSSESSION    OF    JOHN    \Y.    FOSTER.    ESQ.)
52< 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 
PAINTING   BY   VANDERUYN, 
ZACHARY     TAYLOR.       (1852.)       PRESIDENT,     1849-50. 
THc    CORCORAN    GALLEF 
towards  the  Rio  Grande  and  to  cross  the  dis- 
puted territory.  He  arrived  at  a  point  opposite 
Matamoras  on  the  28th  of  March,  and  imme- 
diately fortified  himself,  disregarding  the  sum- 
mons of  the  Mexican  commander,  who  warned 
him  that  such  action  would  be  considered  as 
a  declaration  of  war.  In  May  General  Arista 
crossed  the  river  and  attacked  General  Taylor 
on  the  field  of  Palo  Alto,  where  Taylor  won 
the  first  of  that  remarkable  series  of  victories, 
embracing  Resaca  de  la  Palma,  Monterey,  and 
Buena  Vista,  all  gained  over  superior  forces 
of  the  enemy,  which  made  the  American  com- 
mander for  the  brief  day  which  was  left  him 
the  idol  alike  of  soldiers  and  voters. 
After  Baker's  election  in  1844,  it  was  gener- 
ally taken  as  a  matter  of  course  in  the  district 
that  Lincoln  was  to  be  the  next  candidate  of 
the  Whig  party  for  Congress.  It  was  charged 
at  the  time,  and  some  recent  writers  have 
repeated  the  charge,  that  there  was  a  bargain 
made  in  1840  between  Hardin,  Baker,  Lincoln, 
and  Logan  to  succeed  each  other  in  the  order 
named.    This  sort  of  fiction  is  the  commonest
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
52i 
known  to  American  politics.  Something  like  it 
is  told,  and  more  or  less  believed,  in  half  the 
districts  in  the  country  every  year.  It  arises 
naturally  from  the  fact  that  there  are  always 
more  candidates  than  places,  that  any  one  who 
is  a  candidate  twice  is  felt  to  be  defrauding 
his  neighbors,  and  that  all  candidates  are  too 
ready  to  assure  their  constituents  that  they 
only  want  one  term,  and  too  ready  to  forget 
these  assurances  when  their  terms  are  ending. 
There  is  not  only  no  evidence  of  any  such 
bargain  among  the  men  we  have  mentioned, 
but  there  is  the  clearest  proof  of  the  contrary. 
Two  or  more  of  them  were  candidates  for  the 
nomination  at  every  election  from  the  time 
when  Stuart  retired  until  the  Whigs  lost  the 
district.  At  the  same  time  it  is  not  to  be  denied 
that  there  was  a  tacit  understanding  among 
the  Whigs  of  the  district  that  whoever  should, 
at  each  election,  gain  the  honor  of  represent- 
ing the  one  Whig  constituency  of  the  State, 
should  hold  himself  satisfied  with  that  privilege, 
and  not  be  a  candidate  for  reelection.  The 
retiring  member  was  not  always  convinced  of 
the  propriety  of  this  arrangement.  In  the  early 
part  of  January,  1846,  Hardin  was  the  only  one 
whose  name  was  mentioned  in  opposition  to 
Lincoln.  He  was  reasonably  sure  of  his  own 
county,  and  he  tried  to  induce  Lincoln  to  con- 
sent to  an  arrangement  that  all  candidates 
should  confine  themselves  to  their  own  counties 
in  the  canvass;  but  Lincoln,  who  was  very 
strong  in  the  outlying  counties  of  the  district, 
declined  the  proposition,  alleging,  as  a  reason 
for  refusing,  that  Hardin  was  so  much  better 
known  than  he,  by  reason  of  his  service  in  Con- 
gress, that  such  a  stipulation  would  give  him 
a  great  advantage.  There  was  fully  as  much 
courtesy  as  candor  in  this  plea,  and  Lincoln's 
entire  letter  was  extremely  politic  and  civil. 
"I  have  always  been  in  the  habit,"  he  says, 
"  of  acceding  to  almost  any  proposal  that  a 
friend  would  make,  and  I  am  truly  sorry  that  I 
cannot  to  this."  A  month  later  Hardin  saw  that 
his  candidacy  was  useless,  and  he  published  a 
card  withdrawing  from  the  contest,  which  was 
copied  and  commended  in  the  kindest  terms 
by  papers  friendly  to  Lincoln,  and  the  two  men 
remained  on  terms  of  intimate  friendship. 
The  convention  was  held  at  Petersburg  on 
the  1st  of  May.  Judge  Logan  placed  the  name 
of  Lincoln  before  it,  and  he  was  nominated 
unanimously.  The  Springfield  "Journal/'giving 
the  news  the  week  after,  said,"  This  nomination 
was  of  course  anticipated,  there  being  no  other 
candidate  in  the  field.  Mr.  Lincoln,weall  know, 
is  a  good  Whig,  a  good  man,  an  able  speaker, 
and  richly  deserves,  as  he  enjoys,  the  confidence 
of  the  Whigs  of  this  district  and  of  the  State." 
The  Democrats  gave  Mr.  Lincoln  a  singular 
competitor — the  famous  Methodist  preacher, 
Vol.  XXXIII.— 67-68. 
Peter  Cartwright.  It  was  not  the  first  time 
they  had  met  in  the  field  of  politics.  When 
Lincoln  ran  for  the  Legislature  on  his  return 
from  the  Black  Hawk  war,  in  1832,  one  of  the 
successful  candidates  of  that  year  was  this  in- 
defatigable circuit-rider.  He  was  now  over 
sixty  years  of  age,  in  the  height  of  his  popular- 
ity, and  in  all  respects  an  adversary  not  to  be 
despised.  His  career  as  a  preacher  began  at 
the  beginning  of  the  century  and  continued 
for  seventy  years.  He  was  the  son  of  one  of 
the  pioneers  of  the  West,  and  grew  up  in  the 
rudest  regions  of  the  border  land  between 
Tennessee  and  Kentucky.  He  represents  him- 
self, with  the  usual  inverted  pride  of  a  class- 
leader,  as  having  been  a  wild,  vicious  youth ; 
but  the  catalogue  of  his  crimes  embraces  noth- 
ing less  venial  than  card-playing,  horse-racing, 
and  dancing,  and  it  is  hard  to  see  what  differ- 
ent amusements  could  have  been  found  in 
southern  Kentucky  in  the  year  1801.  This 
course  of  dissipation  did  not  continue  long,  as 
he  was  "converted  and  united  with  the  Eben- 
ezer  Methodist  Episcopal  Church"  in  June  of 
that  year,  when  only  sixteen  years  old,  and 
immediately  developed  such  zeal  and  power  in 
exhortation  that  less  than  a  year  later  he  was 
licensed  "  to  exercise  his  gifts  as  an  exhorter 
so  long  as  his  practice  is  agreeable  to  the  gos- 
pel. "  He  became  a  deacon  at  twenty-one,  an 
elder  at  twenty-three,  a  presiding  elder  at  twen- 
ty-seven, and  from  that  time  his  life  is  the  his- 
tory of  his  church  in  the  West  for  sixty  years. 
He  died  in  1872,  eighty-seven  years  of  age, 
having  baptized  twelve  thousand  persons  and 
preached  fifteen  thousand  sermons.  He  was. 
and  will  always  remain,  the  type  of  the  back- 
woods preacher.  Even  in  his  lifetime  the 
simple  story  of  his  life  became  so  overgrown 
with  a  net-work  of  fable  that  there  is  little  re- 
semblance between  the  simple,  courageous, 
prejudiced  itinerant  of  his  "Autobiography" 
and  the  fighting,  brawling,  half-civilized,  Prot- 
estant Friar  Tuck  of  bar-room  and  newspaper 
legend.  It  is  true  that  he  did  not  always 
discard  the  weapons  of  the  flesh  in  his  com- 
bats with  the  ungodly,  and  he  was  more  than 
once  compelled  to  leave  the  pulpit  to  do  car- 
nal execution  upon  the  disturbers  of  the  peace 
of  the  sanctuary ;  but  two  or  three  incidents 
of  this  sort  in  three-quarters  of  a  century  do 
not  turn  a  parson  into  a  pugilist.  He  was  a 
fluent,  self-confident  speaker,  who,  after  the 
habit  of  his  time,  addressed  his  discourses 
more  to  the  emotions  than  to  the  reason  of 
his  hearers.  His  system  of  future  rewards  and 
punishments  was  of  the  most  simple  and  con- 
crete character,  and  formed  the  staple  of  his 
sermons.  He  had  no  patience  with  the  refine- 
ments and  reticences  of  modern  theology,  and 
in  his  later  years  observed  with  scorn  and
122 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
sorrow  the  progress  of  education  and  scholarly 
training  in  his  own  communion.  After  listen- 
ing one  day  to  a  prayer  from  a  young  minis- 
ter which  shone  more  by  its  correctness  than 
its  unction,  he  could  not  refrain  from  saying, 
"  Brother  — ,  three  prayers  like  that  would 
freeze  hell  over! " — a  consummation  which  did 
not  commend  itself  to  him  as  desirable.  He 
often  visited  the  cities  of  the  Atlantic  coast,  but 
saw  little  in  them  to  admire.  His  chief  pleasure 
on  his  return  was  to  sit  in  a  circle  of  his  friends 
and  pour  out  the  phials  of  his  sarcasm  upon 
all  the  refinements  of  life  which  he  had  wit- 
nessed in  New  York  or  Philadelphia,  which  he 
believed,  or  affected  to  believe,  were  tenanted 
by  a  species  of  beings  altogether  inferior  to 
the  manhood  that  filled  the  cabins  of  Ken- 
tucky and  Illinois.  An  apocryphal  story  of 
one  of  these  visits  was  often  told  of  him,  which 
pleased  him  so  that  he  never  contradicted  it : 
that  becoming  bewildered  in  the  vastness  of  a 
New  York  hotel,  he  procured  a  hatchet,  and 
in  pioneer  fashion  "blazed"  his  way  along  the 
mahogany  staircases  and  painted  corridors 
from  the  office  to  his  room.  With  all  his  ec- 
centricities, he  was  a  devout  man,  conscien- 
tious and  brave.  He  lived  in  domestic  peace 
and  honor  all  his  days,  and  dying,  he  and  his 
wife,  whom  he  had  married  almost  in  childhood, 
left  a  posterity  of  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
nine  direct  descendants  to  mourn  them.* 
With  all  his  devotion  to  the  cause  of  his 
church,  Peter  Cartwright  was  an  ardent  Jack- 
son politician,  with  probably  a  larger  acquaint- 
ance throughout  the  district  than  any  other 
man  in  it,  and  with  a  personal  following  which, 
beginning  with  his  own  children  and  grand- 
children and  extending  through  every  precinct, 
made  it  no  holiday  task  to  defeat  him  in  a  popu- 
lar contest.  But  Lincoln  and  his  friends  went 
energetically  into  the  canvass,  and  before  it 
closed  he  was  able  to  foresee  a  certain  victory. 
An  incident  is  related  to  show  how  accu- 
rately he  could  calculate  political  results  in 
advance — a  faculty  which  remained  with  him 
all  his  life.  A  friend,  who  was  a  Democrat, 
had  come  to  him  early  in  the  canvass  and  had 
told  him  he  wanted  to  see  him  elected,  but  did 
not  like  to  vote  against  his  party;  still  he  would 
vote  for  him,  if  the  contest  was  to  be  so  close 
that  every  vote  was  needed.  A  short  time  be- 
fore the  election  Lincoln  said  to  him,  "I  have 
got  the  preacher,  and  I  don't  want  your  vote." 
*  The  impressive  manner  of  Mrs.  Cartwright's  death, 
who  survived  her  husband  a  few  years,  is  remembered  in 
the  churches  of  Sangamon  County.  She  was  attending 
a  religious  meeting  at  Bethel  Chapel,  a  mile  from  her 
house.  She  was  called  upon  "  to  give  her  testimony," 
which  she  did  with  much  feeling,  concluding  with  the 
words,  "  the  past  three  weeks  have  been  the  happiest  of 
allmylife;  Tarn waitingfor thechariot."  Whcnthemeet- 
ing  broke  up,  she  did  not  rise  with  the  rest.  The  minister 
The  campaign  was  carried  on  almost  entire- 
ly without  expense.  Mr.  Joshua  Speed  told 
the  writers  that  some  of  the  Whigs  contributed 
a  purse  of  $200,  which  Speed  handed  to  Lin- 
coln to  pay  his  personal  expenses  in  the  can- 
vass. After  the  election  was  over  the  successful 
candidate  handed  Speed  $199.25,  with  the  re- 
quest that  he  return  it  to  the  subscribers.  "  I 
did  not  need  the  money,"  he  said.  "  I  made 
the  canvass  on  my  own  horse ;  my  entertain- 
ment, being  at  the  houses  of  friends,  cost  me 
nothing;  and  my  only  outlay  was  75  cents 
for  a  barrel  of  cider,  which  some  farm-hands 
insisted  I  should  treat  them  to." 
The  election  was  held  in  August,  and  the 
Whig  candidate's  majority  was  very  large — 
15 1 1  in  the  district,  where  Clay's  majority  had 
been  only  914,  and  where  Taylor's,  two  years 
later,  with  all  the  glamour  of  victory  about  him, 
was  ten  less.  Lincoln's  majority  in  Sangamon 
County  was  690,  which,  in  view  of  the  stand- 
ing of  his  competitor,  was  the  most  remarkable 
proof  which  could  be  given  of  his  personal 
popularity;!  it  was  the  highest  majority  ever 
given  to  any  candidate  in  the  county  during 
the  entire  period  of  Whig  ascendency  until 
Yates's  triumphant  campaign  of  1852. 
This  large  vote  was  all  the  more  noteworthy 
because  the  Whigs  were  this  year  upon  the  un- 
popular side.  The  annexation  of  Texas  was 
generally  approved  throughout  the  West,  and 
those  who  opposed  it  were  regarded  as  rather 
lacking  in  patriotism,  even  before  actual  hos- 
tilities began.  But  when  General  Taylor  and 
General  Ampudia  confronted  each  other  with 
hostile  guns  across  the  Rio  Grande,  and  still 
more  after  the  brilliant  feat  of  arms  by  which 
the  Americans  opened  the  war  on  the  plain  of 
Palo  Alto,  it  required  a  good  deal  of  moral 
courage  on  the  part  of  the  candidates  and 
voters  alike  to  continue  their  attitude  of  dis- 
approval of  the  policy  of  the  Government,  at 
the  same  time  that  they  were  shouting  paeans 
over  the  exploits  of  our  soldiers.  They  were 
assisted,  it  is  true,  by  the  fact  that  the  leading 
Whigs  of  the  State  volunteered  with  the  ut- 
most alacrity  and  promptitude  in  the  military 
service.  On  the  1  ith  of  May,  Congress  author- 
ized the  raising  of  fifty  thousand  volunteers, 
and  as  soon  as  the  intelligence  reached  Illinois, 
the  daring  and  restless  spirit  of  Hardin  leaped 
forward  to  the  fate  which  was  awaiting  him, 
and  he  instantly  issued  a  call  to  his  brigade  of 
solemnly  said,  "The  chariot  has  arrived."  —  "Early 
Settlers  of  Sangamon  County,"  by  John  Carroll  Power. 
Stuart's  maj. over  May                in  '36  in Sangamon Co. 
was  543 
«           « 
"     Douglass 
u  »38  « 
" 
" 
"     295 
U                  (( 
"    Ralston 
"   '40  " 
" 
" 
"    575 
Hardin's   " 
"    McDougal 
'   '43  " 
" 
" 
"    5°4 
Baker's     " 
"    Calhoun 
'   '44  " 
" 
" 
"     373 
Lincoln's  " 
"    Cartwright 
<    '46  " 
" 
" 
"    690 
Logan's    " 
"   Harris 
«   '48  " 
" 
" 
"     263 
Yates's     " 
"   Harris 
'    '50  " 
" 
« 
"     336
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
523 
militia,  in  which  he  said :  "  The  general  has 
already  enrolled  himself  as  the  first  volunteer 
from  Illinois  under  the  requisition.  He  is  go- 
ing whenever  ordered.  Who  will  go  with  him  ? 
He  confidently  expects  to  be  accompanied  by 
many  of  his  brigade."  The  quota  assigned  to 
Illinois  was  three  regiments ;  these  were  quickly 
raised,*  and  an  additional  regiment  offered  by 
Baker  was  then  accepted.  The  sons  of  the 
prominent  Whigs  enlisted  as  private  soldiers ; 
David  Logan  was  a  sergeant  in  Baker's  reg- 
iment. A  public  meeting  was  held  in  Spring- 
field on  the  29th  of  May,  at  which  Mr.  Lincoln 
delivered  what  was  considered  a  thrilling  and 
effective  speech  on  the  condition  of  affairs,  and 
the  duty  of  citizens  to  stand  by  the  flag  of  the 
nation  until  an' honorable  peace  was  secured. 
