to think this is exceedingly degrading. Well, as his faith is, so be it unto him. But can he remember no other military coat-tail, under which a certain other party have been sheltering for near a quarter of a century? Has he no acquaintance with the ample military coat-tail of General Jackson? Yes, sir, that coat-tail was not only used for General Jackson himself, but has been clung to with the grip of death by every Democratic candidate since. Mr. Polk himself was "Young Hickory," "Little Hickory," or something so; and even now your campaign paper here is proclaiming that Cass and Butler are of the "Hickory stripe." No, sir, you dare not give it up. Like a horde of hungry ticks, you have stuck to the tail of the Hermitage lion to the end of his life; and you are still sticking to it, and drawing a loathsome sustenance from it, after he is dead. A fellow once advertised that he had made a discovery by which he could make a new man out of an old one and have enough of the stuff left to make a little yellow dog. Just such a discovery has General Jackson's popularity been to you. You not only twice made Presidents of him out of it, but you have enough of the stuff left to make Presidents of several comparatively small men since; and it is your chief reliance now to make still another.

Mr. Speaker, old horses and coat-tails, or tails of any sort, are not such figures of speech as I would be the first to introduce into discussion here; but as the gentleman from Georgia has thought fit to introduce them, he and you are welcome to all you have made or can make by them. If you have any more old horses, trot them out; any more tails, just cock them and come at us. By the way, Mr. Speaker, did you know I am a military hero? Yes, sir, in the days of the Black Hawk war I fought, bled, and came away. Speaking of General Cass's career, reminds me of my own. I was not at Stillman's defeat, but I was about as near it as Cass was to Hull's surrender; and, like him, I saw the place very soon afterward. It is quite certain I did not break my sword, for I had none to break, but I bent my musket pretty badly on one occasion. If Cass broke his sword, the idea is, he broke it in desperation; I bent my musket by accident. If General Cass went in advance of me picking whortleberries, I guess I surpassed him in charges upon wild onions. If he saw any live fighting Indians, it was more than I did, but I had a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes; and, al

though I never fainted from loss of blood, I can truly say that I was often very hungry.

Such a harangue, waggish at times almost to the point of buffoonery, is not edifying; still less so when read alongside his solemn, seer-like words ten years later; but it shows us the politician out of which the statesman was made. Some have thought that they could detect a tone of inner protest underneath the exaggerated humor of this speech, as of one who felt the dissonance of his position; but this is the error, into which so many have fallen, of reading his early years in the light of after time. No; it is plain that Lincoln had followed his party into a state of discord with himself, and with his true destiny, of which he was as yet hardly aware, though he began to realize it when he went campaigning for Taylor in New England after Congress had adjourned. For the sentiment in New England with regard to the Mexican war, and the issues involved in it, as vivified by Lowell in "The Bigelow Papers," required something more than burlesque to convince it.

Lincoln spoke at Worcester, Lowell, Dedham, Roxbury, Chelsea, Cambridge, Boston, and other cities, where his inimitable manner, his sagacious party pleas, and his homely humor delighted large audiences. Such reports of his speeches as remain show that he did not at any time rise above mere partisanship, and the Whig press gave him credit for winning back to the fold many who had gone off after "the Free-Soil fizzle." At Worcester, amidst pronounced defection from the party, he argued at length, according to the Boston Advertiser, against the charge that Taylor had no political princi

1 One of the best studies of the making of Lincoln, tracing the union in him of the Folk-soul and World-spirit, is Abraham Lincoln, by D. J. Snider (1908). It is an interpretation in Biography," as the subtitle indicates, accurate as to fact, often fanciful in inference, but always suggestive of the saying of Socrates, who likened man to a tree whose roots run up into the unseen. Only, as this author sees, in the case of Lincoln the roots ran both ways, down into the rough soil of the early West, and up into that mystical realm whence great souls draw their strength and charm. Hence a medley of haunting beauties and gnarled angularities.

ples; justified the Whigs for putting forth no platform; held the Free-Soil position with regard to the restriction of slavery to be that of the Whigs-a passage he would hardly have risked before the Whig Club at Washington, of which Stephens, Preston, and Toombs were members; ridiculed the single plank in the Free-Soil platform, which reminded him of the Yankee peddler, who, in offering for sale a single pair of pantaloons, described them as "large enough for any man, and small enough for any boy;" criticised the followers of Van Buren for helping to elect Cass, and to their plea for the right and duty of acting independently, "leaving the consequences with God," opposed the doctrine- which he held to the end of his life — that "when divine or human law does not clearly point out what is our duty, it must be found only by intelligent judgment, which takes account of the results of action." Whig papers spoke of the speech as masterly and convincing," while the Free-Soil report described it as "a pretty tedious affair."

