manners were so affable and delightful that "he could charm the birds off the trees." But, if Lincoln was pleased with Van Buren, the ex-President was no less gratified by his meeting with the young Whig leader of central Illinois. Being weather-bound at a small town not far from Springfield, the ex-President was forced to remain overnight. Some of his Springfield friends, hearing of Mr. Van Buren's plight, made up a party, and taking with them some refreshments, left Springfield for the village aforementioned. Knowing Lincoln's good-nature, as well as his powers of entertaining, they besought his assistance to lighten the weary hours of the ex-President's stay at the wretched inn, where he was detained. Lincoln, always ready to do a good turn, went out with the party, and entertained the wayfarers far into the night with Western anecdotes, funny stories, and graphic descriptions of wild life on the frontier. Van Buren, delighted, said

the only drawback to his enjoyment was that his sides were sore for a week thereafter, from laughing at Lincoln's stories."

Lincoln had long desired to go to Congress; but it so happened that his dearest friends, also Whigs, were equally anxious to go from the Sangamon district. The district was strongly Whig, and a nomination was almost an election. But Lincoln, always preferring his friend before himself, loyally supported each of his most intimate associates, and thought his to be the better claim. On one occasion, having been a candidate for the nomination to Congress, Lincoln was elected as a delegate to the nominating convention, and was instructed to vote for E D. Baker. Of this predicament he good-naturedly said: "I shall be fixed a good deal like the fellow who is made groomsman to

the man who cut him out and is marrying his girl." At this time, 1842, John J. Hardin was nominated and elected. He was one of Lincoln's truest friends; he was subsequently killed at the battle of Buena Vista, during the Mexican War.

CHAPTER VIII

IT

THE RISING POLITICIAN

T was said of Lincoln that he was a born politician and that, as a political prophet, he made few mistakes. But he was deeply and overwhelmingly disappointed, in 1844, when Henry Clay was defeated for the presidency by James K. Polk of Tennessee. The defeat was unexpected, and its very unexpectedness made it harder to bear. Lincoln was accustomed to refer to the defeat of Clay as one of his keenest personal sorrows.

It is very likely, however, that the edge of this grief was made less sharp by Clay's own conduct. In 1846, Lincoln, learning that Clay was to speak in Lexington, Kentucky, made a pilgrimage to that place in order to hear the voice, grasp the hand, and look in the magnetic eyes of his adored leader. Clay's speech was on the subject of colonizing Africa with emancipated American slaves, an expedient then attracting much attention as a possible solution of the problem of American slavery. Clay's speech, on this occasion, was written out and was read in a cold manner. Lincoln, who had come so far to hear what was a very commonplace address, was disappointed. Nevertheless, when the meeting was dissolved, he sought the much-wished-for introduction to Clay, and was invited

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to Ashland, the seat of the Clay family. But more disillusion was in store for him. Clay was proud, distant, and haughty in his manner, and he evidently regarded Lincoln as a clodhopper, a rude backwoodsman, whose personal affection for "the great Whig chief" must be rewarded by a few curt words of welcome. He was conceited in himself, impatient of suggestions or advice from others, self-sufficient. Lincoln was humble, conscious of his own shortcomings, and his invariable habit was to defer to others. Clay accepted the deference offered him as his due, while Lincoln felt that his hero-worship was an egregious blunder. He went back to Springfield, as he afterwards expressed it, "with the enthusiasm all oozed out of him." The man who was to be President had learned a lesson from him who never could be President.

In 1846, Lincoln was nominated for Congress, and one object of his ambition was within reach. His competitor on the Democratic ticket was Peter Cartwright, a backwoods preacher and exhorter, famous in his time for the vigor with which he pursued every topic to which he addressed himself. It was thought that Cartwright would poll a very much larger vote than that usually given to a Democratic candidate in the district, and possibly might be elected. But Lincoln astonished his opponents by the fulness of his vote. His majority over Cartwright was sixteen hundred and eleven, considerably more than any other Whig candidate had a right to expect.

When Lincoln took the stump " for himself in the canvass, he had a plenty of material for his addresses to the people. During the preceding winter, the new State of Texas had been admitted to the Union, a measure to which Lincoln, and other Whigs were bitterly

opposed. Texas had first seceded from Mexico, and, after a sharp war, had gained something that was akin to independence. At least, the war was temporarily suspended, according to Mexican notions of the position of affairs, and the new State proposed to join the family of the United States. After various expedients had been tried without success, the Democratic administration finally did secure the annexation of Texas. This was done in order that a new slave State might be added to the Union. The increase of population in the North, so much more rapid than it was in the South, made it necessary that something should be done to maintain the political strength of the slave States.

The work of achieving the independence of Texas was accomplished largely by Americans, and with no other purpose than to bring the young republic into the Union. The resulting war and a reduction of the tariff, for which the Democrats were responsible, gave the Whigs ammunition for their campaign; and Lincoln used it vigorously in his canvass.

The Congress to which Lincoln was elected was the Thirtieth, and Lincoln took his seat in it December 6, 1847. He was very much at home there, for he had then been repeatedly a member of the State Legislature, had "stumped" Illinois from one end to the other, had made a great many public speeches, had met all the leading men of that region, and had been accustomed to hold his own in debate. He was familiar with all the great questions, had debated them before the people, and had so studied the history of his country that he knew all that had happened to lead up to the crisis in which the republic then found itself—with a foreign war on its hands and a new State in the Union -the admission of which a great many public men, in