It  was  thought  probable,  and  would  have  been 
altogether  fitting,  that  either  Colonel  Hardin, 
Colonel  Baker,  or  Colonel  Bissell,  all  of  them 
men  of  intelligence  and  distinction,  should  be 
appointed  general  of  the  Illinois  Brigade,  but 
the  Polk  administration  was  not  inclined  to 
waste  so  important  a  place  upon  men  who 
might  hereafter  have  views  of  their  own  in 
public  affairs.  The  coveted  appointment  was 
given  to  a  man  already  loaded  to  a  grotesque  de- 
gree with  political  employment  —  Mr.  Lincoln's 
old  adversary,  James  Shields.  He  had  left  the 
position  of  Auditor  of  State  to  assume  a  seat  on 
the  Bench;  leaving  this,  he  had  just  been  ap- 
pointed Commissioner  of  the  General  Land 
Office.  He  had  no  military  experience,  and 
so  far  as  known  no  capacity  for  the  service ; 
but  his  fervid  partisanship  and  his  nationality 
commended  him  to  Mr.  Polk  as  a  safe  servant, 
and  he  received  his  commission,  to  the  surprise 
and  derision  of  the  State.  His  bravery  in  action 
and  his  honorable  wounds  at  Cerro  Gordo 
and  Chapultepec  saved  him  from  contempt 
and  made  his  political  fortune. 
He  had  received  the  recommendation  of  the 
Illinois  Democrats  in  Congress,  and  it  is  alto- 
gether probable  that  he  owed  his  appointment 
in  great  measure  to  the  influence  of  Douglas, 
who  desired  to  have  as  few  Democratic  states- 
men as  possible  in  Springfield  that  winter.  A 
Senator  was  to  be  elected,  and  Shields  had  ac- 
quired such  a  habit  of  taking  all  the  offices 
that  fell  vacant  that  it  was  only  prudent  to 
remove  him  as  far  as  convenient  from  such  a 
temptation.  The  election  was  held  in  Decem- 
ber, and  Douglas  was  promoted  from  the 
House  of  Representatives  to  that  seat  in  the 
Senate  which  he  held  the  rest  of  his  life. 
The  session  of  1846-7  opened  with  the  San- 
gamon district  of  Illinois  unrepresented  in 
Congress.  Baker  had  gone  with  his  regiment 
to  Mexico.  It  did  not  have  the  good  fortune 
to  participate  in  any  of  the  earlier  actions  of 
the  campaign,  and  his  fiery  spirit  chafed  in  this 
enforced  idleness  of  camp  and  garrison.  He 
seized  an  occasion  which  was  offered  him  to 
go  to  Washington  as  bearer  of  dispatches,  and 
while  there  he  made  one  of  those  sudden  and 
dramatic  appearances  in  the  Capitol  which 
were  so  much  in  harmony  with  his  tastes  and 
his  character.  He  went  to  his  place  on  the 
floor,f  and  there  delivered  a  bright,  interesting 
speech  in  his  most  attractive  vein,  calling  at- 
tention to  the  needs  of  the  army,  disavowing 
on  the  part  of  the  Whigs  any  responsibility  for 
the  war  or  its  conduct,  and  adroitly  claiming 
for  them  a  full  share  of  the  credit  for  its  pros- 
ecution. He  began  by  thanking  the  House 
for  its  kindness  in  allowing  him  the  floor,  pro- 
testing at  the  same  time  that  he  had  done  noth- 
ing to  deserve  such  courtesy.  "  I  could  wish," 
he  said,  "  that  it  had  been  the  fortune  of 
the  gallant  Davis  %  to  now  stand  where  I  do 
and  to  receive  from  gentlemen  on  all  sides  the 
congratulations  so  justly  due  to  him,  and  to 
listen  to  the  praises  of  his  brave  compeers. 
For  myself,  I  have,  unfortunately,  been  left  far 
in  the  rear  of  the  war,  and  if  now  I  venture 
to  say  a  word  in  behalf  of  those  who  have  en- 
dured the  severest  hardships  of  the  struggle, 
whether  in  the  blood-stained  streets  of  Mon- 
terey, or  in  a  yet  sterner  form  on  the  banks 
of  the  Rio  Grande,  I  beg  you  to  believe  that 
while  I  feel  this  a  most  pleasant  duty,  it  is  in 
other  respects  a  duty  full  of  pain  ;  for  I  stand 
here,  after  six  months'  service  as  a  volunteer, 
having  seen  no  actual  warfare  in  the  field." 
Yet  even  this  disadvantage  he  turned  with 
great  dexterity  to  his  service.  He  reproached 
Congress  for  its  apathy  and  inaction  in  not 
providing  for  the  wants  of  the  army  by  rein- 
forcements and  supplies;  he  flattered  the 
troops  in  the  field,  and  paid  a  touching  tribute 
to  those  who  died  of  disease  and  exposure, 
without  ever  enjoying  the  sight  of  a  battle- 
field, and  rising  to  lyric  enthusiasm,  he  repeat- 
ed a  poem  of  his  own,  which  he  had  written 
in  camp  to  the  memory  of  the  dead  of  the 
Fourth  Illinois.  He  could  not  refrain  from 
giving  his  own  party  all  the  credit  which  could 
be  claimed  for  it,  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  im- 
agine how  exasperating  it  must  have  been  to 
the  majority  to  hear  so  calm  an  assumption  of 
superior  patriotism  on  the  part  of  the  opposi- 
tion as  the  following:  "As  a  Whig  I  still  oc- 
cupy a  place  on  this  floor ;  nor  do  I  think  it 
worth  while  to  reply  to  such  a  charge  as  that 
the  Whigs  are  not  friends  of  their  country 
because  many  of  them  doubt  the  justice  or 
expediency  of  the  present  war.  Surely  there 
was  all  the  more  evidence  of  the  patriotism 
of  the  man   who,  doubting  the   expediency 
*  The  colonels  were  Hardin,  Bissell,  and  Freeman. 
t  December  28,  1846. 
t  Jefferson  Davis,  who  was  with  the  armvin  Mexico.
524 
and  even  the  entire  justice 
of  the  war,  nevertheless 
supported  it.  because  it 
was  the  war  of  his  coun- 
try. In  the  one  it  might 
be  mere  enthusiasm  and  an 
impetuous  temperament ; 
in  the  other  it  was  true 
patriotism,  a  sense  of  duty. 
Homer  represents  Hec- 
tor as  strongly  doubting 
the  expediency  of  the  war 
against  Greece.  He  gave 
his  advice  against  it ;  he 
had  no  sympathy  with 
Paris,  whom  he  bitterly 
reproached,  much  less  with 
Helen ;  yet,  when  the  war 
came,  and  the  Grecian 
forces  were  marshaled  on 
the  plain,  and  their  crook- 
ed keels  were  seen  cutting 
the  sands  of  the  Trojan 
coast,  Hector  was  a  flam- 
ing fire,  his  beaming  hel- 
met was  seen  in  the  thick- 
est of  the  fight.  There  are 
in  the  American  army 
many  who  have  the  spirit 
of  Hector;  who  strongly 
doubt  the  propriety  of  the 
war,  and  especially  the 
manner  of  its  commence- 
ment ;  who  yet  are  ready 
to  pour  out  their  hearts' 
best  blood  like  water,  and 
their  lives  with  it,  on  a  for- 
AERAHAM  LINCOLN. 
THE    BOUNDARIES    OF    TEXAS. 
This  map  gives  the  boundary  between  Mexico  and  the  United  States  as  defined  by  the 
treaty  of  1828  ;  the  westerly  bank  of  the  Sabine  River  from  its  mouth  to  the  yiA  degree  of 
latitude ;  thence  due  north  to  the  Red  River,  following  the  course  of  that  stream  to  the  100th 
degree  of  longitude  west  from  Greenwich  ;  thence  due  north  to  the  Arkansas  River,  and  run- 
ning along  its  south  bank  to  its  source  in  the  Rocky  Mountains,  near  the  place  where  Leadville 
now  stands ;  thence  due  north  to  the  42d  parallel  of  latitude,  which  it  follows  to  the  Pacific 
Ocean. 
On  the  west  will  be  seen  the  boundaries  claimed  by' Mexico  and  the  United  States  after  the 
annexation  of  Texas.     The  Mexican  authorities  considered  the  western  boundary  of  Texas  to 
be  the  Nueces  River,  from  mouth  to  source ;   thence  by  an  indefinite  line  to  the  Rio  Pecos, 
r    and  through  the  elevated  and  barren  Llano  Estacado  to  the  source  of  the  main  branch  of  the 
eign    Shore,    in    deiense    OI     Red  River,  and  along  that  river  to  the  100th  meridian.     The  United  States  adopted  the 
the      American      flaS'      and     Texan  claim  of  the  Rio  Grande  del  Norte  as  their  western  limit.     By  the  treaty  of  peace  of 
8  1848,  the  Mexicans  relinquished  to  the  United  States  the  territory  between  *be  Nueces  and 
American  glory.     *  the   Rio  Grande  del  Norte;  also  the  territory  lying  between  the  last-named  river  and  the 
Trv^Tv-«ci/-liofalTr  nft-m*  w^ol^       Pacific  Ocean,  and  north  of  the  Gila  River  and  the  southern  boundary  of  New  Mexico,  which 
lmmeaiateiy  alter  maK-    was  a  short  distance  above  the  town  of  E1  Paso._j.  w. 
ing  this  speech,  Baker  in- 
creased the  favorable  impression  created  by    Orleans,  to  embark  there  for  Mexico.    He  had 
it  by  resigning  his  seat  in  Congress  and  hurry-    heard  of  the  advance  of  Santa  Anna  upon 
ing  as  fast  as  steam  could  carry  him  to  New    Saltillo,  and  did  not  wish  to  lose  any  opportu- 
*  We  give  a  copy  of  these  lines,  not  on  account  of 
their  intrinsic  merit,  but  as  illustrating  the  versatility 
of  the  lawyer,  orator,  and  soldier  who  wrote  them. 
Where  rolls  the  rushing  Rio  Grande, 
How  peacefully  they  sleep  ! 
Far  from  their  native  Northern  land, 
Far  from  the  friends  who  weep. 
No  rolling  drums  disturb  their  rest 
Beneath  the  sandy  sod; 
The  mold  lies  heavy  on  each  breast, 
The  spirit  is  with  God. 
They  heard  their  country's  call,  and  came 
To  battle  for  the  right; 
Each  bosom  filled  with  martial  flame, 
And  kindling  for  the  fight. 
Light  was  their  measured  footstep  when 
They  moved  to  seek  the  foe ; 
Alas  that  hearts  so  fiery  then 
Should  soon  be  cold  and  low  ! 
They  did  not  die  in  eager  strife 
Upon  a  well-fought  field ; 
Nor  from  the  red  wound  poured  their  life 
Where  cowering  foemen  yield. 
Death's  ghastly  shade  was  slowly  cast 
Upon  each  manly  brow, 
But  calm  and  fearless  to  the  last, 
They  sleep  securely  now. 
Yet  shall  a  grateful  country  give 
Her  honors  to  their  name ; 
In  kindred  hearts  their  memory  live, 
And  history  guard  their  fame. 
Not  unremembered  do  they  sleep 
Upon  a  foreign  strand, 
Though  near  their  graves  thy  wild  waves  sweep, 
O  rushing  Rio  Grande  !
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
525 
nity  of  fighting  which  might  fall  in  the  way  of 
his  regiment.  He  arrived  to  find  his  troops 
transferred  to  the  Department  of  General 
Scott ;  and  although  he  missed  Buena  Vista,  he 
took  part  in  the  capture  of  Vera  Cruz,  and 
greatly  distinguished  himself  at  Cerro  Gordo. 
When  Shields  was  wounded,  Baker  took  com- 
mand of  his  brigade,  and  by  a  gallant  charge 
on  the  Mexican  guns  gained  possession  of  the 
Jalapa  road,  an  act  by  which  a  great  portion 
of  the  fruits  of  that  victory  were  harvested. 
His  resignation  left  a  vacancy  in  Congress, 
and  a  contest,  characteristic  of  the  politics  of 
the  time,  at  once  sprang  up  over  it.  The  ra- 
tional course  would  have  been  to  elect  Lincoln, 
but,  with  his  usual  overstrained  delicacy,  he 
declined  to  run,  thinking  it  fair  to  give  other 
aspirants  a  chance  for  the  term  of  two  months. 
The  Whigs  nominated  a  respectable  man 
named  Brown,  but  a  short  while  before  the 
election  John  Henry,  a  member  of  the  State 
Senate,  announced  himself  as  a  candidate,  and 
appealed  for  votes  on  the  sole  ground  that  he 
was  a  poor  man  and  wanted  the  place  for  the 
mileage.  Brown,  either  recognizing  the  force  of 
this  plea,  or  smitten  with  a  sudden  disgust  for 
a  service  in  which  such  pleas  were  possible, 
withdrew  from  the  canvass,  and  Henry  got  his 
election  and  his  mileage. 
THE    THIRTIETH    CONGRESS. 
The  Thirtieth  Congress  organized  on  the 
6th  of  December,  1847.  Its  roll  contained  the 
names  of  many  eminent  men,  few  of  whom 
were  less  known  than  his  which  was  destined 
to  a  fame  more  wide  and  enduring  than  all 
the  rest  together.  It  was  Mr.  Lincoln's  sole 
distinction  that  he  was  the  only  Whig  member 
from  Illinois.  He  entered  upon  the  larger  field 
of  work  which  now  lay  before  him  without  any 
special  diffidence,  but  equally  without  elation. 
Writing  to  his  friend  Speed  soon  after  his 
election  he  said,  "  Being  elected  to  Congress, 
though  I  am  very  grateful  to  our  friends  for 
having  done  it,  has  not  pleased  me  as  much 
as  I  expected," —  an  experience  not  unknown 
to  most  public  men,  but  probably  intensified 
in  Lincoln's  case  by  his  constitutional  mel- 
ancholy. He  went  about  his  work  with  little 
gladness,  but  with  a  dogged  sincerity  and  an 
inflexible  conscience. 
It  soon  became  apparent  that  the  Whigs 
were  to  derive  at  least  a  temporary  advan- 
tage from  the  war  which  the  Democrats  had 
brought  upon  the  country,  although  it   was 
*  The  following  extract  from  a  letter  of  Lincoln  to 
his  partner,  Mr.  Herndon,  gives  the  names  of  some  of 
the  Whig  soldiers  who  persisted  in  their  faith  through- 
out the  war :  "  As  to  the  Whig  men  who  have  partici- 
pated in  the  war,  so  far  as  they  have  spoken  to  my 
hearing,  they  do  not  hesitate  to  denounce  as  unjust 
the  President's  conduct  in  the  beginning  of  the  war. 
destined  in  its  later  consequences  to  sweep 
the  former  party  out  of  existence  and  exile 
the  other  from  power  for  many  years.  The 
House  was  so  closely  divided  that  Lincoln, 
writing  on  the  5th,  expressed  some  doubt 
whether  the  Whigs  could  elect  all  their  caucus 
nominees,  and  Mr.  Robert  C.  VVinthrop  was 
chosen  Speaker  the  next  day  by  a  majority  of 
one  vote.  The  President  showed  in  his  mes- 
sage that  he  was  doubtful  of  the  verdict  of 
Congress  and  the  country  upon  the  year's 
operations,  and  he  argued  with  more  solici- 
tude than  force  in  defense  of  the  proceedings 
of  the  Administration  in  regard  to  the  war  with 
Mexico.  His  anxiety  was  at  once  shown  to 
be  well  founded.  The  first  attempt  made  by 
his  friends  to  indorse  the  conduct  of  the  Gov- 
ernment was  met  by  a  stern  rebuke  from  the 
House  of  Representatives,  which  passed  an 
amendment  proposed  by  George  Ashmun  that 
"  the  war  had  been  unnecessarily  and  uncon- 
stitutionally commenced  by  the  President." 