As he went further into New England, however, Lincoln saw the real spirit and nature of the Free-Soil protest. After hearing Governor Seward speak in Tremont Temple, Boston, when they were together at the hotel, he said: "I have been thinking about what you said in your speech. I reckon you are right. We have got to deal with this slavery question, and got to give more attention to it hereafter than we have been doing." On the fundamental issue of the injustice and bad policy of slavery he had never wavered, but beyond the dream of gradual emancipation he saw no way of dealing with it, except to push it back into a corner and let it die. At Washington the question had not seemed imminent or urgent, but in New England it loomed like an ominous shadow upon the

1

1 Life of Wm. H. Seward, by F. W. Seward, Vol. II, p. 80 (1891). Once in his law practice Lincoln had met the slavery question in a rather embarrassing manner, having been retained by a slave-owner. For a history of this case, showing his half-heartedness in pleading a cause against his conscience, see an article entitled "Lincoln and the Maston Negroes," by Jesse W. Weik, in the Arena, April, 1897. Mr. Herndon contributed to the fund provided to transport the negroes to Liberia.

horizon, portentous of impending storm, and the gathering clouds subdued his later speeches to a more serious tone.

So meditating, Lincoln started home late in September, stopping at Albany where, in company with Thurlow Weed, he called on Millard Fillmore; and at Niagara Falls-concerning which he made notes for a popular lecture.1 At home he found things in a bad way politically, as Herndon had duly forewarned him. The Democrats, determined to capture the district by fair means or foul, were using his opposition to the Mexican war to defeat Judge Logan, who was a candidate for his seat Lincoln having stood aside for Logan according to agreement. The story was that Lincoln, by voting for the Ashmun amendment to the Supply Bill, had refused to support the army in the field, thereby betraying his country. Of course it was false; but among a people who would rather be warlike than right it was working havoc, and so industriously was it circulated that it lived to confront him in his debates with Douglas ten years later though for Douglas, who knew better, there was no excuse for such tactics. Thus, while not a candidate for re-election, Lincoln was forced to defend his record in behalf of Judge Logan; and the result showed that he could have had a second term had he sought it. The Whigs carried the district by a decided majority, the defeat of Logan being due chiefly to his own unpopularity, and not, as has been so often stated, to the position of Lin1 Like all travelers Lincoln was impressed by that supendous spectacle, as his notes show; but his comment to Herndon betrayed no more susceptibility to natural grandeur than did Walt Whitman's record of his visit to the scene the same year. When asked what most impressed him when he stood before the Falls, he said: "The thing that struck me most forcibly when I saw the Falls, was, where in the world did all that water come from?" To Herndon, who was an enthusiastic lover of nature in all her moods, this reply was amazing beyond words.

2 Of such an agreement there is little doubt; the letters of Lincoln show it. Besides, in giving a reason why Lincoln was not a candidate for re-election, J. L. Scripps, his first biographer, says that "this was determined upon and publicly declared before he went to Washington, in accordance with an understanding among leading Whigs in the district." New York Tribune Tracts, No. 6, p. 18 (1860).

coln on the Mexican war. Mr. Herndon took little part in the campaign, his sympathies being with the Free-Soil party, but for the sake of his partner he remained a loyal Whig.

While the election of Taylor inspired hopes that the extension of slavery might be checked, as a fact it was the beginning of that re-alignment of forces amidst which, as a penalty for having evaded the supreme question of the age, the Whig party went to pieces. Returning to Washington, Lincoln took a less conspicuous part in the discussions than in the former session; but he stood consistently for a protective tariff, for the right of Congress to prohibit slavery in the Territories, and for every measure looking toward the gradual emancipation of the slaves which provided compensation to their owners. The Wilmot Proviso had passed the House in the preceding Congress, and had been killed in the Senate. But it reappeared in various shapes, and Lincoln afterwards said that he voted for it in one form or another" about fortytwo times "a reckoning not quite accurate mathematically, but sufficiently expressive of loyalty. Not liking its form, he voted against the Gott resolution asking the Committee for the District of Columbia to report a bill prohibiting the slave trade in the District. When it again came before the House, he offered a measure as a substitute, setting forth what in his view was just and practicable at that time.

This bill forbade the bringing of slaves into the District, except as household servants of government officials who were citizens of Slave States, or selling them to be taken out of the District. It provided that children of slave mothers born after 1850 should be freed, subject to a temporary apprenticeship, and the payment of their full cash value to the owners by the government; fugitive slaves escaping from Washington and Georgetown were to be returned; and, finally, the whole measure was to be submitted to popular vote in the District. So staunch an Abolitionist as Joshua R. Giddings supported this measure, thinking it " as good a bill as we can get at this time," and on the further ground that it would save a few slaves from the Southern market. Lincoln actually secured a promise of aid from W. W. Seaton, editor of