attention and undivided thought—affairs which must often not only have tried him sorely, but sometimes made him feel that the burden they cast upon him was almost too heavy to bear.

CHAPTER VI.

THE HOUR AND THE MAN.

IN the preceding chapter I spoke more particularly of Lincoln's doings as a successful lawyer, though, as we saw, he had still continued to perform his legislative duties.

After being a Member for Sangamon County for eight years, however, he had begun to have higher ambition; and in the year 1846-having now ceased to attend the sittings of the Illinois State Househe received a greater honour than had yet been conferred upon him by being elected a Member of the United States Congress.*

* Congress is the term applied to the Representatives of the people, who form the Legislature of the United States. Congress comprises two Houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate consists of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, and elected for a period of six years. One-third of the Senators are elected every two years. The House of Representatives consists of one or more Members from each State-the number varying in proportion to the population-elected by all male citizens over twenty-one years of age. They sit for two years only. The Senator must have attained the age of thirty, and the Representative the age of twenty-five. Both Senators and Representatives are paid five thousand dollars annually, with travelling expenses.

Two years before-in 1844-Lincoln, who was a warm admirer of Henry Clay, a prominent statesman and then a candidate for the American Presidency, had canvassed, or "stumped," Illinois, in furtherance of his cause. He had made speeches nearly every day for some time on the various national subjects uppermost at the moment, particularly against the extension of the Slave trade, to which Clay had been ever opposed; and it was at this time that he met in debate Mr. Stephen A. Douglas, who had been for some years a fellow Member of the Illinois Legislature, and who was shortly to become-for a long period, but not for ever-his most powerful political enemy. Douglas-a man of great ability and of commanding influence with his own party-was not only working against those who were opposed to Slavery, but was even in favour of having the law altered so that the institution might be still further extended.

Mr. Clay was, to Lincoln's disappointment, unsuccessful in his candidature; but, as it proved, the result was all the better for Lincoln himself. For so popular had he become during his journeyings through the State on behalf of Clay, that when, in 1846, an election for Congress was to take place, he was brought forward as a candidate, and elected by a large majority. On the 6th of December he took his seat in the House of Representatives at Washington. Mr. Douglas was now returned as a Senator from Illinois, and it is a curious coincidence that

Lincoln was the tallest man in the Legislature and Douglas the smallest.

Not merely was his election another step upward, but it was the forerunner of others that were destined to affect the whole future of the United States. A war was at this period being carried on with Mexico, the latter country having resisted the invasion by the American army of Texas, a State which the former claimed as a portion of its own dominions. In what was really his first important speech in Congress, Lincoln denounced this war. He and his party were doubly opposed to it; first, because they could not countenance such annexation of territory, and next—a stronger reason still-because they knew full well that the main object of adding Texas to the Union was that the powerful slave-owners of the South -at whose instigation mainly the campaign had been undertaken-might use it for the furtherance of

Slavery.

In the speech referred to, Lincoln, by the force of his arguments, and the earnestness of his protests, dealt the Slave Party a severe blow; and it was through the determined attitude assumed by him and by those associated with him in the cause of Liberty that the compromise eventually made-which allowed only a portion of Texas to become slave territorywas effected.

Nor was it merely in connection with Texas that the Slave Party had been opposed by Lincoln. So

powerful had the latter become, and so resolved on the extension of their trade, that they had endeavoured, though their Representatives in Congress, to extend it to the Territories of the West-which, as new States, were now being added to the Union— where it was not legalised; and these attempts, too, were opposed by him, with the result that a compromise was arrived at by which the slave-owners' ends were only partially gained.

One feature of this temporary settlement of the question was a concession to the Slave party in the form of a measure which made it illegal to harbour slaves who had escaped to Free States, and caused the return of them to their owners to be compulsory. That this Bill was the cause of much suffering and hardship is unquestionable, and Mr. Charles G. Leland, the well-known American writer, in speaking of it says, "While great pains were taken to hunt down. and return slaves who had escaped to Free States, there was literally nothing done to return free coloured people who had been inveigled and carried by force to the South and there sold as slaves. It is believed that at one time hardly a day passed during which a free black was not thus entrapped from Pennsylvania." Mr. Leland adds that he "once knew a boy of purely white blood, but of dark complexion,

* A term used in the United States to signify large districts of the country not forming portions of any individual States, and not yet admitted into the Union, but having temporary governments appointed by the President and Congress.

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who narrowly escaped being kidnapped by downright violence that he might be 'sent South.""

In spite, however, of the fact that these compromises threatened, to some extent, to defeat their purpose, it was more than ever evident that the Slave party were by no means discouraged, and that they were bent on asserting, for their own ends, the strength which, year by year, they had been gathering; for though there was a lull in the storm for the moment, yet events soon proved that the slaveowners of the South, and the opponents of Slavery in the North, were on the eve of a life-and-death conflict.

At the end of his first term in Congress-during which he had taken part in many important debates besides those on the Slavery question, and rapidly risen in the esteem of his fellow-legislators-Abraham Lincoln determined not to seek re-election for a while; and once more we find him in Springfield. Here, he resumed the practice of his profession as a lawyer, and at the same time-having probably realised, when in Washington, his inferiority in certain respects to some of the accomplished statesmen with whom he came in contact there he again applied himself to further mental improvement. Perhaps, too, as one of his biographers suggests, "he clearly foresaw at this period the tremendous struggle which was approaching between North and South, and wished to prepare himself for some great part in it."