This  severe  declaration  was  provoked  and 
justified  by  the  persistent  and  disingenuous 
assertion  of  the  President  that  the  preceding 
Congress  had  "  with  virtual  unanimity  "  de- 
clared that  "  war  existed  by  the  act  of  Mex- 
ico " —  the  truth  being  that  a  strong  minority 
had  voted  to  strike  out  those  words  from  the 
preamble  of  the  supply  bill,  but  being  outvoted 
in  this,  they  were  compelled  either  to  vote 
for  preamble  and  bill  together,  or  else  refuse 
supplies  to  the  army.  It  was  not  surprising 
that  the  Whigs  and  other  opponents  of  the 
war  should  take  the  first  opportunity  to  give 
the  President  their  opinion  of  such  a  misrep- 
resentation. The  position  of  the  opposition 
had  been  greatly  strengthened  by  the  very 
victories  upon  which  Mr.  Polk  had  confidently 
relied  for  his  vindication.  Both  our  armies  in 
Mexico  were  under  command  of  Whig  gen- 
erals, and  among  the  subordinate  officers  who 
had  distinguished  themselves  in  the  field,  a  full 
share  were  Whigs,  who,  to  an  extent  unusual 
in  wars  of  political  significance,  retained  their 
attitude  of  hostility  to  the  administration  un- 
der whose  orders  they  were  serving.  Some 
of  them  had  returned  to  their  places  on  the 
floor  of  Congress  brandishing  their  laurels  with 
great  effect  in  the  faces  of  their  opponents 
who  had  talked  while  they  fought.*  When 
we  number  the  names  which  leaped  into  sud- 
den fame  in  that  short  but  sanguinary  war,  it 
is  surprising  to  find  how  few  of  them  sympa- 
thized with  the  party  which  brought  it  on,  or 
They  do  not  suppose  that  such  denunciation  is  directed 
by  undying  hatred  to  them,  as  '  the  Register  '  would 
have  it  believed.  There  are  two  such  Whigs  on  this 
floor  (Colonel  Haskell  and  Major  James").  The  former 
fought  as  a  colonel  by  the  side  of  Colonel  Baker,  at 
Cerro  Gordo,  and  stands  side  by  side  with  me  in  the 
vote  that  you  seem  dissatisfied  with.    The  latter,  the
5*6 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
with  the  purposes  for  which  it  was  waged. 
The  earnest  opposition  of  Taylor  to  the  scheme 
of  the  annexationists  did  not  hamper  his  move- 
ments or  paralyze  his  arm,  when  with  his  lit- 
tle band  of  regulars  he  beat  the  army  of  Arista 
on  the  plain  of  Palo  Alto,  and  again  in  the 
precipitous  Resaca  de  la  Palma ;  took  by 
storm  the  fortified  city  of  Monterey,  defended 
by  a  greatly  superior  force;  and  finally,  with 
a  few  regiments  of  raw  levies,  posted  among 
the  rocky  spurs  and  gorges  about  the  farm  of 
Buena  Vista,  met  and  defeated  the  best-led 
and  best-fought  army  the  Mexicans  ever 
brought  into  the  field,  outnumbering  him  more 
than  four  to  one.  It  was  only  natural  that  the 
Whigs  should  profit  by  the  glory  gained  by 
Whig  valor,  no  matter  in  what  cause.  The 
attitude  of  the  opposition  — sure  of  their  ad- 
vantage and  exulting  in  it  —  was  never  per- 
haps more  clearly  and  strongly  set  forth  than 
in  a  speech  made  by  Mr.  Lincoln  near  the 
close  of  this  session.    He  said : 
"  As  General  Taylor  is  par  excellence  the  hero  of 
the  Mexican  War,  and  as  you  Democrats  say  we 
Whigs  have  always  opposed  the  war,  you  think  it  must 
be  very  awkward  and  embarrassing  for  us  to  go  for 
General  Taylor.  The  declaration  that  we  have  always 
opposed  the  war  is  true  or  false  accordingly  as  one 
may  understand  the  term  'opposing  the  war.'  If  to 
say  '  the  war  was  unnecessarily  and  unconstitutionally 
commenced  by  the  President '  be  opposing  the  war, 
then  the  Whigs  have  very  generally  opposed  it. 
Whenever  they  have  spoken  at  all  they  have  said  this  ; 
and  they  have  said  it  on  what  has  appeared  good  rea- 
son to  them  ;  the  marching  of  an  army  into  the  midst 
of  a  peaceful  Mexican  settlement,  frightening  the  in- 
habitants away,  leaving  their  growing  crops  and  other 
property  to  destruction,  to  yon  may  appear  a  perfectly 
amiable,  peaceful,  unprovoking  procedure ;  but  it  does 
not  appear  so  to  us.  So  to  call  such  an  act,  to  us  ap- 
pears no  other  than  a  naked,  impudent  absurdity,  and 
we  speak  of  it  accordingly.  But  if  when  the  war  had 
begun,  and  had  become  the  cause  of  the  country,  the 
giving  of  our  money  and  our  blood,  in  common  with 
yours,  was  support  of  the  war,  then  it  is  not  true  that 
we  have  always  opposed  the  war.  With  few  individual 
exceptions,  you  have  constantly  had  our  votes  here  for 
all  the  necessary  supplies.  And,  more  than  this,  you 
have  had  the  services,  the  blood,  and  the  lives  of  our 
political  brethren  in  every  trial,  and  on  every  field. 
The  beardless  boy  and  the  mature  man,  the  humble 
and  the  distinguished, —  you  have  had  them.  Through 
suffering  and  death,  by  disease  and  in  battle,  they 
have  endured  and  fought  and  fallen  with  you.  Clay 
and  Webster  each  gave  a  son,  never  to  be  returned. 
From  the  State  of  my  own  residence,  besides  other 
worthy  but  less-known  Whig  names,  we  sent  Marshall, 
Morrison,  Baker,  and  Hardin  ;  they  all  fought,  and  one 
fell,  and  in  the  fall  of  that  one  we  lost  our  best  Whig 
man.  Nor  were  the  Whigs  few  in  number  or  laggard 
in  the  day  of  battle.  In  that  fearful,  bloody,  breathless 
struggle  at  Buena  Vista,  where  each  man's  hard  task 
was  to  beat  back  five  foes  or  die  himself,  of  the  five 
high  officers  who  perished,  four  were  Whigs." 
history  of  whose  capture  with  Cassius  Clay  you  well 
know,  had  not  arrived  here  when  that  vote  was  given  ; 
but,  as  I  understand,  he  stands  ready  to  give  just  such 
a  vote  whenever  an  occasion  shall  present.  Baker, 
too,  who  is  now  here,  says  the  truth  is  undoubtedly  that 
way  ;  and  whenever  he  shall  speak  out,  he  will  say 
There  was  no  other  refuge  for  the  Demo- 
crats after  the  Whigs  had  adopted  Taylor  as 
their  especial  hero,  as  Scott  was  also  a  Whig 
and  an  original  opponent  of  the  war.  His 
victories  have  never  received  the  credit  justly 
due  them  on  account  of  the  apparent  ease 
with  which  they  were  gained.  The  student  of 
military  history  will  rarely  meet  with  accounts 
of  battles  in  any  age  where  the  actual  opera- 
tions coincide  so  exactly  with  the  orders  issued 
upon  the  eve  of  conflict,  as  in  the  official  re- 
ports of  the  wonderfully  energetic  and  suc- 
cessful campaign  in  which  General  Scott  with 
a  handful  of  men  renewed  the  memory  of  the 
conquest  of  Cortes,  in  his  triumphant  march 
from  Vera  Cruz  to  the  capital.  The  plan  of 
the  battle  of  Cerro  Gordo  was  so  fully  carried 
out  in  action  that  the  official  report  is  hardly 
more  than  the  general  orders  translated  from 
the  future  tense  to  the  past.  The  story  of 
Chapultepec  has  the  same  element  of  the 
marvelous  in  it.  The  general  commands  ap- 
parent impossibilities  in  the  closest  detail  on 
one  day,  and  the  next  day  reports  that  they 
have  been  accomplished.  These  successes 
were  not  cheaply  attained.  The  Mexicans, 
though  deficient  in  science  and  in  military 
intelligence,  fought  with  bravery  and  some- 
times with  desperation.  The  enormous  per- 
centage of  loss  in  his  army  proves  that  Scott 
was  engaged  in  no  light  work.  He  marched 
from  Pueblo  with  about  ten  thousand  men, 
and  his  losses  in  the  basin  of  Mexico  were 
2703,  of  whom  383  were  officers.  But  neither 
he  nor  Taylor  was  a  favorite  of  the  Adminis- 
tration, and  their  brilliant  success  brought  no 
gain  of  popularity  to  Mr.  Polk  and  his  Cabinet. 
During  the  early  part  of  the  session  little 
was  talked  about  except  the  Mexican  war,  its 
causes,  its  prosecution,  and  its  probable  re- 
sults. In  these  wordy  engagements  the  Whigs, 
partly  for  the  reasons  we  have  mentioned, 
partly  through  their  unquestionable  superiority 
in  debate,  and  partly  by  virtue  of  their  stronger 
cause,  usually  had  the  advantage.  There  was 
no  distinct  line  of  demarcation,  however,  be- 
tween the  two  parties.  There  was  hardly  a 
vote,  after  the  election  of  Mr.  Winthrop  as 
Speaker,  where  the  two  sides  divided  accord- 
ing to  their  partisan  nomenclature.  The  ques- 
tion of  slavery,  even  where  its  presence  was 
not  avowed,  had  its  secret  influence  upon 
every  trial  of  strength  in  Congress,  and  South- 
ern Whigs  were  continually  found  sustaining 
the  President,  and  New  England  Democrats 
voting  against  his  most  cherished  plans.    Not 
so.  Colonel  Doniphan,  too,  the  favorite  Whig  of  Mis- 
souri, and  who  overran  all  northern  Mexico,  on  his  re- 
turn home,  in  a  public  speech  at  St.  Louis,  condemned 
the  Administration  in  relation  to  the  war,  if  I  remem- 
ber. G.  T.  M.  Davis,  who  has  been  through  almost  the 
whole  war,  declares  in  favor  of  Mr.  Clay;  "  etc.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
527 
even  all  the  Democrats  of  the  South  could  be 
relied  on  by  the  Administration.  The  most 
powerful  leader  of  them  all  denounced  with 
bitter  earnestness  the  conduct  of  the  war,  for 
which  he  was  greatly  responsible.  Mr.  Cal- 
houn, in  an  attack  upon  the  President's  policy, 
January  4,  1848,  said,  "  I  opposed  the  war, 
not  only  because  it  might  have  been  easily 
avoided ;  not  only  because  the  President  had 
no  authority  to  order  a  part  of  the  disputed 
territory  in  possession  of  the  Mexicans  to  be 
occupied  by  our  troops ;  not  only  because  I 
believed  the  allegations  upon  which  Congress 
sanctioned  the  war  untrue,  but  from  high  con- 
siderations of  policy ;  because  I  believed  it 
would  lead  to  many  and  serious  evils  to  the 
country  and  greatly  endanger  its  free  institu- 
tions." It  was  probably  not  so  much  the  free 
institutions  of  the  country  that  the  South 
Carolina  Senator  was  disturbed  about  as  some 
others.  He  perhaps  felt  that  the  friends  of 
slavery  had  set  in  motion  a  train  of  events 
whose  result  was  beyond  their  ken.  Mr.  Pal- 
frey of  Massachusetts  a  few  days  later  said 
with  as  much  sagacity  as  wit  that  "  Mr.  Cal- 
houn thought  that  he  could  set  fire  to  a  barrel 
of  gunpowder  and  extinguish  it  when  half- 
consumed."  In  his  anxiety  that  the  war  should 
be  brought  to  an  end,  Calhoun  proposed  that 
the  United  States  army  should  evacuate  the 
Mexican  capital,  establish  a  defensive  line, 
and  hold  it  as  the  only  indemnity  possible  to 
us.  He  had  no  confidence  in  treaties,  and  be- 
lieved that  no  Mexican  government  was  capa- 
ble of  carrying  one  into  effect.  A  few  days 
later,*  in  a  running  debate,  Mr.  Calhoun  made 
an  important  statement  which  still  further 
strengthened  the  contention  of  the  Whigs. 
He  said  that  in  making  the  treaty  of  annex- 
ation he  did  not  assume  that  the  Rio  del 
Norte  was  the  western  boundary  of  Texas ; 
on  the  contrary,  he  assumed  that  the  boundary 
was  an  unsettled  one  between  Mexico  and 
Texas ;  and  that  he  had  intimated  to  our 
charge  d'affaires  that  we  were  prepared  to 
settle  the  boundary  on  the  most  liberal  terms ! 
This  was  perfectly  in  accordance  with  the 
position  held  by  most  Democrats  before  the 
Rio  Grande  boundary  was  made  by  the  Presi- 
dent an  article  of  faith.  Mr.  C.  J.  Ingersoll, 
one  of  the  leading  men  upon  that  side  in 
Congress,  in  a  speech  three  years  before  had 
said,  "  The  stupendous  deserts  between  the 
Nueces  and  the  Bravo  rivers  are  the  natural 
boundaries  between  the  Anglo-Saxon  and  the 
Mauritanian races";  a  statement  which,  how- 
ever faulty  from  the  point  of  view  of  ethnol- 
ogy and  physical  geography,  shows  clearly 
enough  the  view  then  held  of  the  boundary 
question. 
*  January  13,  1848. 
The  discipline  of  both  parties  was  more  or 
less  relaxed  under  the  influence  of  the  slavery 
question.  It  was  singular  to  see  Mr.  McLane 
of  Baltimore  rebuking  Mr.  Clingman  of  North 
Carolina  for  mentioning  that  forbidden  subjeet 
on  the  floor  of  the  House ;  Mr.  Reverdy  John- 
son, a  Whig  from  Maryland,  administering 
correction  to  Mr.  Hale,  an  insubordinate  Dem- 
ocrat from  New  Hampshire,  for  the  same 
offense,  and  at  the  same  time  screaming  that 
the  "  blood  of  our  glorious  battle  fields  in  Mex- 
ico rested  on  the  hands  of  the  President  ";  Mr. 
Clingman  challenging  the  House  with  the 
broad  statement  that  "  it  is  a  misnomer  to 
speak  of  our  institution  at  the  South  as  pecul- 
iar; ours  is  the  general  system  of  the  world, 
and  the  free  system  is  the  peculiar  one,"  and 
Mr.  Palfrey  dryly  responding  that  slavery  was 
natural  just  as  barbarism  was;  just  as  fig-leaves 
and  bare  skins  were  a  natural  dress.  When  the 
time  arrived,  however,  for  leaving  off  grimacing 
and  posturing,  and  the  House  went  to  voting, 
the  advocates  of  slavery  usually  carried  the 
day,  as  the  South,  Whigs  and  Democrats  to- 
gether, voted  solidly,  and  the  North  was  di- 
vided. Especially  was  this  the  case  after  the 
arrival  of  the  treaty  of  peace  between  the 
United  States  and  Mexico,  which  was  signed 
at  Guadalupe  Hidalgo  on  the  2d  of  February 
and  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Senate  only  twen- 
ty days  later.  It  was  ratified  by  that  body  on 
the  10th  of  March,  with  a  series  of  amend- 
ments which  were  at  once  accepted  by  Mex- 
ico, and  the  treaty  of  peace  was  officially  pro- 
mulgated on  the  national  festival  of  the  Fourth 
of  July.  From  the  hour  when  the  treaty  was 
received  in  Washington,  however,  the  discus- 
sion as  to  the  conduct  of  the  war  naturally 
languished ;  the  ablest  speeches  of  the  day  be- 
fore became  obsolete  in  the  presence  of  accom- 
plished facts;  and  the  interest  of  Congress 
promptly  turned  to  the  more  important  sub- 
ject of  the  disposition  to  be  made  of  the  vast 
domain  which  our  arms  had  conquered  and 
the  treaty  confirmed  to  us.  No  one  in  Amer- 
ica then  realized  the  magnitude  of  this  acqui- 
sition. Its  stupendous  physical  features  were 
as  little  appreciated  as  the  vast  moral  and 
political  results  which  were  to  flow  from  its 
entrance  into  our  commonwealth.  It  was  only 
known,  in  general  terms,  that  our  new  posses- 
sions covered  ten  degrees  of  latitude  and  fifteen 
of  longitude;  that  we  had  acquired,  in  short, 
six  hundred  and  thirty- thousand  square  miles 
of  desert,  mountain,  and  wilderness.  There  was 
no  dream,  then,  of  that  portentous  discovery 
which,  even  while  the  Senate  was  wrangling 
over  the  treaty,  had  converted  Captain  Suttar's 
farm  at  Coloma  into  a  mining  camp  —  for  his 
ruin  and  the  sudden  up-building  of  many  co- 
lossal fortunes.  The  name  of  California,  which
5- 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
conveys  to-day  such  opulent  suggestions,  then 
meant  nothing  but  barrenness,  and  Nevada 
was  a  name  as  yet  unknown  —  some  future 
Congressman,  innocent  of  taste  and  of  Spanish, 
was  to  hit  upon  the  absurdity  of  calling  that 
land  of  silver  and  cactus,  of  the  orange  and 
the  sage-hen,  the  land  of  snow.  But  imperfect 
as  was  the  appreciation,  at  that  day,  of  the 
possibilities  which  lay  hidden  in  these  sunset 
regions,  there  was  still  enough  of  instinctive 
greed  in  the  minds  of  politicians  to  make  them 
a  subject  of  lively  interest  and  intrigue.*  At 
the  first  showing  of  hands,  the  South  was 
successful. 
