education, agricultural improvements, the relief of the struggling poor man, met his warm support. Questions of a national character seldom came up; but pro-slavery resolutions having been presented to the House, in 1837, Mr. Lincoln, in the following protest, recorded views, which show how early he formed his opinion and how little he ever swerved from it:

MARCH, 3, 1837.

The following protest was presented to the House, which was read and ordered to be spread on the journals, to wit:

"Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed both branches of the General Assembly, at its present session, the undersigned hereby protest against the passage of the same.

"They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy; but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils.

They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power, under the Constitution, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the different States.

"They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; but that the power ought not to be exercised, unless at the request of the people of said District.

"The difference between these opinions and those contained in the said resolutions, is their reason for entering this protest.

"(Signed)

"DAN. STONE,

"A. LINCOLN,

"Representatives from the County of Sangamon."

In 1837, he moved to Springfield, and became a partner of his friend, Mr. Stuart, the connection thus formed continuing till the election of Mr. Stuart to Congress, when Mr. Lincoln became the partner of Judge Logan, one of the leaders of the bar.

Mr. Lincoln's characteristics as an advocate were an earnestness and sincerity of manner, and a directness, conciseness, and strength of style; he appealed, at other times, to the weapons of good-humored ridicule as ably as to the heavier arms of forensic combat. He was strongest in civil cases, but in a criminal cause that enlisted his sympathy he was also great. It was then that the advocate's convictions, presented to the jury in terse and

forcible yet eloquent language, sometimes outweighed the charge of the judge. Juries listened to him and concurred in his arguments; for his known truth had preceded his arguments, and he triumphed. There might be law and evidence against him, but the belief that Lincoln was right, nothing could shake in the minds of those who knew the man.

He prepared his cases with infinite care, when he had nothing but technical work before him. No detail of the affair escaped him. All the parts were perfectly fitted together, and the peculiar powers of his keen analytic mind were brought into full play.

Lincoln did not grow rich at the law, though possessing a decent competence and owing no man any thing. No early friend of Lincoln ever appealed to him in vain; and his biographers relate his defence of young Armstrong, the son of an early benefactor, for whom he secured an acquittal when every thing seemed to render his conviction certain.

Another old friend, U. F. Linder, Esq., a member of the Illinois bar, at a meeting of the profession called when the sad tidings of Mr. Lincoln's death arrived, alluding to a case in which his own son was involved in a similar difficulty, said:

"On that occasion, many seemed to avail themselves of the opportunity to wreak vengeance upon me in the death of my son. I wrote to Mr. Lincoln. I was in a quarter of the country where I knew he was a tower of strength, where his name raised up friends, where his arguments at law had more power than the instructions of the court. I feared-many of his political friends being united against my son-that his services and his talents might be enlisted against him. I wrote to him, giving him all the circumstances, telling him of my wife's grief and my own, and soliciting that he would come and assist me to defend my son; that I thought he had been employed against him. I preserved his letter for a long time. I wish I had it now; I should rejoice in its possession. The sum of it was this: he condoled with me and my wife in our misfortune, and assured us that no matter what business he might be engaged in, he would come; and he was truly sorry that I supposed that he would take part in the prosecution of the son of a friend of his. I had offered him a fee, and in that letter he also said that he knew of no act of his life that would justify me in supposing that he would take money from me or any dear friend for assisting in the defence of the life of a child. I give this as a proof of his friend

ship; and that friendship has been cherished by me through all mutations of life. In politics we have ever been opposed; but I thank God to-day that he always was my friend."

Meantime, in the year 1842, Lincoln married a woman worthy to be the companion of his progress towards honor and distinction. Miss Mary Todd, who became his wife, is the daughter of Robert Todd, of Lexington, Kentucky, a man well known in that State, and at one period the clerk of the lower house of Congress. At the time of her marriage, Miss Todd was the belle of Springfield society-accomplished and intellectual, and possessing all the social graces native in the women of Kentucky.

The fruit of their Union were four sons-Robert Lincoln, now a captain on General Grant's staff, born in 1843; a second son, born in 1846, and William, born in 1850, both of whom are dead; and Thaddeus, born in 1853, who stands beside his illustrious father in the last photograph taken of the President.

It gives some idea of the prominence of Mr. Lincoln in Illinois, that, though elected to the Legislature only in 1834, he was a Whig candidate for Presidential electors at every election from 1836 to 1852. An early and warm admirer of Henry Clay, he came forward, in 1844, and stumped the entire State of Illinois in his favor, and then crossed into Indiana, attracting attention by the homely force, humor, energy, and eloquence of his addresses. Thus thrown again into active politics, he was elected to Congress in 1846, from the Central District of Illinois, by a majority of 1,500, being the only Whig member from the State.

