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Another great measure of the Congress in which Mr. Lincoln figured, was the Wilmot Proviso-now a favorite Republican measure-and so pervading, with its distinctive principle (opposition to slavery extension) the whole Republican soul, that, whether in or out of platforms, it remains the life and strength of the party.. To this measure Mr. Lincoln was fully committed. Indeed, it is a peculiarity of this man, that he has always acted decidedly one way or the other. He thought the Mexican war wrong. He opposed it with his whole heart and strength. He thought the Wilmot Proviso right, and he says he "had the pleasure of voting for it, in one way or another, about forty times.”

Mr. Lincoln was one of those who advocated the nomination of General Taylor, in the National Whig Convention of 1848. Returning to Illinois after the adjournment of Congress, he took the stump for his favorite candidate, and was active throughout that famous canvass. In 1849, he retired from Congress, firmly declining re-nomination, and resumed the practice of his profession.

The position which he maintained in the House of Representatives was eminently respectable. His name appears oftener in the ayes and noes, than in the debates; he spoke therefore with the more force and effect when he felt called upon to express his opinion.

leading citizens. Afterward, Southern Congressmen visited the Mayor and persuaded him to withdraw the moral support given to the measure. When this had been done, the chief hope of success was destroyed, and the bill, of which Mr. Lincoln gave notice, was never introduced.

The impression that his Congressional speeches give you, is the same left by all others that he has made. You feel that he has not argued to gain a point, but to show the truth; that it is not Lincoln he wishes to sustain, but Lincoln's principles.

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CHAPTER VII.

PEACE to the old Whig party, which is dead! When a man has ceased to live, we are cheaply magnanimous in the exaltation of his virtues, and we repair whatever wrong we did him when alive by remorselessly abusing every one who hints that he may have been an imperceptible trifle lower than the angels.

It is with such post-mortem greatness of soul that the leaders of the Democracy have cherished the memory of the Whig party, and gone about the stump, clad in moral sackcloth and craped hats.

If you will believe these stricken mourners, virtue went out with that lamented organization; and there is but one true man unhanged in America, and he is a stoutish giant, somewhat under the middle size.

In speaking, therefore, of the Whig party, you have first to avoid offense to the gentlemen who reviled its great men in their lifetime, and who have a fondness for throwing the honored dust of the past into the eyes of the present. Then, respect is due to the feelings of those Republicans who abandoned the Whig party only after the last consolations of religion had been administered, and who still remember it with sincere regret. The prejudices of another class of our friends must

be treated with decent regard. Very many old Democrats in the Republican ranks are earnestly persuaded that in former times they were right in their opposition to the Whigs.

Yet one more variety of opinion must be consultedthe opinion that the Whig party had survived its usefulness, and that all which was good in it has now entered upon a higher and purer state of existence in the Republican organization.

Doubtless it would be better not to mention the Whig party at all. Unfortunately for the ends of strict prudence, the story of Abraham Lincoln's life involves allusion to it, since he was once a Whig, and became a Republican, and not a Democrat. But as every Republican is a code of by-laws unto himself-subject only to the Chicago platform-perhaps we may venture to reverently speak of the shade which still, it is said, revisits the glimpses of Boston; and to recount the events which preceded its becoming a shade.

So early as 1848 the dismemberment of the Whig party commenced. It had been distinguished by many of the characteristics of the Republican party, among which is the reserved right of each member of the organization to think and act for himself, on his own responsibility, as already intimated. Whenever its leaders deflected from the straight line of principle, their followers called them to account; and a persistence in the advocacy of measures repugnant to the individual sense of right, caused disaffection.

Many sincere and earnest men, who supported Henry Clay with ardor, ceased to be Whigs when General Taylor was nominated, because they conceived that his nomination was a departure from the Clay Whig principles of opposition to the Mexican war and the acquisition of slave territory.

This is not the place to pronounce upon the wisdom or justice of their course. Others, as sincere and earnest as they, supported General Taylor, and continued to act with the Whig party throughout the Fillmore administration.

The assimilation of the two great parties on the slavcry question in 1852, widened the distance between the Whigs and the Free Soilers, and the former were, in the opinion of the latter, demoralized before the election in which they suffered so total an overthrow, though they continued steadfast in their devotion to the Whig name until 1854, when the first organization of the Republicans took place, under the name of the Anti-Nebraska party.

The Whig Free Soilers were eager and glad to fraternize with their old friends; and all greeted with enthusiasm the vast accessions which the new party received from the men who had given spiritual vitality to the Democracy.

Those members of both the old parties, who were particularly sensible to the attractions of office, those whom no pro-slavery aggression could render superior to the luxury of a feeble or selfish acquiescence,

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