In  the  twenty-ninth  Congress  this  contest 
had  begun  over  the  spoils  of  a  victory  not  yet 
achieved.  President  Polk,  foreseeing  the  prob- 
ability of  an  acquisition  of  territory  by  treaty, 
had  asked  Congress  to  make  an  appropriation 
for  that  purpose.  A  bill  was  at  once  reported 
in  that  sense,  appropriating  $30,000  for  the 
expenses  of  the  negotiation  and  $2,000,000 
to  be  used  in  the  President's  discretion.  But 
before  it  passed,  a  number  of  Northern  Demo- 
crats t  had  become  alarmed  as  to  the  disposi- 
tion that  might  be  made  of  the  territory  thus 
acquired,  which  was  now  free  soil  by  Mexican 
law.  After  a  hasty  consultation  they  agreed 
upon  a  proviso  to  the  bill,  which  was  pre- 
sented by  Mr.  David  Wilmot  of  Pennsylvania. 
He  was  a  man  of  respectable  abilities,  who 
then,  and  long  afterwards,  held  a  somewhat 
prominent  position  among  the  public  men  of 
his  State ;  but  his  sole  claim  to  a  place  in 
history  rests  upon  these  few  lines  which  he 
moved  to  add  to  the  first  section  of  the  bill 
under  discussion : 
"  Provided,  That  as  an  express  and  fundamental  con- 
dition to  the  acquisition  of  any  territory  from  the  Re- 
public of  Mexico  by  the  United  States,  by  virtue  of 
any  treaty  that  may  be  negotiated  between  them,  and 
to  the  use  by  the  Executive  of  the  moneys  herein  ap- 
propriated, neither  slavery  nor  involuntary  servitude 
shall  exist  in  any  part  of  said  territory,  except  for 
crime,  whereof  the  party  shall  first  be  duly  convicted." 
This  condition  seemed  so  fair,  when  first 
presented  to  the  Northern  conscience,  that 
only  three  members  from  the  free  States  voted 
*  To  show  how  crude  and  vague  were  the  ideas  of 
even  the  most  intelligent  men  in  relation  to  this  great 
empire,  we  give  a  few  lines  from  the  closing  page  of 
E.  D.  Mansfield's  "History  of  the  Mexican  War."  "But 
will  the  greater  part  of  this  vast  space  ever  be  inhab- 
ited by  any  but  the  restless  hunter  and  the  wandering 
trapper?  Two  hundred  thousand  square  miles  of  this 
territory,  in  New  California,  has  been  trod  by  the  foot 
of  no  civilized  being.  No  spy  or  pioneer  or  vagrant 
trapper  has  ever  returned  to  report  the  character  and 
scenery  of  that  waste  and  lonely  wilderness.  Two  hun- 
dred thousand  square  miles  more  are  occupied  with 
broken  mountains  and  dreary  wilds.  But  little  remains 
then  for  civilization." 
t  Some  of  the  more  conspicuous  among  them  were 
No  in  committee.  The  amendment  was  adopt- 
ed —  80  to  64  —  and  the  bill  reported  to  the 
House.  A  desperate  effort  was  then  made  by 
the  pro-slavery  members  to  kill  the  bill  for 
the  purpose  of  destroying  the  amendment 
with  it.  This  failed, |  and  the  bill,  as  amended, 
passed  the  House,  but  going  to  the  Senate  a 
few  hours  before  the  close  of  the  session,  it 
lapsed  without  a  vote. 
As  soon  as  the  wrar  was  ended  and  the 
treaty  of  peace  was  sent  to  the  Senate,  this 
subject  assumed  a  new  interest  and  importance, 
and  a  resolution  embodying  the  principle  of 
the  Wilmot  proviso  was  brought  before  the 
House  by  Mr.  Harvey  Putnam  of  New  York, 
but  no  longer  with  the  same  success.  The 
South  was  now  solid  against  it,  and  such  a 
disintegration  of  conscience  among  Northern 
Democrats  had  set  in,  that  whereas  only  three 
of  them  in  the  last  Congress  had  seen  fit  to 
approve  the  introduction  of  slavery  into  free 
territory,  twenty-five  now  voted  with  the 
South  against  maintaining  the  existing  con- 
ditions there.  The  fight  was  kept  up  during 
the  session  in  various  places ;  if  now  and  then 
a  temporary  advantage  seemed  gained  in  the 
House,  it  was  lost  in  the  Senate,  and  no  per- 
manent progress  was  made. 
What  we  have  said  in  regard  to  the  general 
discussion  provoked  by  the  Mexican  war  ap- 
peared necessary  to  explain  the  part  taken  by 
Mr.  Lincoln  on  the  floor.  He  came  to  his 
place  unheralded  and  without  any  special 
personal  pretensions.  His  first  participation 
in  debate  can  best  be  described  in  his  own 
quaint  and  simple  words  :  §  "As  to  speech- 
making,  by  way  of  getting  the  hang  of  the 
House,  I  made  a  little  speech  two  or  three 
days  ago  on  a  post-office  question  of  no 
general  interest.  I  find  speaking  here  and 
elsewhere  about  the  same  thing.  I  was  about 
as  badly  scared,  and  no  worse,  as  I  am  when 
I  speak  in  court.  I  expect  to  make  one  with- 
in a  week  or  two  in  which  I  hope  to  succeed 
well  enough  to  wish  you  to  see  it."  He  evi- 
dently had  the  orator's  temperament  —  the 
mixture  of  dread  and  eagerness  which  all  good 
speakers  feel  before  facing  an  audience,  which 
Hamlin  of  Maine,  Preston  King  of  New  York,  Wil- 
mot of  Pennsylvania,  Brinckerhoff  of  Ohio,  McClelland 
of  Michigan,  etc. 
%  In  this  important  and  significant  vote  all  the 
Whigs  but  one  and  almost  all  the  Democrats,  from 
the  free  States,  together  with  Wm.  P.  Thomasson  and 
Henry  Grider,  Whigs  from  Kentucky,  voted  against 
killing  the  amended  bill,  in  all  93.  On  the  other 
side  were  all  the  members  from  slave-holding  States, 
except  Thomasson  and  Grider,  and  the  following 
from  free  States,  Douglas  and  McClernand  from  Illi- 
nois, Petit  from  Indiana,  and  Schenck,  a  Whig,  from 
Ohio,  in  all  79. — Greeley's  "American  Conflict,"  I.  p. 
189. 
\  Letter  to  Wm.  H.  Herndon,  January  8,  1848.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
529 
made  Cicero  tremble  and  turn  pale  when  rising 
in  the  Forum.  The  speech  he  was  pondering 
was  made  only  four  days  later,  on  the  12th  of 
January,  and  few  better  maiden  speeches  — 
for  it  was  his  first  formal  discourse  in  Con- 
gress—  have  ever  been  made  in  that  House. 
He  preceded  it,  and  prepared  for  it,  by  the 
introduction,  on  the  2 2d  of  December,  of  a 
series  of  resolutions  referring  to  the  Presi- 
dent's persistent  assertions  that  the  war  had 
been  begun  by  Mexico,  "  by  invading  our 
territory  and  shedding  the  blood  of  our  citi- 
zens on  our  own  soil,"  and  calling  upon  him 
to  give  the  House  more  specific  information 
upon  these  points.  As  these  resolutions  be- 
came somewhat  famous  afterwards,  and  were 
relied  upon  to  sustain  the  charge  of  a  lack  of 
patriotism  made  by  Mr.  Douglas  against  their 
author,  it  may  be  as  well  to  give  them  here, 
especially  as  they  are  the  first  production  of 
Mr.  Lincoln's  pen  after  his  entry  upon  the 
field  of  national  politics.  We  omit  the  pre- 
amble, which  consists  of  quotations  from  the 
President's  message. 
Resolved  by  the  House  of  Representatives .  That 
the  President  of  the  United  States  be  respectfully  re- 
quested to  inform  this  House: 
First.  Whether  the  spot  on  which  the  blood  of  our 
citizens  was  shed,  as  in  his  messages  declared,  was  or 
was  not  within  the  territory  of  Spain,  at  least  after 
the  treaty  of  1819,  until  the  Mexican  revolution. 
Second.  Whether  that  spot  is  or  is  not  within  the 
territory  which  was  wrested  from  Spain  by  the  revo- 
lutionary government  of  Mexico. 
Third.  Whether  that  spot  is  or  is  not  within  a  settle- 
ment of  people,  which  settlement  has  existed  ever  since 
long  before  the  Texas  revolution  and  until  its  inhabitants 
fled  before  the  approach  of  the  United  States  army. 
Fourth.  Whether  that  settlement  is  or  is  not  isolated 
from  any  and  all  other  settlements  by  the  Gulf  and 
the  Rio  Grande  on  the  south  and  west,  and  by  wide 
uninhabited  regions  in  the  north  and  east. 
Fifth.  Whether  the  people  of  that  settlement,  or  a 
majority  of  them,  or  any  of  them,  have  ever  submitted 
themselves  to  the  government  or  laws  of  Texas  or  of 
the  United  States,  by  consent  or  by  compulsion,  either 
by  accepting  office,  or  voting  at  elections,  or  paying 
tax,  or  serving  on  juries,  or  having  process  served 
upon  them,  or  in  any  other  way. 
Sixth.  Whether  the  people  of  that  settlement  did 
or  did  not  flee  from  the  approach  of  the  United  States 
army,  leaving  unprotected  their  homes  and  their  grow- 
ing crops,  before  the  blood  was  shed,  as  in  the  mes- 
sages stated ;  and  whether  the  first  blood  so  shed  was 
or  was  not  shed  within  the  inclosure  of  one  of  the 
people  who  had  thus  fled  from  it. 
Seventh.  Whether  our  citizens  whose  blood  was 
shed,  as  in  his  message  declared,  were  or  were  not  at 
that  time  armed  officers  and  soldiers,  sent  into  that 
settlement  by  the  military  order  of  the  President, 
through  the  Secretary  of  War. 
Eighth.  Whether  the  military  force  of  the  United 
States  was  or  was  not  so  sent  into  that  settlement  after 
General  Taylor  had  more  than  once  intimated  to  the 
War  Department  that  in  his  opinion  no  such  movement 
was  necessary  to  the  defense  or  protection  of  Texas. 
It  would  have  been  impossible  for  the 
President  to  answer  these  questions,  one  by 
one,  according  to  the  evidence  in  his  posses- 
sion, without  surrendering  every  position  he 
had  taken  in  his  messages  for  the  last  two 
years.  An  answer  was  probably  not  expected ; 
the  resolutions  were  never  acted  upon  by  the 
House,  the  vote  on  the  Ashmun  proposition 
having  sufficiently  indicated  the  view  which 
the  majority  held  of  the  President's  precipitate 
and  unconstitutional  proceeding.  But  they 
served  as  a  text  for  the  speech  which  Lincoln 
made  in  Committee  of  the  Whole,  which  de- 
serves the  attentive  reading  of  any  one  who 
imagines  that  there  was  anything  accidental 
in  the  ascendency  which  he  held  for  twenty 
years  among  the  public  men  of  Illinois.  The 
winter  was  mostly  devoted  to  speeches  upon 
the  same  subject  from  men  of  eminence  and 
experience,  but  it  is  within  bounds  to  say 
there  was  not  a  speech  made  in  the  House 
that  year  superior  to  this,  in  clearness  of  state- 
ment, severity  of  criticism  combined  with 
soberness  of  style,  or,  what  is  most  surprising, 
finish  and  correctness.  In  its  close,  clear  argu- 
ment, its  felicity  of  illustration,  its  restrained 
yet  burning  earnestness,  it  belongs  to  pre- 
cisely the  same  class  of  addresses  as  those 
which  he  made  a  dozen  years  later.  The 
ordinary  Congressman  can  never  conclude  in- 
side the  limits  assigned  him ;  he  must  beg  for 
unanimous  consent  for  an  extension  of  time 
to  come  to  his  sprawling  peroration.  But  this 
masterly  speech  covered  the  whole  ground 
of  the  controversy,  and  so  intent  was  Lincoln 
on  not  exceeding  his  hour  that  he  finished 
his  task,  to  his  own  surprise,  in  forty-five  min- 
utes. It  is  an  admirable  discourse,  and  the 
oblivion  which  overtook  it,  along  with  the 
other  volumes  of  speeches  made  at  the  same 
time,  can  only  be  accounted  for  by  remem- 
bering that  the  Guadalupe  Treaty  came  sud- 
denly in  upon  the  debate,  with  its  immense 
consequences  sweeping  forever  out  of  view 
all  consideration  of  the  causes  and  the  proc- 
esses which  led  to  the  momentous  result. 
Lincoln's  speech  and  his  resolutions  were 
alike  inspired  with  one  purpose :  to  correct 
what  he  considered  an  error  and  a  wrong  ;  to 
rectify  a  misrepresentation  which  he  could 
not,  in  his  very  nature,  permit  to  go  uncon- 
tradicted. It  gratified  his  offended  moral 
sense  to  protest  against  the  false  pretenses 
which  he  saw  so  clearly,  and  it  pleased  his 
fancy  as  a  lawyer  to  bring  a  truth  to  light 
which  somebody,  as  he  thought,  wTas  trying 
to  conceal.  He  certainly  got  no  other  reward 
for  his  trouble.  His  speech  was  not  particu- 
larly well  received  in  Illinois.  His  own  part- 
ner, Mr.  Herndon,  a  young  and  ardent  man, 
with  more  heart  than  learning,  more  feeling  for 
the  flag  than  for  international  justice,  could 
not,  or  would  not,  understand  Mr.  Lincoln's
53° 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
position,  and  gave  him  great  pain  by  his  let- 
ters. Again  and  again  Lincoln  explained  to 
him  the  difference  between  approving  the  war 
and  voting  supplies  to  the  soldiers,  but  Hern- 
don  was  obstinately  obtuse,  and  there  were 
many  of  his  mind.  Lincoln's  convictions  were 
so  positive  in  regard  to  the  matter  that  any 
laxitv  of  opinion  among  his  friends  caused 
him  real  suffering.  In  a  letter  to  the  Rev.  J. 
M.  Peck,  who  had  written  a  defense  of  the 
Administration  in  reference  to  the  origin  of 
the  war,  he  writes:  this  "disappoints  me,  be- 
cause it  is  the  first  effort  of  the  kind  I  have 
known,  made  by  one  appearing  to  me  to  be 
intelligent,  right-minded,  and  impartial."  He 
then  reviews  some  of  the  statements  of  Mr. 
Peck,  proving  their  incorrectness,  and  goes  on 
to  show  that  our  army  had  marched  under 
orders  across  the  desert  of  the  Nueces  into  a 
peaceful  Mexican  settlement,  frightening  away 
the  inhabitants ;  that  Fort  Brown  was  built  in 
a  Mexican  cotton-field,  where  a  young  crop 
was  growing;  that  Captain  Thornton  and  his 
men  were  captured  in  another  cultivated  field. 
He  then  asks,  how  under  any  law,  human  or 
divine,  this  can  be  considered  "  no  aggres- 
sion," and  closes  by  asking  his  clerical  corre- 
spondent if  the  precept,  "  Whatsoever  ye  would 
that  men  should  do  to  you,  do  ye  even  so  to 
them,"  is  obsolete,  of  no  force,  of  no  applica- 
tion? This  is  not  the  anxiety  of  a  politician 
troubled  about  his  record.  He  is  not  a  candi- 
date for  reelection,  and  the  discussion  has 
passed  by ;  but  he  must  stop  and  vindicate 
the  truth  whenever  assailed.  He  perhaps 
does  not  see,  certainly  does  not  care,  that 
this  stubborn  devotion  to  mere  justice  will  do 
him  no  good  at  an  hour  when  the  air  is  full 
of  the  fumes  of  gunpowder;  when  the  re- 
turned volunteers  are  running  for  constable  in 
every  county;  when  so  good  a  Whig  as  Mr. 
Winthrop  gives,  as  a  sentiment,  at  a  public 
meeting  in  Boston,  "  Our  country,  however 
bounded,"  and  the  majority  of  his  party  are 
preparing  —  unmindful  of  Mr.  Polk  and  all 
his  works  —  to  reap  the  fruits  of  the  Mexican 
war  by  making  its  popular  hero  President. 
