It was not until the Southern politicians, growing more and more arrogant, passed, with the aid of their Northern allies, the Fugitive Slave Law, that the conscience of the North made itself felt as a political force; for, hitherto, it had been satisfied with moral and religious protests, or with silent lamentations over the impossibility of abolishing slavery under the Federal Constitution.

That act gave the death-blow to the Whig party. Out of its ashes arose the Republican party, which was organized solely to prevent the extension of slavery into virgin territory, but which was destined to destroy it and subsequently to enfranchise the slaves whom it had emancipated.

Yet the Fugitive Slave Law did not arouse in Abraham Lincoln the profound indignation that he was afterward to transmute into emancipation.

The Fugitive Slave Law, by some oversight, had omitted the District of Columbia from its operations. On the 10th of January, 1849, in the 30th Congress, Abraham Lincoln offered a resolution to extend the Fugitive Slave Law over the District of Columbia!

It was for this act, when the news of his nomination for the presidency reached Massachusetts, that he was denounced by the greatest of American antislavery orators, Wendell Phillips, as "the Slave Hound of Illinois."

This proposition, however, was not presented in what might otherwise have well been regarded as its naked deformity. It was part of a bill, offered by the obscure congressman from Illinois, to provide for the gradual extinction of slavery in the District.

As this incident in the public life of Lincoln has been but slightly noticed, it may be well to put the entire record before the reader:

"January 8, 1849. At Second Session, 30th Congress, Mr. Lincoln voted against a motion to suspend the rules and take up the following:

"Resolved: That the Committee on the Judiciary is hereby instructed to report a bill to the House, providing effectually for the apprehension and delivery of fugitives from Iowa who have escaped, or who may escape, from one State into another."

"January 13, 1849. Mr. Lincoln gave notice of a motion for leave to introduce a bill abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia by consent of the free white people of the District of Columbia, with compensation to owners.

"At Second Session, 30th Congress, January 10th, 1849, John Wentworth, of Illinois, introduced the following:

"Whereas, The traffic now prosecuted in this metropolis of the Republic in human beings as

chattels is contrary to natural justice and the fundamental principles of our political system, and is notoriously a reproach to our country throughout Christendom, and a serious hinderance to the progress of republican liberty among the nations of the earth; therefore,

"Resolved, That the Committee for the District of Columbia be instructed to report a bill, as soon as practicable, prohibiting the slave trade in said District."

'Mr. Lincoln thereupon read an amendment which he intended to offer, if he could obtain the opportunity, as follows:

"That the Committee on the District of Columbia be instructed to report a bill in substance as follows:

"SEC. 1. Be it enacted, etc., That no person not now within the District of Columbia, nor now owned by any person or persons now resident within it, nor hereafter born within it, shall ever be held in slavery within said District.

"SEC. 2. That no person now within said District, or now owned by any person or persons now resiIdent within the same, or hereafter born within it, shall ever be held in slavery within the limits of said District.

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Provided, That officers of the Government of

the United States, being citizens of the slave-holding States, coming into said District on public business, and remaining only so long as may be reasonably necessary for that object, may be attended into and out of said District, and while there, by the necessary servants of themselves and their families, without their rights to hold such servants in service being thereby impaired.

"SEC. 3. That all children born of slave mothers within said District on or after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty, shall be free; but shall be reasonably supported and educated by the respective owners of their mothers, or by their heirs or representatives, and shall serve reasonable service as apprentices to such owners, heirs and representatives, until they respectively arrive at the age of

years,

when they shall be entirely free; but the municipal authorities of Washington and Georgetown, within their respective jurisdictional limits, are hereby empowered and required to make all suitable and necessary provisions for enforcing obedience to this section, on the part of both masters and apprentices.

"SEC. 4. That all persons now within said District, lawfully held as slaves, or now owned by any person or persons now residents within said District, shall remain such at the will of their respective owners, their heirs and legal representatives;

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"Provided, That any such owner, or his legal representatives, may at any time receive from the Treasury of the United States the full value of his or her slave of the class in this section mentioned, upon which such slave shall be forthwith and forever free.

"And provided further, That the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of the Treasury shall be a board for determining the value of such slaves as their owners may desire to emancipate under this section, and whose duty it shall be to hold a session for such purpose on the first Monday of each calendar month, to receive all applications, and, on satisfactory evidence in each case that the person presented for valuation is a slave and of the class in this section mentioned, and is owned by the applicant, shall value such slave at his or her full cash value, and give to the applicant an order on the Treasury for the amount, and also to such slave a certificate of freedom.

"SEC. 5. That the municipal authorities of Washington and Georgetown, within their respective jurisdictional limits, are hereby empowered and required to provide active and efficient means to arrest and deliver up to their owners all fugitive slaves escaping into said districts.

"SEC. 6. That the officers of elections within said District of Columbia are hereby empowered and required to open polls at all the usual places of hold