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.1 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.

2

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, Lin-' coln 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

the National Intelligencer and mayor of Washington, which gave some hope of success. But Southern Congressmen, fearing the bill as an entering wedge, won the mayor to their side, leaving Lincoln and Giddings unable even to bring their bill to a vote.

On the whole, Lincoln seems to have enjoyed his life in Congress, where he attracted notice by his quaint simplicity of manner, as when he was seen carrying books from the Library of the Supreme Court tied in a handkerchief slung over his shoulder. What marred his peace was the clamor of importunate office-seekers, which increased after the Whig victory until it became an annoyance, not without entanglements. The defeat of Judge Logan left the patronage of the district in his hand, and even after his term had expired he was often besought to use his influence to obtain, as he termed it, "a way to live without work.' Apparently he was more successful in obtaining office for others than for himself, owing, as Herndon explains, to a certain unconscious sense of superiority and pride which unfitted him to be a suitor for place. Having lost interest in the law, along with all hope of future political preferment, he tried to obtain the appointment as Commissioner of the General Land Office, but failed. This was a keen disappointment, after he had taken so active a part in the nomination and election of Taylor. He was, however, offered the Governorship of the new Territory of Oregon, and made a special trip to Washington to discuss the subject. He had half a mind to accept, but his wife emphatically vetoed the suggestion, and, as Herndon adds, "that always settled it with Lincoln." Years later he was reminded that had he gone to Oregon, he might have come back as Senator, but never as President. "Yes, you are probably right," he replied, and then in a musing, dreamy tone, as if talking to himself, he added: "I have all my life been a fatalist. What is to be will be, or rather, I have found all my life as Hamlet says:

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough hew them how we will.'"'1

1 Abraham Lincoln, by I. N. Arnold, p. 81 (1884).