It  was  fortunate  for  Mr.  Lincoln  and  for 
Whigs  like  him,  with  consciences,  that  Gen- 
eral Taylor  had  occupied  so  unequivocal  an 
attitude  in  regard  to  the  war.  He  had  not 
been  in  favor  of  the  march  to  the  Rio  Grande, 
and  had  resisted  every  suggestion  to  that 
effect  until  his  peremptory  orders  came.  In 
regard  to  other  political  questions,  his  posi- 
tion was  so  undefined,  and  his  silence  gener- 
ally so  discreet,  that  few  of  the  Whigs,  how- 
ever exacting,  could  find  any  difficulty  in 
supporting  him.    Mr.  Lincoln  did  more  than 
*  Archibald  Williams  of  Quincy,  Illinois.  Lamon, 
p.  294. 
tolerate  his  candidacy.  He  supported  it  with 
energy  and  cordiality.  He  was  at  last  con- 
vinced that  the  election  of  Mr.  Clay  was  im- 
possible, and  he  thought  he  could  see  that 
the  one  opportunity  oi  the  Whigs  was  in  the 
nomination  of  Taylor.  So  early  as  April  he 
wrote  to  a  friend:*  "  Mr.  Clay's  chance  for 
an  election  is  just  no  chance  at  all.  He  might 
get  New  York,  and  that  would  have  elected 
in  1844,  but  it  will  not  now,  because  he  must 
now,  at  the  least,  lose  Tennessee,  which  he 
had  then,  and  in  addition  the  fifteen  new  votes 
of  Florida,  Texas,  Iowa,  and  Wisconsin." 
Later  he  wrote  to  the  same  friend  that  the 
nomination  took  the  Democrats  "  on  the 
blind  side.  It  turns  the  war  thunder  against 
them.  The  war  is  now  to  them  the  gallows  of 
Haman,  which  they  built  for  us,  and  on  which 
they  are  doomed  to  be  hanged  themselves." 
At  the  same  time  he  bated  no  jot  of  his  op- 
position to  the  war,  and  urged  the  same  course 
upon  his  friends.  To  Linder  of  Illinois  he 
wrote :  f  "In  law,  it  is  good  policy  to  never 
plead  what  you  need  not,  lest  you  oblige  your- 
self to  prove  what  you  cannot."  He  then 
counsels  him  to  go  for  Taylor,  but  to  avoid  ap- 
proving Polk  and  the  war,  as  in  the  former 
case  he  will  gain  Democratic  votes  and  in  the 
latter  he  would  lose  with  the  Whigs.  Linder 
answered  him,  wanting  to  know  if  it  would 
not  be  as  easy  to  elect  Taylor  without  oppos- 
ing the  war,  which  drew  from  Lincoln  the 
angry  response  that  silence  was  impossible; 
the  Whigs  must,  speak,  "  and  their  only  option 
is  whether  they  will,  when  they  speak,  tell  the 
truth  or  tell  a  foul  and  villainous  falsehood." 
When  the  Whig  Convention  came  together 
in  Philadelphia,  J  the  differences  of  opinion  on 
points  of  principle  and  policy  were  almost  as 
numerous  as  the  delegates.  The  unconditional 
Clay  men  rallied  once  more  and  gave  their 
aged  leader  ninety-seven  votes  to  one  hundred 
and  eleven  which  Taylor  received  on  the  first 
ballot.  Scott  and  Webster  had  each  a  few 
votes;  but  on  the  fourth  ballot  the  soldier  of 
Buena  Vista  was  nominated,  and  Millard  Fill- 
more placed  in  the  line  of  succession  to  him. 
It  was  impossible  for  a  body  so  heterogeneous 
to  put  forward  a  distinctive  platform  of  prin- 
ciples. An  attempt  was  made  to  force  an  ex- 
pression in  regard  to  the  Wilmot  proviso,  but 
it  was  never  permitted  to  come  to  a  vote. 
The  convention  was  determined  that  "Old 
Rough  and  Ready,"  as  he  was  now  univer- 
sally nicknamed,  should  run  upon  his  battle- 
flags  and  his  name  of  Whig — although  he 
cautiously  called  himself  "  not  an  ultra  Whig." 
The  nomination  was  received  with  great  and 
noisy  demonstrations  of  adhesion  from  every 
t  Holland,  p.  118. 
X  June  7,   1848.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
53< 
quarter.  Lincoln,  writing  a  day  or  two  after 
his  return  from  the  convention,  says:  "Many 
had  said  they  would  not  abide  the  nomination 
of  Taylor ;  but  since  the  deed  has  been  done 
they  are  fast  falling  in,  and  in  my  opinion  we 
shall  have  a  most  overwhelming,  glorious  tri- 
umph. One  unmistakable  sign  is  that  all  the 
odds  and  ends  are  with  us,  —  Barnburners, 
native  Americans,  Tyler  men,  disappointed 
office-seeking  Loco-focos,  and  the  Lord  knows 
what.  This  is  important,  if  in  nothing  else,  in 
showing  which  way  the  wind  blows." 
General  Taylor's  chances  for  election  had 
been  greatly  increased  by  what  had  taken  place 
at  the  Democratic  Convention,  a  fortnight  be- 
fore. General  Cass  had  been  nominated  for  the 
Presidency,  but  his  militia  title  had  no  glamour 
of  carnage  about  it,  and  the  secession  of  the 
New  York  Antislavery  "  Barnburners "  from 
the  convention  was  a  presage  of  disaster  which 
was  fulfilled  in  the  following  August  by  the  as- 
sembling of  the  recusant  delegates  at  Buffalo, 
where  they  were  joined  by  a  large  number  of 
discontented  Democrats  and  "  Liberty  "  men, 
and  the  Free-soil  party  was  organized  for  its 
short  but  effective  mission.  Martin  Van  Buren 
was  nominated  for  President,  and  Charles 
Francis  Adams  was  associated  with  him  on  the 
ticket.  The  great  superiority  of  caliber  shown 
in  the  nominations  of  the  mutineers  over  the 
regular  Democrats  was  also  apparent  in  the  roll 
of  those  who  made  and  sustained  the  revolt. 
When  Salmon  P.  Chase,  Charles  Sumner, 
Preston  King,  the  Van  Burens  and  Adamses, 
John  P.  Hale,  Henry  Wilson,  William  Cullen 
Bryant,  David  Wilmot,  and  their  like  went  out 
of  their  party,  they  left  a  vacancy  which  was 
never  to  be  filled.  It  was  perhaps  an  instinct 
rather  than  any  clear  spirit  of  prophecy  which 
drove  the  antislavery  Democrats  out  of  their 
party  and  kept  the  Whigs  together.  So  far  as  the 
authorized  utterances  of  their  conventions  were 
concerned,  there  was  little  to  choose  between 
them.  They  had  both  evaded  any  profession 
of  faith  in  regard  to  slavery.  The  Democrats 
had  rejected  the  resolution  offered  by  Yancey 
committing  them  to  the  doctrine  of  "  non-inter- 
ference with  the  rights  of  property  in  the  terri- 
tories," and  the  Whigs  had  never  allowed  the 
Wilmot  proviso  to  be  voted  upon.  But  never- 
theless those  Democrats  who  felt  that  the  time 
had  come  to  put  a  stop  to  the  aggression 
of  slavery,  generally  threw  off  their  partisan 
allegiance,  and  the  most  ardent  of  the  anti- 
slavery    Whigs,  with   not    many    exceptions, 
*  It  is  a  tradition  that  a  planter  once  wrote  to  him :  "  I 
have  worked  hard  and  been  frugal  all  my  life,  and  the 
results  of  my  industry  have  mainly  taken  the  form  of 
slaves,  of  whom  I  own  about  a  hundred.  Before  I  vote 
for  President  I  want  to  be  sure  that  the  candidate  I  sup- 
port will  not  so  act  as  to  divest  me  of  my  property." 
To  which  the  general,  with  a  dexterity  that  would  have 
thought  best  to  remain  with  their  party.  Gen- 
eral Taylor  was  a  Southerner  and  a  slaveholder. 
In  regard  to  all  questions  bearing  upon  slavery, 
he  observed  a  discretion  in  the  canvass  which 
was  almost  ludicrous.*  Yet  there  was  a  well- 
nigh  universal  impression  among  the  antislav- 
ery Whigs  that  his  administration  would  be 
under  influences  favorable  to  the  restriction 
of  slavery.  Clay,  Webster,  and  Seward,  all  of 
whom  were  agreed  at  that  time  against  any  ex- 
tension of  the  area  of  that  institution,  heartily 
supported  him.  Webster  insisted  upon  it  that 
the  Whigs  were  themselves  the  best  "  Free-soil- 
ers,"  and  for  them  to  join  the  party  called  by 
that  distinctive  name  would  be  merely  putting 
Mr.  Van  Buren  at  the  head  of  the  Whig  party. 
Mr.  Seward,  speaking  for  Taylor  at  Cleveland, t 
took  still  stronger  ground,  declaring  that  slav- 
ery "must  be  abolished";  that  "freedom  and 
slavery  aretwo  antagonistic  elements  of  society 
in  America";  that  "  the  party  of  freedom  seeks 
complete  and  universal  emancipation."  No 
one  then  seems  to  have  foreseen  that  the  Whig 
party  —  then  on  the  eve  of  a  great  victory  — 
was  so  near  its  dissolution,  and  that  the  bolting 
Democrats  and  the  faithful  Whigs  were  alike 
engaged  in  laying  the  foundations  of  a  party 
which  was  to  illustrate  the  latter  half  of  the 
century  with  achievements  of  such  colossal  and 
enduring  importance. 
There  was  certainly  no  doubt  or  misgiving 
in  the  mind  of  Lincoln  as  to  that  future,  which, 
if  he  could  have  foreseen  it,  would  have  pre- 
sented so  much  of  terrible  fascination.  He 
went  into  the  campaign  with  exultant  alacrity. 
He  could  not  even  wait  for  the  adjournment  of 
Congress  to  begin  his  stump-speaking.  Fol- 
lowing the  bad  example  of  the  rest  of  his  col- 
leagues, he  obtained  the  floor  on  the  27th  of 
July,  and  made  a  long,  brilliant,  and  humor- 
ous speech  upon  the  merits  of  the  two  candi- 
dates before  the  people.  As  it  is  the  only  one 
of  Lincoln's  popular  speeches  of  that  period 
which  has  been  preserved  entire,  it  should  be 
read  by  those  who  desire  to  understand  the 
manner  and  spirit  of  the  politics  of  1 848.  What- 
ever faults  of  taste  or  of  method  may  be  found 
in  it,  considering  it  as  a  speech  delivered  in 
the  House  of  Representatives,  with  no  more 
propriety  or  pertinence  than  hundreds  of  oth- 
ers which  have  been  made  under  like  circum- 
stances, it  is  an  extremely  able  speech,  and  it 
is  by  itself  enough  to  show  how  remarkably 
effective  he  must  have  been  as  a  canvasser  in 
the  remoter  districts  of  his  State  where  means 
done  credit  to  a  diplomatist,  and  would  have  proved 
exceedingly  useful  to  Mr.  Clay,  responded, M  Sir :  I  have 
the  honor  to  inform  you  that  /  too  have  been  all  my 
life  industrious  and  frugal,  and  that  the  fruits  thereof  are 
mainly  invested  in  slaves,  of  whom  I  own  three  hundred. 
Yours,  etc. "  —  Greeley's  "  American  Conflict,"  I.  p.  1 99. 
t  October  26,  1848.
532 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
of  intellectual  excitement  were  rare  and  a  po- 
litical meeting  was  the  best-known  form  of  pub- 
lic entertainment.  He  begins  by  making  a  clear, 
brief,  and  dignified  defense  of  the  position  of 
Taylor  upon  the  question  of  the  proper  use  of 
the  veto ;  he  then  avows  with  characteristic 
candor  that  he  does  not  know  what  General 
Taylor  will  do  as  to  slavery;  he  is  himself  "a 
Northern  man,  or  rather  a  Western  free-State 
man,  with  a  constituency  I  believe  to  be,  and 
with  personal  feelings  I  know  to  be,  against 
the  extension  of  slavery  "  (a  definition  in  which 
his  caution  and  his  honesty  are  equally  dis- 
played), and  he  hopes  General  Taylor  would 
not,  if  elected,  do  anything  against  its  restric- 
tion ;  but  he  would  vote  for  him  in  any  case, 
as  offering  better  guarantees  than  Mr.  Cass. 
He  then  enters  upon  an  analysis  of  the  posi- 
tion of  Cass  and  his  party  which  is  full  of  keen 
observation  and  political  intelligence,  and  his 
speech  goes  on  to  its  rollicking  close  with  a 
constant  succession  of  bright,  witty,  and  strik- 
ing passages  in  which  the  orator's  own  convic- 
tion and  enjoyment  of  an  assured  success  is 
not  the  least  remarkable  feature.  A  few  weeks 
later  Congress  adjourned,  and  Lincoln,  without 
returning  home,  entered  upon  the  canvass  in 
New  England,*  and  then  going  to  Illinois, 
spoke  night  and  day  until  the  election.  When 
the  votes  wrere  counted,  the  extent  of  the  de- 
fection among  the  Northern  Democrats  who 
voted  for  Van  Buren  and  among  the  Southern 
Democrats  who  had  been  beguiled  by  the  ep- 
aulets of  Taylor,  was  plainly  seen.  The  "  Free- 
soilers"  had  given  several  important  Northern 
States,  by  small  pluralities,  to  the  Whigs,  car- 
rying no  electors,  but  having  more  votes  than 
Cass  in  New  York,  Massachusetts,  and  Ver- 
mont. The  entire  popular  vote  (exclusive  of 
South  Carolina,  which  chose  its  electors  by  the 
Legislature)  was  for  Taylor  1,360,752;  for  Cass 
1,219,962;  for  Van  Buren  291,342.  Of  the 
electors,  Taylor  had  163  and  Cass  137. 
A    FORTUNATE    ESCAPE. 
When  Congress  came  together  again  in 
December,  there  was  such  a  change  in  the 
temper  of  its  members  that  no  one  would 
have  imagined,  on  seeing  the  House  divided, 
that  it  was  the  same  body  which  had  assem- 
bled there  a  year  before.  The  election  was 
over ;  the  Whigs  were  to  control  the  Execu- 
tive Department  of  the  government  for  four 
*Thurlow  Weed  says  in  his  Autobiography,  Vol.  I. 
p.  603  :  "  I  had  supposed,  until  we  now  met,  that  I  had 
never  seen  Mr.  Lincoln,  having  forgotten  that  in  the 
fall  of  1848,  when  he  took  the  stump  in  New  England, 
he  called  upon  me  at  Albany,  and  that  we  went  to  see 
Mr.  Fillmore,  who  was  then  the  Whig  candidate  for 
Vice-President. "  The  New  York  "  Tribune,"  Septem- 
ber 14,  1848,  mentions  Mr.   Lincoln  as  addressing  a 
years  to  come ;  the  members  themselves  were 
either  reelected  or  defeated ;  and  there  was 
nothing  to  prevent  the  gratification  of  such 
private  feelings  as  they  might  have  been  sup- 
pressing during  the  canvass  in  the  interest  of 
their  party.  It  wras  not  long  before  some  of 
the  Northern  Democrats  began  to  avail  them- 
selves of  this  new  liberty.  They  had  returned 
burdened  with  a  sense  of  wrong.  They  had 
seen  their  party  beaten  in  several  Northern 
States  by  reason  of  its  fidelity  to  the  South, 
and  they  had  seen  how  little  their  Southern 
brethren  cared  for  their  labors  and  sacrifices, 
in  the  enormous  gains  which  Taylor  had 
made  in  the  South,  carrying  eight  out  of  fif- 
teen slave  States.  They  were  in  the  humor  to 
avenge  themselves  by  a  display  of  independ- 
ence on  their  own  account,  at  the  first  oppor- 
tunity. The  occasion  was  not  long  in  pre- 
senting itself.  A  few  days  after  Congress 
opened,  Mr.  Root  of  Ohio  introduced  a  reso- 
lution instructing  the  Committee  on  Territories 
to  bring  in  a  bill  "  with  as  little  delay  as 
practicable "  to  provide  territorial  govern- 
ments for  California  and  New  Mexico,  which 
should  "  exclude  slavery  therefrom."  This 
resolution  would  have  thrown  the  same  House 
into  a  panic  twelve  months  before,  but  now  it 
passed  by  a  vote  of  108  to  80 — in  the  former 
number  were  all  the  Whigs  from  the  North  and 
all  the  Democrats  but  eight,  and  in  the  latter 
the  entire  South  and  the  eight  referred  to. 
