of Illinois, and he urged the passage of the bill with a fair degree of energy, but the near approach of the end of the session and the pressure of other business prevented its reaching a final vote. Had it done so, the bill would probably have passed, and the anti-slavery barrier at the Missouri western border would have been made stronger than ever. As it was, the entire matter of Nebraska territorial organization went over to the next Congress. During all the long months of 1853 the political future involved in the organic law of the yet unpeopled region underwent a careful discussion at the hands of thoughtful politicians at the North and at the South, but so firmly established were the compromises supposed to be that when the Thirty-second Congress assembled, it was mentally prepared for precisely such a bill as Senator Douglas introduced on January 4th, 1854. He accompanied it with a long report explaining its provisions and averring that it in no manner disturbed the compromises of 1850. If this bill had passed it would have left the gate closed as before, subject only to a few doubts and questions of interpretation in the minds of the men most anxious to have it opened. The debates upon that bill, the caucuses held, and the agreements made relating to it are interesting studies in political history, but do not require narration here. They resulted in the preparation, by Senator Douglas and the party chiefs who co-operated with him, of yet a third bill, dividing the area into two new Territories, Kansas and Nebraska, and practically repealing the Missouri Compromise by declaring it

inoperative. It was introduced on January 23d, 1854. In an instant the floodgates of slavery agitation were thrown open, and the very terms of the bill itself provided for a hand-to-hand struggle between the friends and foes of the "peculiar institution" upon the soil of Kansas. In his talk with Herndon, in 1850, Mr. Lincoln had asked: “What is to be done? Is anything to be done? Who can do anything? And how is it to be done?" It might almost be said that his old political adversary and rival had now given him an explanatory answer.

confess any interest in the future. The Democratic candidates, Cass and Butler, were as conservative as Mr. Fillmore himself. It is true that throughout the North candidates for Congress found themselves compelled to evade or to answer disagreeable questions relating to the Wilmot Proviso and slavery extension, but the Whig Party, as a whole, disclaimed responsibility for anything but the defeat of Santa Anna. The Democratic Party, at its National Convention and afterward, said and did just enough to enable Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams to rally the New York Free-soilers, run an independent ticket, and so turn over the electoral votes of that State to General Taylor and elect him. Without them he would have been defeated. With their associates in other States and the Wilmot Proviso Whigs, they formed the nucleus of what became, only a few years later, the Republican Party east of the Alleghany Mountains.

Mr. Lincoln entered the Presidential canvass with energy. On June 20th he addressed the House upon the subject of internal improvements, and he made his first campaign speech upon the floor of Congress, July 27th, 1848, before setting out upon an electioneering tour of New York and New England. When at Albany he formed slight acquaintances with Millard Fillmore and Thurlow Weed. Both were to be remarkably renewed in later years. Up to that time Mr. Lincoln's acquaintance with the people of the Middle and Eastern States had been made only through their emigrants to the West, and he now had an opportunity for studying

them at home. Before the campaign was over he was again in Illinois, adding materially to his reputation as a speaker, but no amount of Whig eloquence could prevent the vote of that State from being given to Cass and Butler.

The second session of the Thirtieth Congress began in December, 1848. There had been some changes in its membership, and more were indicated, but the greatest change of all made itself manifest because the campaign was over. The Mexican War and its management no longer furnished a cloak for the real issue over which the old parties were to break in pieces and new parties were to form. The question of slavery extension came to the front at once, with the first legislative effort to provide for the organization of the vast territories acquired from Mexico by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the return of peace. The session was to terminate on March 4th following, and there was little possibility of doing more than open the way for the great debates and measures, the compromises of 1850 included, which were to make the succeeding Congress memorable in American political history. How distinctly Mr. Lincoln marked his position among anti-slavery men may be gathered from the facts that at the close of his term he was recorded as having voted forty-two times for the Wilmot Proviso, as it appeared and reappeared, and that early in January, 1849, he prepared and presented a bill for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

CHAPTER XIII.

Beginning Anew-A Tempting Offer-The Old Circuit Once More-Death of Thomas Lincoln-Standing of Mr. Lincoln at the Bar-The Abolitionists.

LETTERS written by Mr. Lincoln during his term in Congress deal very little with men and affairs around him in Washington. He kept no diary, and he was not yet of sufficient mark for other men to record the occurrences of his daily life. It is evident that he found his separation from home wearisome. He was conscious that as yet he had no great work upon his hands and that he was somehow out of place. Nevertheless, as the end drew near, it became necessary to look forward and decide upon his future course in life. He did not too strongly desire a second term, and there was good reason to expect defeat at the polls in case he should obtain a nomination. The Democratic Party was everywhere recovering from its reactionary defeat in 1848, and was beginning to take upon itself a new character. Both at the North and at the South it was absorbing more and more of the multitudes who instinctively shrink from changes, and to whom there is a semblance of evil in any assault upon a solid, time-honored institution, such, for instance, as the Constitutional right of slave owners to own slaves. The right to own them anywhere in the