Called now into the great council of the nation, Mr. Lincoln took his seat among great men. In the Senate, Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Benton, still shaped the destinies and restrained the passions of men; and men of great ability stood forth in the lower House. Mr. Lincoln was opposed to the annexation of Texas and to the Mexican war. Deeming unfounded the assertion of President Polk, that American blood had been shed on American soil, he offered, on the 22d of December, the following resolutions:

"Whereas, the President of the United States, in his Message of May 11, 1846, has declared that 'the Mexican government refused

to receive him [the envoy of the United States], or listen to his propositions, but, after a long-continued series of menaces, have at last invaded our territory, and shed the blood of our fellow-citizens on our own soil.'

"And again, in his Message of December 8, 1846, that 'we had ample cause of war against Mexico long before the breaking out of hostilities; but even then we forbore to take redress into our own hands, until Mexico basely became the aggressor, by invading our soil in hostile array, and shedding the blood of our citizens.'

"And yet again, in his Message of December 7, 1847, 'The Mexican government refused even to hear the terms of adjustment which he (our minister of peace) was authorized to propose, and finally, under wholly unjustifiable pretexts, involved the two countries in war, by invading the Territory of the State of Texas, striking the first blow, and shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil!'

"And whereas this House is desirous to obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot on which the blood of our citizens was so shed, was, or was not, at that time, our own soil. Therefore,

Resolved, by the House of Representatives, That the President of the United States be respectfully requested to inform this House—

"1st. Whether the spot on which the blood of our citizens was shed, as in his memorial declared, was, or was not, within the territory of Spain, at least, after the treaty of 1819, until the Mexican revolution.

'2d. Whether that spot is, or is not, within the territory which was wrested from Spain by the revolutionary government of Mexico.

"3d. Whether that spot is, or is not, within a settlement of people, which settlement has existed ever since long before the Texas revolution, and until its inhabitants fled before the approach of the United States Army.

"4th. Whether that settlement is, or is not, isolated from any and all other settlements of the Gulf and Rio Grande on the south and west, and of wide uninhabited regions on the north and east.

"5th. Whether the people of that settlement, or a majority of them, have ever submitted themselves to the government or laws of Texas, or of the United States, of consent or of compulsion, either of accepting office or voting at elections, or paying taxes, or serving on juries, or having process served on them, or in any other way.

"6th. Whether the people of that settlement did, or did not, flee at the approaching of the United States Army, leaving unprotected their homes and their growing crops before the blood was shed, as in the message stated; and whether the first blood so shed was, o:

was not, shed within the inclosure of one of the people who had thus fled from it.

"7th. Whether our citizens whose blood was shed, as in his message declared, were, or were not, at that time, armed officers and soldiers sent into that settlement by the military order of the President, through the Secretary of War.

"8th. Whether the military force of the United States was, or was not, so sent into that settlement after General Taylor had more than once intimated to the War Department that, in his opinion, no such movement was necessary to the defence or protection of Texas."

These resolutions sufficiently evince Mr. Lincoln's sense of justice. He was accused afterwards of siding with the enemy in the war. He opposed the war as unjust; but it was a war of the country, and it was equally just that the country should pay the soldiers called to the field; and Mr. Lincoln never voted against, or avoided voting for, any bill for army pay or supplies or the relief of the soldiers.

When, in 1848, Mr. Gott, of New York, introduced a resolution instructing the Committee on the District of Columbia to report a bill for the abolition of the slave-trade in the District, Mr. Lincoln, after consulting Mayor Seaton, of Washington, proposed, on the 10th of January, that the committee should be instructed to report a bill forbidding the sale, beyond the District of Columbia, of any slave born within its limits, or the removal of slaves from the District, except such servants as were in attendance upon their masters temporarily residing at Washington; establishing an apprenticeship of twenty-one years for all slaves born within the District subsequent to the year 1850; providing for their emancipation at the expiration of the apprenticeship; authorizing the United States to buy and emancipate all slaves within the District, whose owners should desire to set them free in that manner; finally, submitting the bill to a vote of the citizens of the District for approval.

The Wilmot proviso had made its appearance in August, 1847, during the previous session, but frequently came up in that on which Mr. Lincoln served. He steadily supported it, and, as he said in one of his debates with Judge Douglas, “had the pleasure of voting for it, in one way or another, about forty times,"

Mr. Lincoln was a member of the Philadelphia convention