The  Senate,  however,  was  not  so  suscep- 
tible to  popular  impressions,  and  the  bill,  pre- 
pared in  obedience  to  the  mandate  of  the 
House,  never  got  farther  than  the  desk  of  the 
Senate  Chamber.  The  pro-slavery  majority 
in  that  body  held  firmly  together  till  near  the 
close  of  the  session,  when  they  attempted  to 
bring  in  the  new  territories  without  any  re- 
striction as  to  slavery,  by  attaching  what  is 
called  "  a  rider  "  to  that  effect,  to  the  Civil 
Appropriation  Bill.  The  House  resisted,  and 
returned  the  bill  to  the  Senate  with  the  rider 
unhorsed.  A  committee  of  conference  failed 
to  agree.  Mr.  McClernand,  a  Democrat  from 
Illinois,  then  moved  that  the  House  recede 
from  its  disagreement,  which  was  carried  by  a 
few  Whig  votes,  to  the  dismay  of  those  who 
were  not  in  the  secret,  when  Richard  W. 
Thompson  (who  was  thirty  years  afterwards 
Secretary  of  the  Navy)  instantly  moved  that 
the  House  do  concur  with  the  Senate,  with 
this  amendment,  that  the  existing  laws  of  those 
great  Whig  meeting  in  Boston,  September  12.  The 
Boston  "Atlas"  refers  to  speeches  made  by  him  at 
Dorchester,  September  16;  at  Chelsea,  September 
17;  by  Lincoln  and  Seward  at  Boston,  September  22, 
on  which  occasion  the  report  says  :  "  Mr.  Lincoln  of 
Illinois  next  came  forward,  and  was  received  with  great 
applause.  He  spoke  about  an  hour  and  made  a  powerful 
and  convincing  speech  which  was  cheered  to  the  echo."
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
533 
territories  be  for  the  present  and  until  Con- 
gress should  amend  them,  retained.  This  would 
secure  them  to  freedom,  as  slavery  had  long 
ago  been  abolished  by  Mexico.  This  amend- 
ment passed,  and  the  Senate  had  to  force 
the  many-pronged  dilemma,  either  to  defeat 
the  Appropriation  Bill,  to  consent  that  the 
territories  should  be  organized  as  free  commu- 
nities, or  to  swallow  their  protestations  that 
the  territories  were  in  sore  need  of  government 
and  adjourn,  leaving  them  in  the  anarchy  they 
had  so  feelingly  depicted.  They  chose  the 
last  as  the  least  dangerous  course,  and  passed 
the  Appropriation  Bill  in  its  original  form. 
Mr.  Lincoln  took  little  part  in  the  discus- 
sions incident  to  these  proceedings ;  he  was 
constantly  in  his  seat,  however,  and  voted 
generally  with  his  party,  and  always  with  those 
opposed  to  the  extension  of  slavery.  He  used 
to  say  that  he  had  voted  for  the  Wilmot  pro- 
viso, in  its  various  phases,  forty-two  times. 
He  left  to  others,  however,  the  active  work  on 
the  floor.  His  chief  preoccupation  during  this 
second  session  was  a  scheme  which  links 
itself  characteristically  with  his  first  protest 
against  the  proscriptive  spirit  of  slavery  ten 
years  before  in  the  Illinois  Legislature  and  his 
immortal  act  fifteen  years  afterwards  in  conse- 
quence of  which  American  slavery  ceased  to 
exist  He  had  long  felt  in  common  with  many 
others  that  the  traffic  in  human  beings  under 
the  very  shadow  of  the  Capitol  was  a  national 
scandal  and  reproach.  He  thought  that  Con- 
gress had  the  power  under  the  Constitution 
to  regulate  or  prohibit  slavery  in  all  regions 
under  its  exclusive  jurisdiction,  and  he  thought 
it  proper  to  exercise  that  power  with  due  re- 
gard to  vested  rights  and  the  general  welfare. 
He  therefore  resolved  to  test  the  question 
whether  it  were  possible  to  remove  from  the 
seat  of  government  this  stain  and  offense.  He 
proceeded  carefully  and  cautiously  about  it, 
after  his  fashion.  When  he  had  drawn  up  his 
plan,  he  took  counsel  with  some  of  the  leading 
citizens  of  Washington  and  some  of  the  more 
prominent  members  of  Congress  before  bring- 
ing it  forward.  His  bill  obtained  the  cordial 
approval  of  Colonel  Seaton,  the  Mayor  of 
Washington,  whom  Mr.  Lincoln  had  con- 
sulted as  the  representative  of  the  intelligent 
slave-holding  citizens  of  the  District,  and  of 
Joshua  F.  Giddings,*  whom  he  regarded  as  the 
leading  abolitionist  in  Congress,  a  fact  which 
sufficiently  proves  the  practical  wisdom  with 
which  he  had  reconciled  the  demands  of 
right  and  expediency.  In  the  mean  time,  how- 
ever, Mr.  Gott,  a  member  from  New  York, 
had  introduced  a  resolution  with  a  rhetorical 
preamble  directing  the  proper  committee  to 
#  Giddings's  diary,  January  8,  9,  and  11,  1849  :"pub- 
lished  in  "  Cleveland  Post,"  March  31,  1878. 
bring  in  a  bill  prohibiting  the  slave-trade  in 
the  District.  This  occasioned  great  excite- 
ment, much  caucusing  and  threatening  on  the 
part  of  the  Southern  members,  but  nothing 
else.  In  the  opinion  of  the  leading  antislavery 
men,  Mr.  Lincoln's  bill,  being  at  the  same 
time  more  radical  and  more  reasonable,  was 
far  better  calculated  to  effect  its  purpose. 
Giddings  says  in  his  diary :  "  This  evening 
(January  11),  our  whole  mess  remained  in  the 
dining-room  after  tea,  and  conversed  upon 
the  subject  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  bill  to  abolish 
slavery.  It  was  approved  by  all ;  I  believe  it 
as  good  a  bill  as  we  could  get  at  this  time,  and 
was  willing  to  pay  for  slaves  in  order  to  save 
them  from  the  Southern  market,  as  I  suppose 
every  man  in  the  District  would  sell  his  slaves 
if  he  saw  that  slavery  was  to  be  abolished." 
Mr.  Lincoln  therefore  moved,  on  the  16th  of 
January,  as  an  amendment  to  Gott's  proposi- 
tion, that  the  committee  report  a  bill  for  the 
total  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District  of 
Columbia,  the  terms  of  which  he  gave  in  full. 
They  were  in  substance  the  folio  .ving : 
The  first  two  sections  prohibit  the  bringing 
of  slaves  into  the  district  or  selling  them  out 
of  it,  provided,  however,  that  officers  of  the 
Government,  being  citizens  of  slave-holding 
States,  may  bring  their  household  servants 
with  them  for  a  reasonable  time  and  take 
them  away  again.  The  third  provides  a  tem- 
porary system  of  apprenticeship  and  eventual 
emancipation  for  children  born  of  slave- 
mothers  after  January  1st,  1850.  The  fourth 
provides  for  the  manumission  of  slaves  by  the 
Government  on  application  of  the  owners,  the 
latter  to  receive  their  full  cash  value.  The  fifth 
provides  for  the  return  of  fugitive  slaves  from 
Washington  and  Georgetown.  The  sixth  sub- 
mits this  bill  itself  to  a  popular  vote  in  the  Dis- 
trict as  a  condition  of  its  promulgation  as  law. 
These  are  the  essential  points  of  the  meas- 
ure, and  the  success  of  Mr.  Lincoln  in  gaining 
the  adhesion  of  the  abolitionists  in  the  House 
is  more  remarkable  than  that  he  should  have 
induced  the  Washington  Conservatives  to  ap- 
prove it.  But  the  usual  result  followed  as 
soon  as  it  was  formally  introduced  to  the  no- 
tice of  Congress.  It  was  met  by  that  violent 
and  excited  opposition  which  greeted  any 
measure,  however  intrinsically  moderate  and 
reasonable,  which  was  founded  on  the  assump- 
tion that  slavery  was  not  in  itself  a  good  and 
desirable  thing.  The  social  influences  of  Wash- 
ington were  brought  to  bear  against  a  propo- 
sition which  the  Southerners  contended  would 
vulgarize  society,  and  the  genial  and  liberal 
mayor  was  forced  to  withdraw  his  approval  as 
gracefully  or  as  awkwardly  as  he  might.  The 
prospects  of  the  bill  were  seen  to  be  hopeless,  as 
the  session  was  to  end  on  the  4th  of  March,  and
534 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
no  further  effort  was  made  to  carry  it  through. 
Fifteen  years  afterwards,  in  the  stress  and  tem- 
pest of  a  terrible  war,  it  was  Mr.  Lincoln's 
strange  fortune  to  sign  a  bill  sent  him  by  Con- 
gress for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  Washington; 
and  perhaps  the  most  remarkable  thing  about 
the  whole  transaction  was  that  while  we  were 
looking  politically  upon  a  new  heaven  and  a 
new  earth  —  for  the  vast  change  in  our  moral 
and  economic  condition  might  justify  so  auda- 
cious a  phrase  —  when  there  was  scarcely  a  man 
on  the  continent  who  had  not  greatly  shifted 
his  point  of  view  in  a  dozen  years,  there  was 
so  little  change  in  Mr.  Lincoln.  The  same 
hatred  for  slavery,  the  same  sympathy  with 
the  slave,  the  same  consideration  for  the  slave- 
holder as  the  victim  of  a  system  he  had  inher- 
ited, the  same  sense  of  divided  responsibility 
between  the  South  and  the  North,  the  same 
desire  to  effect  great  reforms  with  as  little  in- 
dividual damage  and  injury,  as  little  disturb- 
ance of  social  conditions  as  possible,  were 
equally  evident  when  the  raw  pioneer  signed 
the  protest  with  Dan  Stone  at  Vandalia,  when 
the  mature  man  moved  the  resolution  in  1849 
in  the  Capitol,  and  when  the  President  gave 
the  sanction  of  his  bold  signature  to  the  act 
which  swept  away  the  slave-shambles  from 
the  city  of  Washington. 
His  term  in  Congress  ended  on  the  4th  of 
March,  and  he  was  not  a  candidate  for  reelec- 
tion. A  year  before  he  had  contemplated  the 
possibility  of  entering  the  field  again.  He 
then  wrote  to  his  friend  and  partner  Herndon : 
"  It  is  very  pleasant  for  me  to  learn  from  you 
that  there  are  some  who  desire  that  I  should 
be  reelected.  I  most  heartily  thank  them  for 
the  kind  partiality ;  and  I  can  say,  as  Mr. 
Clay  said  of  the  annexation  of  Texas,  that 
'  personally  I  would  not  object '  to  a  reelec- 
tion, although  I  thought  at  the  time  (of  his 
nomination),  and  still  think,  it  would  be  quite 
as  well  for  me  to  return  to  the  law  at  the  end  of 
a  single  term.  I  made  the  declaration  that  I 
would  not  be  a  candidate  again,  more  from  a 
wish  to  deal  fairly  with  others,  to  keep  peace 
among  our  friends,  and  keep  the  district  from 
going  to  the  enemy,  than  for  any  cause  per- 
sonal to  myself,  so  that,  if  it  should  so  hap- 
pen that  nobody  else  wishes  to  be  elected,  I 
could  not  refuse  the  people  the  right  of  send- 
ing me  again.  But  to  enter  myself  as  a  com- 
petitor of  others,  or  to  authorize  any  one  so  to 
enter  me,  is  what  my  word  and  honor  forbid." 
But  before  his  first  session  ended  he  gave  up 
all  idea  of  going  back,  and  heartily  concurred 
in  the  nomination  of  Judge  Logan  to  succeed 
him.  The  Sangamon  district  was  the  one 
which  the  Whigs  of  Illinois  had  apparently  the 
best  prospect  of  carrying,  and  it  was  full  of 
able    and   ambitious    men,    who  were   nom- 
inated successively  for  the  only  place  which 
gave  them  the  opportunity  of  playing  a  part 
in  the  national  theater  at  Washington.  They^ 
all  served  with  more  or  less  distinction,  but 
for  ten  years  no  one  was  ever  twice  a  candi- 
date. A  sort  of  tradition  had  grown  up,  through 
which  a  perverted  notion  of  honor  and  pro- 
priety held  it  discreditable  in  a  member  to  ask 
for  reelection.  This  state  of  things  was  not 
peculiar  to  that  district,  and  it  survives  with 
more  or  less  vigor  throughout  the  country  to 
this  day,  to  the  serious  detriment  of  Congress. 
This  consideration,  coupled  with  what  is  called 
the  claim  of  locality,  must  in  time  still  further 
deteriorate  and  degrade  the  representatives  of 
the  States  at  Washington.  To  ask  in  a  nomina- 
ting convention  who  is  best  qualified  for  ser- 
vice in  Congress  is  always  regarded  as  an 
impertinence  ;  but  the  question  "  what  county 
in  the  district  has  had  the  Congressman  often- 
est  "  is  always  considered  in  order.  For  such 
reasons  as  these  Mr.  Lincoln  refused  to  allow 
his  name  to  go  before  the  voters  again,  and 
the  next  year  he  again  refused,  writing  an  em- 
phatic letter  for  publication,  in  which  he  said 
that  there  were  many  Whigs  who  could  do  as 
much  as  he  "  to  bring  the  district  right  side  up." 
Colonel  Baker  had  come  back  from  the 
wars  with  all  the  glitter  of  Cerro  Gordo  about 
him,  but  did  not  find  the  prospect  of  political 
preferment  flattering  in  Sangamon  County, 
and  therefore,  with  that  versatility  and  sagac- 
ity which  was  more  than  once  to  render  him 
signal  service,  he  removed  to  the  Galena  dis- 
trict, in  the  extreme  north-western  corner  of 
the  State,  and  almost  immediately  on  his  ar- 
rival there  received  a  nomination  to  Congress. 
He  was  doubly  fortunate  in  this  move,  as  the 
nomination  he  was  unable  to  take  away  from 
Logan  proved  useless  to  the  latter,  who  was 
defeated  after  a  hot  contest.  Baker  therefore 
took  the  place  of  Lincoln  as  the  only  Whig 
member  from  Illinois,  and  their  names  occur 
frequently  together  in  the  arrangements  for 
the  distribution  of  "  Federal  patronage  "  at 
the  close  of  the  Administration  of  Polk  and 
the  beginning  of  that  of  Taylor.  During  the 
period  while  the  President  elect  was  consid- 
ering the  appointment  of  his  Cabinet,  Lincoln 
used  all  the  influence  he  could  bring  to  bear, 
which  was  probably  not  very  much,  in  favor 
of  Baker  for  a  place  in  the  Government.  The 
Whig  members  of  the  Legislatures  of  Illinois, 
Iowa,  and  Wisconsin  joined  in  this  effort, 
which  came  to  nothing.*  The  recommenda- 
tions to  office  which  Lincoln  made  after  the 
inauguration  of  General  Taylor  are  probably 
unique  of  their  kind.  Here  is  a  specimen 
which  is  short  enough  to  give  entire.  It  is 
addressed  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior: 
*  MS.  letter  from  Lincoln  to  Schooler,  Feb.  2,  1849.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
535 
1  "  I  recommend  that  William  Butler  be  ap- 
pointed Pension  Agent  for  the  Illinois  agency 
when  the  place  shall  be  vacant.  Mr.  Hurst, 
the  present  incumbent,  I  believe  has  performed 
the  duties  very  well.  He  is  a  decided  parti- 
san, and  I  believe  expects  to  be  removed. 
