CHAPTER V.

MR. LINCOLN IN CONGRESS AND "ON THE STUMP."

Is sent to Congress in 1847.-His record while there.-Resumes the practice of Law.-Enters warmly into the campaign of 1854.—Measures swords with Douglas.-Engages in the Presidential campaign of 1858.— Is nominated for United States Senator.-The celebrated debates between Lincoln and Douglas.-His tribute to the Declaration of Independence.-Pen-portraits of Mr. Lincoln, during his campaign.-Story, relating to the Harper's Ferry Invasion.-Story of his duel with Hardin.-Goes to Ohio, to aid in the canvass there.-Extracts from his speeches. Gives a helping hand to the canvass in the Eastern States.— His great Cooper Institute Speech.-Touching Scene in New York.

A MAN of family, a recognized leader in the ranks of the Whig party, a successful lawyer, and one whose popularity was daily increasing, it is not a matter of wonder that, in 1848, Mr. Lincoln's fellow-citizens should have deemed him an appropriate man to represent them in the national Congress.

Accordingly, he was returned for the central district of Illinois, in the fall of 1846, and took his seat in the House of Representatives at Washington, on the 6th day of December, 1847, the opening of the thirtieth Congress.

He was the only representative from his State who had been elected under the Whig standard-his six colleagues being all Democrats.

Mr. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, was elected Speaker of the House. This House was replete with the best

talent of the country; and it proved to be one of the most agitated and agitating sessions ever convened in Washington. Enrolled with Mr. Lincoln, as Whigs, were such names as Collamer, Tallmage, Ingersoll, Botts, Clingman, Stephens, Toombs, and Thompson; while, opposed to him in politics, were others, not less distinguished, of whom we may mention Wilmot, Bocock, Rhett, Linn Boyd, and Andrew Johnson-the latter afterward his associate and coadjutor in the great work of restoring the Union. Such conspicuous lights as Webster, Calhoun, Dayton, Davis, Dix, Dickinson, Hale, Bell, Crittenden, and Corwin, constituted a senatorial galaxy which seldom has been outshone. Mr. Lincoln entered into his new duties with characteristic energy, voting on every question, and speaking wherever there seemed to be necessity, with a directness which gave abundant evidence that he fully comprehended the issues of the day.

His Congressional record throughout, was that of a Whig of those days, his votes on all leading national subjects, being invariably what those of Clay, Webster or Corwin would have been, had they occupied his place.

Mr. Giddings having presented a memorial (December 21st, 1847) from certain citizens of the District of Columbia, asking for the repeal of all laws upholding the slave trade in the District, a motion was made to lay it on the table, when Mr. Lincoln voted in the negative.

Although he went with the majority of the Whig party in opposing the declaration of war with Mexico, he invariably supported, with his vote, any bill or reso

lution having for its object the sustenance of the health, comfort and honor of our soldiers engaged in the war. On the 22d of December he introduced, with one of his characteristically humorous and logical speeches in their favor, a series of resolutions, keenly criticising the motives which had superinduced the war. In later years, it was charged against Mr. Lincoln by his political enemies, that he lacked genuine patriotism, inasmuch as he had voted against the Mexican war. This charge was sharply and clearly made by Judge Douglas at the first of their joint discussions, in the senatorial contest of 1858. Mr. Lincoln replied: "I was an old Whig, and whenever the Democratic party tried to get me to vote that the war had been righteously begun by the President, I would not do it. * **But, when he, [Judge Douglas], by a general charge conveys the idea that I withheld supplies from the soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican war, or did any thing else to hinder the soldiers, he is, to say the least, grossly and altogether mistaken, as a consultation of the records. will prove to him." This explicit denial of the falsity. of this charge, bears the impress of its own veracity.

He showed, in fact, on this point the same clearness and directness, the same keen eye for the important point in a controversy, and the same tenacity in holding it fast and thwarting his opponent's utmost efforts to obscure it and cover it up, to draw attention to other points and raise false issues, which were the marked characteristics of his great controversy with Judge Douglas at a subsequent period of their political history.

He saw that the strength of the position of the administration before the people in reference to the

beginning of the war, was in the point, which they lost no opportunity of reiterating, viz., that Mexico had shed the blood of our citizens on our own soil. This position he believed to be false, and he accordingly attacked it in a resolution requesting the President to give the House information on that point; which President Polk would have found as difficult to dodge as Douglas. found it to dodge the questions which Mr. Lincoln proposed to him.

"On the right of petition," says Mr. Raymond, "Mr. Lincoln, of course, held the right side, voting repeatedly against laying on the table without consideration, petitions in favor of the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and against the slave trade.

"On the question of abolishing slavery in the District, he took rather a prominent part. A Mr. Gott had introduced a resolution directing the committee for the District to introduce a bill abolishing the slave trade in the District. To this Mr. Lincoln moved an amendment instructing them to introduce a bill for the abolition, not of the slave trade, but of slavery within the District. The bill which he proposed, prevented any slave from ever being brought into the District, except in the case of officers of the Government of the United States, who might bring the necessary servants for themselves and their families while in the District on public business. It prevented any one then resident within the District, or thereafter born within the District, from being held in slavery without the District. It declared that all children of slave mothers born in the District after January 1, 1850, should be free, but should be reasonably supported and educated by the owners of their mothers, and that any owner of slaves in the District might be paid their value from the treasury, and the slaves should thereupon be free; and it provided, also, for the sub

mission of the act to the people of the District for their acceptance or rejection.

"The question of the Territories came up in many ways. The Wilmot proviso had made its appearance in the previous session, in the August before; but it was repeatedly before this Congress also, when efforts were made to apply it to the territory which we procured from Mexico, and to Oregon. On all occasions, when it was before the House, it was supported by Mr. Lincoln; and he stated, during his contest with Judge Douglas, that he had voted for it, 'in one way and another, about forty times.' He thus showed himself, in 1847, the same friend of freedom for the Territories which he was afterward during the heats of the Kansas struggle.

"Another instance in which the slavery question was before the House, was in the famous Pacheco case. The ground taken by the majority, was that slaves were regarded as property by the Constitution, and, when taken for public service, should be paid for as property. The principle involved in the bill was, therefore, the same which the slaveholders have sought in so many ways to maintain. As they sought, afterward, to have it established by a decision of the Supreme Court, so, now, they sought to have it recognized by Congress. Mr. Lincoln opposed it in Congress as heartily as he afterward opposed it when it took the more covert but no less dangerous shape of a judicial dictum.

"On other questions which came before Congress, Mr. Lincoln, being a Whig, took the ground which was held by the great body of his party. He believed in the right of Congress to make appropriations for the improvement of rivers and harbors. He was in favor of giving the public lands, not to speculators, but to actual occupants and cultivators, at as low rates as possible; he was in favor of a protective tariff, and of abolishing the franking privilege."

In short, all his acts, during this his first Congressional term, show a purpose to do his duty to his