CHAPTER XI.

An Honest Plea-A Whig Leader-Extending the National Area-The Mexican War-The Wilmot Proviso A New Political Era.

MR. LINCOLN had been admitted to practice in the Circuit Court of the United States on December 3d, 1839, and business of a better and more profitable grade than formerly was coming to him as his professional capacities earned recognition. The character and name he was winning finds a capital illustration in his first plea before that court. He arose when his case was called, and said:

"This is the first case I have ever had in this court, and I have therefore examined it with great care. As the court will perceive by looking at the abstract of the record, the only question in this case is one of authority. I have not been able to find any authority sustaining my side of the case, but I have found several cases directly in point on the other side. I will now give these cases and then submit the case."

Ready always to give a client the utmost help in his power within the boundaries of law and right, he was almost powerless unless these were manifestly with him. No tempting retainer could induce him to become the agent of injustice or oppression, and any statement made by him came soon to have the weight of testimony with the bench and the jury. His friend and biographer, Lamon, tells

of one criminal for whom, after taking up the case, Lincoln-refused to appear, remarking to his associates: "If you can say anything for him, do it. I can't; if I attempt, the jury will see that I think he is guilty and convict him, of course."

The general public had known no more of his fit of melancholy than that he had been half sick with something or other-maybe it was chills—for a while. General Shields and his seconds took care, after a most ridiculous and wordy fashion, to bring all the laugh about the broadsword duel upon themselves, and it did the challenged man no harm whatever. By his marriage with Mary Todd he had become settled in life and had been admitted more fully than before as a member of the very peculiar social and political clique which clustered around the State Capitol, and which held in its hands the control of both parties in Illinois during almost a generation. There are subtle gradations in such matters, and the rise of Lincoln had been very rapid. The Whig Party contained a number of able and brilliant men, but in 1841-42, when searching for an available candidate for governor, so much was said about Lincoln that it was necessary for him to publish the personal and professional reasons why he would not take the nomination or the office itself. He preferred the unobtrusive place of hard work which he held as a managing member of the State Central Committee. In 1843-44 he would willingly have received the district nomination for Congressman, but there were several other Whig politicians eagerly grasping for it, and General

John J. Hardin, of Morgan County, won the prize. Mr. Lincoln's party rank was pointedly acknowledged, nevertheless, by his being once more named as Presidential elector, intrusted more than any other man with the State canvass.

Since the first election of George Washington, no Presidential election has exceeded in importance that of 1844, of which its one equal, that of 1860, was a direct consequence. The platforms of the Whig and Democratic parties set forth in due form the opposite views of the tariff, national bank, internal improvement, and other questions over which previous contests had been waged, but all of these were subordinated to another and greater issue.

The ordinance of 1787, shutting out slavery from the great Northwestern Territory, was supposed to have shut out the slavery question from American politics. It did not break in, offensively, until Missouri presented herself for admission as a slave State, and then the Missouri Compromise of 1820, under which she was admitted, was confidently declared to have once more shut out the black peril forever.

As the years went by, American emigrants, many of them carrying slaves with them, contrary to Mexican law, poured steadily into the imperfectly defined Mexican territory known as Texas. They did so with a well-understood purpose of wresting the entire region from the weak hands of the disordered semi-republic which nominally owned it. They intended, from the first, to set up for themselves as soon as they should become strong enough,

and then to add all that land and more to the United States for proper division into slave-holding commonwealths. Up to a certain line they succeeded admirably. They built up a new State, declared its independence, drove out Mexican armies after much heroic fighting, few against many, and all the while they were openly sympathized with and aided by the States-Rights faction of the Democratic Party, and by not a few old-time Whigs who were in favor of the territorial expansion of the Republic. There were, on the other hand, men who, like John Quincy Adams, at first favored expansion, and then who opposed it on discovering that it included the indefinite extension of the area of slavery.

In the Presidential campaign of 1840 neither of the parties was required to take any position with reference to the annexation of Texas. It was understood that an important faction of the Democratic Party opposed it as involving a war with Mexico, and President Martin Van Buren had formulated this objection in his official response to a Texan envoy. Whigs like Daniel Webster were, on the other hand, believed, perhaps erroneously, to favor such a territorial extension.

The administration of President Tyler, ceasing to be Whig at all, took upon itself the work of preparing the way for annexation, and the Whig Party in Congress fought against it as an Administration

measure.

There had been a nominal equality preserved in the number of free and slave States, respectively, securing equal votes upon any sectional division in

the United States Senate, but upon any question affecting slavery the equilibrium vanished, for that body did not contain a corporal's guard of Northern men confessing positive anti-slavery sentiments.

The House of Representatives, however, with a membership based upon population, was yearly becoming more and more prophetic of political peril, so far as any equality of the sections might be concerned. Pro-slavery advocates were fairly justified in declaring that the free States threatened shortly to control the purse and power of the nation absolutely. The South was in a minority, and it must have more States, or there was no telling what might come to pass.

Slowly at first, and then with an increasing enthusiasm, the Democratic Party declared itself the champion of the annexation of Texas, and in like manner the Whig Party argued itself into a determined opposition of that measure. Both parties for a while refused to acknowledge that the real question placed before the people was this: "Shall Texas and all the land west of it to the Pacific be annexed, stolen, or purchased, and shall the question of its future condition as free or slave territory come with it? Shall we or shall we not provide in this way for the ultimate abolition of human bondage in the United States?"

The Democrats nominated James K. Polk, of Tennessee, and George M. Dallas, of Pennsylvania, with a vigorous annexation platform. The Whigs nominated Henry Clay, of Kentucky, and Theodore Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, upon a platform de

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