Whether  he  shall  be,  I  submit  to  the  Depart- 
ment. This  office  is  not  confined  to  my  dis- 
trict, but  pertains  to  the  whole  State ;  so  that 
Colonel  Baker  has  an  equal  right  with  myself 
to  be  heard  concerning  it.  However,  the  of- 
fice is  located  here  (at  Springfield) ;  and  I 
think  it  is  not  probable  any  one  would  desire 
to  remove  from  a  distance  to  take  it."  We 
have  examined  a  large  number  of  his  recom- 
mendations —  for  with  a  complete  change  of 
administration  there  would  naturally  be  great 
activity  among  the  office-seekers  —  and  they 
are  all  in  precisely  the  same  vein.  He  no- 
where asks  for  the  removal  of  an  incumbent ; 
he  never  claims  a  place  as  subject  to  his  dis- 
position ;  in  fact,  he  makes  no  personal  claim 
whatever ;  he  simply  advises  the  Government, 
in  case  a  vacancy  occurs,  who,  in  his  opinion, 
is  the  best  man  to  fill  it.  When  there  are  two 
applicants,  he  indicates  which  is  on  the  whole 
the  better  man,  and  sometimes  adds  that  the 
weight  of  recommendations  is  in  favor  of  the 
other !  In  one  instance  he  sends  forward  the 
recommendations  of  the  man  whom  he  does 
not  prefer,  with  an  indorsement  emphasizing 
the  importance  of  them,  and  adding  :  "  From 
personal  knowledge  I  consider  Mr.  Bond 
every  way  worthy  of  the  office  and  qualified 
to  fill  it.  Holding  the  individual  opinion  that 
the  appointment  of  a  different  gentleman 
would  be  better,  I  ask  especial  attention  and 
consideration  for  his  claims,  and  for  the  opin- 
ions expressed  in  his  favor  by  those  over  whom 
I  can  claim  no  superiority."  The  candor,  the 
fairness  and  moderation,  together  with  the 
respect  for  the  public  service  which  these 
recommendations  display,  are  all  the  more 
remarkable  when  we  reflect  that  there  was  as 
yet  no  sign  of  a  public  conscience  upon  the 
subject.  The  patronage  of  the  Government 
was  scrambled  for,  as  a  matter  of  course,  in 
the  mire  into  which  Jackson  had  flung  it. 
For  a  few  weeks  in  the  spring  of  1849  Mr. 
Lincoln  appears  in  a  character  which  is  en- 
*  Butterfield  had  a  great  reputation  for  ready  wit 
and  was  suspected  of  deep  learning.  Some  of  his  jests 
are  still  repeated  by  old  lawyers  in  Illinois,  and  show 
at  least  a  well-marked  humorous  intention.  On  one 
occasion  he  appeared  before  Judge  Pope  to  ask  the 
discharge  of  the  famous  Mormon  Prophet  Joe  Smith, 
who  was  in  custody  surrounded  by  his  church  dig- 
nitaries. Bowing  profoundly  to  the  court  and  the  la- 
dies who  thronged  the  hall, he  said,  "I  appear  before 
you  under  solemn  and  peculiar  circumstances.  I  am 
to  address  the  Pope,  surrounded  by  angels,  in  the 
presence  of  the  holy  apostles,  in  behalf  of  the  Prophet 
of  the  Lord."    We  once  heard  Lincoln  say  of  Butter- 
tirely  out  of  keeping  with  all  his  former  and 
subsequent  career.  He  became,  for  the  first 
and  only  time  in  his  life,  an  applicant  for  an 
appointment  at  the  hands  of  the  President. 
His  bearing  in  this  attitude  was  marked  by 
his  usual  individuality.  In  the  opinion  of 
many  Illinoisans  it  was  important  that  the 
place  of  Commissioner  of  the  General  Land 
Office  should  be  given  to  a  citizen  of  their 
State,  one  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  land 
law  in  the  West  and  the  special  needs  of  that 
region.  A  letter  to  Lincoln  was  drawn  up  and 
signed  by  some  half-dozen  of  the  leading 
Whigs  of  the  State  asking  him  to  become  an 
applicant  for  that  position.  He  promptly  an- 
swered, saying  that  if  the  position  could  be 
secured  for  a  citizen  of  Illinois  only  by  his  ac- 
cepting it,  he  would  consent;  but  he  went  on 
to  say  that  he  had  promised  his  best  efforts  to 
Cyrus  Edwards  for  that  place,  and  had  after- 
wards stipulated  with  Colonel  Baker  that  if  J. 
L.  D.  Morrison,  another  Mexican  hero,  and 
Edwards  could  come  to  an  understanding 
with  each  other  as  to  which  should  withdraw, 
he  would  join  in  recommending  the  other;  that 
he  could  not  take  the  place,  therefore,  unless 
it  became  clearly  impossible  for  either  of  the 
others  to  get  it.  Some  weeks  later,  the  impos- 
sibility referred  to  having  become  apparent, 
Mr.  Lincoln  applied  for  the  place;  but  a  suit- 
or for  office  so  laggard  and  so  scrupulous  as  he 
stood  very  little  chance  of  success  in  a  contest 
like  those  which  periodically  raged  at  Wash- 
ington during  the  first  weeks  of  every  new 
administration.  The  place  came,  indeed,  to 
Illinois,  but  to  neither  of  the  three  we  have 
mentioned.  The  fortunate  applicant  was  Jus- 
tin Butterfield  of  Chicago,  a  man  well  and 
favorably  known  among  the  early  members 
of  the  Illinois  bar*  and  an  intimate  friend  of 
Lincoln.  He  possessed,  however,  too  practi- 
cal a  mind  to  permit  the  claims  of  friendship 
to  interfere  with  the  business  of  office-seeking, 
which  he  practiced  with  fair  success  all  his  days. 
It  was  in  this  way  that  Abraham  Lincoln 
met  and  escaped  one  of  the  greatest  dangers 
of  his  life.  In  after  days  he  recognized  the  er- 
ror he  had  committed,  and  congratulated  him- 
self upon  the  happy  deliverance  he  had  obtained 
through  no  merit  of  his  own.    The  loss  of  at 
field  that  he  was  one  of  the  few  Whigs  in  Illinois 
who  approved  the  Mexican  War.  His  reason,  frankly 
given,  was  that  he  had  lost  an  office  in  New  York  by 
opposing  the  war  of  1S12.  "  Henceforth,"'  he  said 
with  cynical  vehemence,  "  I  am  for  war,  pestilence, 
and  famine."  He  was  once  defending  the  Shawnee- 
town  Bank  and  advocating  the  extension  of  its  char- 
ter ;  an  opposing  lawyer  contended  that  this  would  be 
creating  a  new  bank.  Butterfield  brought  a  smile 
from  the  court  and  a  laugh  from  the  bar  by  asking 
"  whether  when  the  Lord  lengthened  the  life  of  Hez- 
ekiah  he  made  a  new  man,  or  whether  it  was  the  same 
old  Hezekiah  ?  "
536 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
least  four  years  of  the  active  pursuit  of  his  pro- 
fession would  have  been  irreparable,  leaving 
out  of  view  the  strong  probability  that  the 
singular  charm  of  Washington  life  to  men  who 
have  a  passion  for  politics  might  have  kept 
him  there  forever.  It  has  been  said  that  a  res- 
idence in  Washington  leaves  no  man  precisely 
as  it  found  him.  This  is  an  axiom  which  may 
be  applied  to  most  cities  in  a  certain  sense, 
but  it  is  true  in  a  peculiar  degree  of  our 
capital.  To  the  men  who  come  there  from 
small  rural  communities  in  the  South  and 
the  West,  the  bustle  and  stir,  the  intellectual 
movement,  such  as  it  is,  the  ordinary  subjects 
of  conversation,  of  such  vastly  greater  impor- 
tance than  anything  they  have  previously 
known,  the  daily  and  hourly  combats  on  the 
floor  of  both  nouses,  the  intrigue  and  the 
struggle  of  office-hunting,  which  interest  vast 
numbers  besides  the  office-seekers,  the  su- 
perior piquancy  and  interest  of  the  scandal 
which  is  talked  at  a  Congressional  boarding- 
house  over  that  which  seasons  the  dull  days  at 
a  village-tavern, —  all  this  gives  a  savor  to  life 
in  Washington,  the  memory  of  which  doubles 
the  tedium  of  the  sequestered  vale  to  which 
the  beaten  legislator  returns  when  his  brief 
hour  of  glory  is  over.  It  is  this  which  brings 
to  the  State  Department,  after  every  general 
election,  that  crowd  of  specters,  with  their 
bales  of  recommendations  from  pitying  col- 
leagues who  have  been  reelected,  whose  di- 
minishing prayers  run  down  the  whole  gamut 
of  supplication  from  St.  James  to  St.  Paul  of 
Loando,  and  of  whom  at  the  last  it  must  be 
said,  as  Mr.  Evarts  once  said  after  an  unusu- 
ally heavy  day,  "  Many  called,  but  few 
chosen."  Of  those  who  do  not  achieve  the  ru- 
inous success  of  going  abroad  to  consulates 
that  will  not  pay  their  board,  or  missions 
where  they  only  avoid  daily  shame  by  hiding 
their  penury  and  their  ignorance  away  from 
observation,  a  great  portion  yield  to  their  fate 
and  join  that  fleet  of  wrecks  which  floats  for- 
ever on  the  pavement  of  Washington. 
It  is  needless  to  say  that  Mr.  Lincoln  re- 
ceived no  damage  from  his  term  of  service  in 
Washington,  but  wre  know  of  nothing  which 
shows  so  strongly  the  perilous  fascination  of 
the  place  as  the  fact  that  a  man  of  his  ex- 
traordinary moral  and  mental  qualities  could 
ever  have  thought  for  a  moment  of  accepting 
a  position  so  insignificant  and  incongruous  as 
that  which  he  was  more  than  willing  to  as- 
sume when  he  left  Congress.  He  would  have 
filled  the  place  with  honor  and  credit — but 
at  a  monstrous  expense.  We  do  not  so  much 
refer  to  his  exceptional  career  and  his  great 
figure  in  history;  these  momentous  contin- 
gencies could  not  have  suggested  themselves 
to  him.    But  the  place  he  was  reasonably  sure 
of  filling  in  the  battle  of  life  should  have  made 
a  subordinate  office  in  Washington  a  thing 
out  of  the  question.  He  was  already  a  law- 
yer of  skill  and  reputation  ;  an  orator  upon 
whom  his  party  relied  to  speak  for  them  to 
the  people.  An  innate  love  of  combat  was  in 
his  heart ;  he  loved  discussion  like  a  medieval 
schoolman.  The  air  was  already  tremulous 
with  faint  bugle-notes  that  heralded  a  conflict 
of  giants  on  a  field  of  moral  significance  to 
which  he  was  fully  alive  and  awake,  where  he 
was  certain  to  lead  at  least  his  hundreds  and 
his  thousands.  Yet  if  Justin  Butterfield  had 
not  been  a  more  supple,  more  adroit,  and  less 
scrupulous  suitor  for  office  than  himself,  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  would  have  sat  for  four  inesti- 
mable years  at  a  bureau-desk  in  the  Interior 
Department,  and  when  the  hour  of  action 
sounded  in  Illinois,  who  would  have  filled  the 
place  which  he  took  as  if  he  had  been  born 
fork  ?  Who  could  have  done  the  duty  which 
he  bore  as  lightly  as  if  he  had  been  fashioned 
for  it  from  the  beginning  of  time  ? 
His  temptation  did  not  even  end  with  But- 
terfield's  success.  The  administration  of  Gen- 
eral Taylor,  apparently  feeling  that  some 
compensation  was  due  to  one  so  earnestly 
recommended  by  the  leading  Whigs  of  the 
State,  offered  Mr.  Lincoln  the  governorship 
of  Oregon.  This  was  a  place  more  suited  to 
him  than  the  other,  and  his  acceptance  of  it 
was  urged  by  some  of  his  most  judicious 
friends*  on  the  ground  that  the  new  Territory 
would  soon  be  a  State,  and  that  he  could 
come  back  as  a  senator.  This  view  of  the 
matter  commended  itself  favorably  to  Lincoln 
himself,  who,  however,  gave  it  up  on  account 
of  the  natural  unwillingness  of  his  wife  to  re- 
move to  a  country  so  wild  and  so  remote. 
This  was  all  as  it  should  be.  The  best  place 
for  him  was  Illinois,  and  he  went  about  his 
work  there  until  his  time  should  come. 
SIX    YEARS    OF    LAW    PRACTICE. 
In  that  briefest  of  all  autobiographies,  which 
Mr.  Lincoln  wrote  for  Jesse  Fell  upon  three 
pages  of  note-paper,  he  sketched  the  period  at 
which  we  have  arrived  in  these  words :  "  From 
1849  to  1854,  both  inclusive,  I  practiced  law 
more  assiduously  than  ever  before.  .  .  .  I  was 
losing  interest  in  politics,  when  the  repeal  of 
the  Missouri  Compromise  aroused  me  again." 
His  service  in  Congress  had  made  him  more 
generally  known  than  formerly,  and  had  in- 
creased his  practical  value  as  a  member  of 
any  law  firm.  He  was  offered  a  partnership 
on  favorable  terms  by  a  lawyer  in  good  prac- 
tice in  Chicago;  but  he  declined  it  on  the 
*  Among  others  John  T.  Stuart,  who  is  our  authority 
for  this  statement.
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
537 
ROBERT  C.  WINTHROP.   (AFTER  A  PHOTOGRAPH  BY  BRADY.) 
ground  that  his  health  would  not  endure  the 
close  confinement  necessary  in  a  city  office. 
He  went  back  to  Springfield,  and  resumed  at 
once  his  practice  there  and  in  the  Eighth 
Judicial  Circuit,  where  his  occupations  and 
his  associates  were  the  most  congenial  that 
he  could  anywhere  find.  For  five  years  he 
devoted  himself  to  his  work  with  more  energy 
and  more  success  than  ever  before. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  he  gave  a  notable 
proof  of  his  unusual  powers  of  mental  disci- 
pline. His  wider  knowledge  of  men  and  things, 
acquired  by  contact  with  the  great  world,  had 
shown  him  a  certain  lack  in  himself  of  the 
power  of  close  and  sustained  reasoning.  To 
remedy  this  defect,  he  applied  himself,  after 
his  return  from  Congress,  to  such  works  upon 
logic  and  mathematics  as  he  fancied  would 
Vol.  XXXIII.— 6q. 
be  serviceable.  Devoting  himself  with 
dogged  energy  to  the  task  in  hand,  he 
soon  learned  by  heart  six  books  of  the 
propositions  of  Euclid,  and  he  retained 
through  life  an  intimate  knowledge  of 
the  principles  they  contain. 
The  outward  form  and  fashion  of  ev- 
ery institution  change  rapidly  in  grow- 
ing communities  like  ourWestern  States, 
and  the  practice  of  the  law  had  already 
assumed  a  very  different  degree  of  dig- 
nity and  formality  from  that  which  it 
presented    only   twenty   years   before. 
The  lawyers  in  hunting-shirts  and  moc- 
casins had  long  since  passed  away  ;  so 
had  the  judges  who  apologized  to  the 
criminals    that    they    sentenced,    and 
charged  them  "  to  let  their  friends  on 
Bear  Creek  understand  it  was  the  law 
and  jury  who  were  responsible."  Even 
the  easy  familiarity  of  a  later  date  would 
no  longer  be  tolerated.    No  successor 
of  Judge  Douglas  had  been  known  to 
follow  his  example  by  coming  down 
from  the  bench,  taking  a  seat  in  the 
lap  of  a  friend,  throwing  an  arm  around 
his  neck,  and  in  that  intimate  attitude 
discussing,  coram  publico,  whatever  in- 
terested him.*     David  Davis  —  after- 
wards of  the  Supreme  Court  and  of  the 
Senate  —  was  for  many  years  the  pre- 
siding judge  of  this  circuit,  and  neither 
under  him  nor  his  predecessor,  S.  H. 
Treat,  was  any  lapse  of  dignity  or  of 
propriety  possible.  Still  there  was  much 
less  of  form  and  ceremony  insisted  upon 
than  is  considered  proper  and  necessary 
in  older  communities.   The  bar  in  great 
measure  was  composed  of  the  same 
men  who  used  to  follow  the  circuit  on 
horseback,  over  roads   impossible   to 
wheels,  with  their  scanty  wardrobes, 
their  law-books,  and  their  documents 
crowding  each  other  in  their  leather  saddle- 
bags.  The  improvement  of  roads  which  made 
carriages  a  possibility  had   effected   a   great 
change,  and  the  coming  of  the  railway  had 
completed  the  sudden   development  of  the 
manners  and  customs  of  the  modernized  com- 
munity.   But  they  could  not  all  at  once  take 
from  the  bar  of  the  Eighth  Circuit  its  raci- 
ness  and  its  individuality.   The  men  who  had 
lived  in  log-cabins,  who  had  hunted  their  way 
through  untrodden  woods  and  prairies,  who 
had  thought  as  much  about  the  chances  of 
swimming  over  swollen  fords  as  of  their  cases, 
who  had  passed  their  nights — a  half-dozen 
together — on  the  floors  of  wayside  hostelries, 
could  never  be   precisely  the   same   sort   of 
*  I.  N.  Arnold,  in  "  History  of  Sangamon  County," 
p.  94.
COv 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
k. ,  
^ 
DAVID  DAVIS.   (1862-66.)   (AFTER  A  PHOTOGRAPH  BY  BRADY.) 
practitioners  as  the  smug  barristers  of  a  more 
conventional  age  and  place.  But  they  were 
not  deficient  in  ability,  in  learning,  or  in  that 
most  valuable  faculty  which  enables  really  in- 
telligent men  to  get  their  bearings  and  sus- 
tain themselves  in  every  sphere  of  life  to 
which  they  may  be  called.  Some  of  these  very 
colleagues  of  Lincoln  at  the  Springfield  bar 
have  sat  in  Cabinets,  have  held  their  own  on 
the  floor  of  the  Senate,  have  led  armies  in  the 
field,  have  governed  States,  and  all  with  a  quiet 
self-reliance  which  was  as  far  as  possible  re- 
moved from  either  undue  arrogance  or  undue 
modesty.* 
Among  these  able  and  energetic  men  Lin- 
coln assumed  and  held  the  first  rank.  This  is 
a  statement  which  ought  not  to  be  made  with- 
out authority,  and  rather  than  give  the  com- 
mon repute  of  the  circuit,  we  prefer  to  cite  the 
opinion  of  those  lawyers  of  Illinois  who  are 
entitled  to  speak  as  to  this  matter,  both  by 
the  weight  of  their  personal  and  professional 
character  and  by  their  eminent  official  stand- 
ing among  the  jurists  of  our  time.  We  shall 
quote  rather  fully  from  addresses  delivered  by 
Justice  David  Davis,  of  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States,  and  by  Judge  Drummond, 
the  United  States  District  Judge  for  Illinois. 
Judge  Davis  says: 
"  I  enjoyed  for  over  twenty  years  the  personal  friend- 
ship of  Mr.  Lincoln.  We  were  admitted  to  the  bar 
about  the  same  time  and  traveled  for  many  years  what 
is  known  in  Illinois  as  the  Eighth  Judicial  Circuit.  In 
1848,  when  I  first  went  on  the  bench,  the  circuit  em- 
braced fourteen  counties,  and  Mr.  Lincoln  went  with 
the  court  to  every  county.  Railroads  were  not  then  in 
use,  and  our  mode  of  travel  was  either  on  horseback 
or  in  buggies. 
"  This  simple  life  he  loved,  preferring  it  to  the  prac- 
tice of  the  law  in  a  city,  where,  although  the  remunera- 
tion would  be  greater,  the  opportunity  would  be  less 
for  mixing  with  the  great  body  of  the  people,  who  loved 
*  A  few  of  the  lawyers  who  practiced  with  Lincoln,     Shields,  Logan  Stuart,  Baker,  Treat,  Bledsoe,  Brown- 
and  have  held  the  highest  official  positions,  are  Douglas,     ing,  Hardin,  Trumbull,  McClernand,  etc.
ABRAHAM   /JNCO/.N. 
539 
ENGRAVED  BY  T.  JOHNSON. 
FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH  BY  BRADY. 
MARTIN     VAN     BUREN,    PRESIDEN' 
him,  and  whom  he  loved.  Mr.  Lincoln  was  transferred 
from  the  bar  of  that  circuit  to  the  office  of  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States,  having  been  without  official 
position  since  he  left  Congress  in  1849.  In  all  the 
elements  that  constitute  the  great  lawyer  he  had  few 
equals.  He  was  great  both  at  nisi  prius  and  before 
an  appellate  tribunal.  He  seized  the  strong  points  of 
a  cause,  and  presented  them  with  clearness  and  great 
compactness.  His  mind  was  logical  and  direct,  and 
he  did  not  indulge  in  extraneous  discussion.  General- 
ities and  platitudes  had  no  charms  for  him.  An  unfail- 
ing vein  of  humor  never  deserted  him;  and  he  was 
able  to  claim  the  attention  of  court  and  jury,  when  the 
cause  was  the  most  uninteresting,  by  the  appropriate- 
ness of  his  anecdotes. 
"  His  power  of  comparison  was  large,  and  he  rarely 
failed  in  a  legal  discussion  to  use  that  mode  of  reason- 
ing. The  framework  of  his  mental  and  moral  being 
was  honesty,  and  a  wrong  cause  was  poorly  defended 
by  him.  The  ability  which  some  eminent  lawyers 
possess,  of  explaining  away  the  bad  points  of  a  cause 
by  ingenious  sophistry,  was  denied  him.  In  order  to 
bring  into  full  activity  his  great  powers,  it  was  neces- 
sary that  he  should  be  convinced  of  the  right  and 
justice  of  the  matter  which  he  advocated.  When  so 
convinced,  whether  the  cause  was  great  or  small,  he 
was  usually  successful.  He  read  law-books  but  little, 
except  when  the  cause  in  hand  made  it  necessary ; 
yet  he  was  usually  self-reliant,  depending  on  his  own 
resources,  and  rarely  consulting  his  brother  lawyers,
540 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 
either  on  the  management  o(  his  ease  or  on  the  legal 
questions  involved. 
••  Mr.  Lincoln  was  the  fairest  and  most  accommodat- 
ing of  practitioners,  granting  all  favors  which  were 
consistent  with  his  duty  to  his  client,  and  rarely  avail- 
ing himself  of  an  unwary  oversight  of  his  adversary. 
11  He  hated  wrong  and  oppression  everywhere,  and 
many  a  man  whose  fraudulent  conduct  was  undergo- 
ing review  in  a  court  of  justice  has  writhed  under  his 
terrific  indignation  and  rebukes.    lie  was   the  most 
COLONEL  W.  \V.  SEATON.   (AFTER  A  PHOTOGRAPH  BY  BRADY.) 
simple  and  unostentatious  of  men  in  his  habits,  hav- 
ing few  wants,  and  those  easily  supplied.  To  his  honor 
be  it  said  that  he  never  took  from  a  client,  even  when 
his  cause  was  gained,  more  than  he  thought  the  ser- 
vices were  worth  and  the  client  could  reasonably  afford 
to  pay.  The  people  where  he  practiced  law  were  not 
rich,  and  his  charges  wrere  always  small.  When  he 
was  elected  President,  I  question  whether  there  was  a 
lawyer  in  the  circuit,  who  had  been  at  the  bar  so  long 
a  time,  whose  means  were  not  larger.  It  did  not  seem 
to  be  one  of  the  purposes  of  his  life  to  accumulate  a 
fortune.  In  fact,  outside  of  his  profession,  he  had  no 
knowledge  of  the  way  to  make  money,  and  he  never 
even  attempted  it. 
"  Mr.  Lincoln  was  loved  by  his  brethren  of  the  bar, 
and  no  body  of  men  will  grieve  more  at  his  death,  or 
pay  more  sincere  tributes  to  his  memory.  His  pres- 
ence on  the  circuit  was  watched  for  with  interest,  and 
never  failed  to  produce  joy  or  hilarity.  When  cas- 
ually absent,  the  spirits  of  both  bar  and  people  were 
depressed.  He  was  not  fond  of  litigation,  and  would 
compromise  a  lawsuit  whenever  practicable." 
No  clearer  or  more  authoritative  statement 
of  Lincoln's  rank  as  a  lawyer  can  ever  be 
made  than  is  found  in  these  brief  sentences, 
in  which  the  warmth  of  personal  affection 
is  not  permitted  to  disturb  the  measured  ap- 
preciation, the  habitual  reserve  of  the  emi- 
nent jurist.  But,  as  it  may  be  objected 
that  the  friendship  which  united  Davis  and 
Lincoln  rendered  the  one  incapable  of  a  just 
judgment  upon  the  merits  of  the  other,  we 
will  also  give  an  extract  from  the  address 
delivered  in  Chicago  by  one  of  the  ablest  and 
most  impartial  lawyers  who  have  ever  honored 
the  bar  and  the  bench  in  the  West.  Judge 
Drummond  says : 
"  With  a  probity  of  character  known  to  all,  with  an 
intuitive  insight  into  the  human  heart,  with  a  clear- 
ness of  statement  which  was  in  itself  an  argument,  with 
uncommon  power  and  felicity  of  illustration, — 
often,  it  is  true,  of  a  plain  and  homely  kind, —  and 
with  that  sincerity  and  earnestness  of  manner 
which  carried  conviction,  he  was  perhaps  one  of 
the  most  successful  jury  lawyers  we  ever  had  in 
the  State.  He  always  tried  a  case  fairly  and  hon- 
estly. He  never  intentionally  misrepresented  the 
evidence  of  a  witness  nor  the  argument  of  an  op- 
ponent. He  met  both  squarely,  and  if  he  could 
not  explain  the  one  or  answer  the  other,  sub- 
stantially admitted  it.  He  never  misstated  the  law, 
according  to  his  own  intelligent  view  of  it.  Such 
was  the  transparent  candor  and  integrity  of  his 
nature,  that  he  could  not  well  or  strongly  argue 
a  side  or  a  cause  that  he  thought  wrong.  Of 
course  he  felt  it  his  duty  to  say  what  could  be 
said,  and  to  leave  the  decision  to  others  ;  but 
there  could  be  seen  in  such  cases  the  inward 
struggle  of  his  own  mind.  In  trying  a  case  he 
might  occasionally  dwell  too  long  upon,  or  give 
jk_  too  much  importance  to,  an  inconsiderable  point ; 
but  this  was  the  exception,  and  generally  he 
went  straight  to  the  citadel  of  the  cause  or  ques- 
tion, and  struck  home  there,  knowing  if  that  were 
won  the  outworks  would  necessarily  fall.  He 
could  hardly  be  called  very  learned  in  his  pro- 
fession, and  yet  he  rarely  tried  a  cause  without 
fully  understanding  the  law  applicable  to  it  ; 
and  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  he  was  one 
of  the  ablest  lawyers  I  have  ever  known.  If  he 
was  forcible  before  a  jury,  he  was  equally  so  with 
the  court.  He  detected  with  unerring  sagacity  the 
weak  points  of  an  opponent's  argument,  and  pressed 
his  own  views  with  overwhelming  strength.  His  ef- 
forts were  quite  unequal,  and  it  might  happen  that  he 
would  not,  on  some  occasions,  strike  one  as  at  all  re- 
markable. But  let  him  be  thoroughly  roused,  let 
him  feel  that  he  was  right,  and  that  some  principle 
was  involved  in  his  cause,  and  he  would  come  out 
with  an  earnestness  of  conviction,  a  power  of  argu- 
ment, a  wealth  of  illustration,  that  I  have  never  seen 
surpassed." 
This  is  nothing  less  than  the  portrait  of  a 
great  lawyer,  drawn  by  competent  hands,  with 
the  life-long  habit  of  conscientious  accuracy. 
If  we  chose  to  continue  we  could  fill  this 
volume  with  the  tributes  of  his  professional 
associates,  ranging  all  the  way  from  the  com- 
monplaces of  condolence  to  the  most  extrav- 
agant eulogy.  But  enough  has  been  quoted 
to  justify  the  tradition  which  Lincoln  left  be- 
hind him  at  the  bar  of  Illinois.  His  weak  as 
well  as  his  strong  qualities  have  been  indi- 
cated. He  never  learned  the  technicalities, 
what  some  would  call  the  tricks,  of  the  pro- 
fession. The  sleight  of  plea  and  demurrer, 
the  legerdemain  by  which  justice  is  balked 
and  a  weak  case  is  made  to  gain  an  unfair 
advantage,  was  too  subtle  and  shifty  for  his 
strong  and  straightforward  intelligence.  He 
met  these  manoeuvres  sufficiently  well,  when
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
541 
ENGRAVED  BY  R.  G.  TIETZE. 
AFTER   A    PHOTOGRAPH    BY    BRADY. 
JOSHUA    R.    GIDDINGS. 
practiced  by  others,  but  he  never  could  get  in  when  he  could  consistently  with  the  rules  of 
the  way  of  handling  them  for   himself.    On  his  profession.     He  would  often  persuade  a 
the   wrong   side  he  was    always    weak.    He  fair-minded  litigant  of  the  injustice  of  his  case 
knew   this   himself,  and  avoided  such  cases  and  induce  him  to  give  it  up.    His  partner,
542 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 
with    Judge    S.    C.    Parks, 
de-
(after  a   lithograph   by  m. 
Mr.  Herndon,  relates  a  speech  in  point* 
which  Lincoln  once  made  to  a  man  who  of- 
fered him  an  objectionable  case  :  "Yes,  there 
is  no  reasonable  doubt  but  that  I  can  gain  your 
case  for  you.  I  can  set  a  whole  neighborhood 
at  loggerheads ;  I  can  distress  a  widowed 
mother  and  her  six  fatherless  children,  and 
thereby  get  for  you  six  hundred  dollars,  which 
rightfully  belongs,  it  appears  to  me,  as  much 
to  them  as  it  does  to  you.  I  shall  not  take 
your  case,  but  I  will  give  a  little  advice  for 
nothing.  You  seem  a  sprightly,  energetic 
man.  I  would  advise  you  to  try  your  hand 
at  making  six  hundred  dollars  in  some  other 
way."  Sometimes,  after  he  had  entered  upon 
a  criminal  case,  the  conviction  that  his  client 
was  guilty  would  affect  him  with  a  sort  of 
panic.  On  one  occasion  he  turned  suddenly 
to  his  associate  and  said,  "  Swett,  the  man  is 
guilty;  you  defend  him,  I  can't,"  and  so  gave 
up  his  share  of  a  large  fee.  The  same  thing  hap- 
pened at  another  time  when  he  was  engaged, 
*  Lamon,  p.  317. 
t  As  a  specimen  of  these  stories  we  give  the  follow- 
ing, well  vouched  for,  as  apocrypha  generally  are : 
Lincoln  met  one  day  on  the  court-house  steps  a  young 
lawyer  who  had  lost  a  case  —  his  only  one  —  and 
looked  very  disconsolate.   "  What  has  become  of  your 
fending  a  man  accused  of  larceny. 
He  said,  "  If  you  can  say  any- 
thing for  the  man,  do  it,  I  can't ; 
if  I  attempt  it,  the  jury  will  see  I 
think  he  is  guilty,  and  convict  him." 
Once  he  was  prosecuting  a  civil  suit, 
in  the  course  of  which  evidence  was 
introduced  showing  that  his  client 
was  attempting  a  fraud.  Lincoln  rose 
and  went  to  his  hotel  in  deep  disgust. 
The  judge  sent  for  him  ;  he  refused 
to  come.  "  Tell  the  judge,"  he  said, 
"  my  hands  are  dirty  ;  I  came  over 
to  wash  them."  We  are  aware  that 
these  stories  detract  something  from 
the  character  of  the  lawyer;  but  this 
inflexible,  inconvenient,  and  fastidi- 
ous morality  was  to  be  of  vast  ser- 
vice hereafter  to  his  country  and  the 
world. 
The  Nemesis  which  waits  upon 
men  of  extraordinary  wit  or  humor 
has  not  neglected  Mr.  Lincoln,  and 
the  young  lawyers  of  Illinois,  who 
never  knew  him,  have  an  endless 
store  of  jokes  and  pleasantries  in 
his  name  ;  some  of  them  as  old  as 
Howleglass  or  Rabelais.f  But  the 
fact  is  that  with  all  his  stories  and 
jests,  his  frank  companionable  hu- 
mor, his  gift  of  easy  accessibility 
and  welcome,  he  was,  even  while 
he  traveled  the  Eighth  Circuit,  a 
man  of  grave  and  serious  temper  and  of  an 
unusual  innate  dignity  and  reserve.  He  had 
few  or  no  special  intimates,  and  there  was  a 
line  beyond  which  no  one  ever  thought  of 
passing.  Besides,  he  was  too  strong  a  man  in 
the  court-room  to  be  regarded  with  anything 
but  respect  in  a  community  in  which  legal 
ability  was  the  only  especial  mark  of  distinc- 
tion. Few  of  his  forensic  speeches  have  been 
preserved,  but  his  contemporaries  all  agree  as 
to  their  singular  ability  and  power.  He  seemed 
absolutely  at  home  in  a  court-room ;  his 
great  stature  did  not  encumber  him  there ;  it 
seemed  like  a  natural  symbol  of  superiority .  His 
bearing  and  gesticulation  had  no  awkward- 
ness about  them ;  they  were  simply  striking 
and  original.  He  assumed  at  the  start  a  frank 
and  friendly  relation  with  the  jury  which  was 
extremely  effective.  He  usually  began,  as  the 
phrase  ran,  by  "giving  away  his  case";  by 
allowing  to  the  opposite  side  every  possible 
advantage  that  they  could  honestly  and  justly 
case?"    Lincoln    asked.    "Gone  to  h   ,"  was  the 
gloomy  response.  "  Well,  don't  give  it  up,"  Lincoln 
rejoined  cheerfully ;  "  you  can  try  it  again  there  " —  a 
quip  which  has  been  attributed  to  many  wits  in  many 
ages,  and  will  doubtless  make  the  reputation  of  jesters 
yet  to  be. 
'RAUBEL.)