Indiana. None felt more keenly than he the unexpected defeat of his favorite. In 1846 Mr. Lincoln was induced to accept the nomination for Congress, and in the district which had, two years before, given Mr. Clay, for Presi dent, a majority of nine hundred and fourteen votes, he astonished himself and his friends by rolling up a majority of fifteen hundred and eleven. To add to the signifi cance of his triumph, he was the only Whig representative from Illinois, which had then seven members in that body. This Congress had before it subjects of great importance and interest to the country. The Mexican War was in progress, and Congress had to deal with grave questions arising out of it, besides determining and providing the means by which it was to be carried on. The irrepressible Slavery Question was there also, in many of its Protean forms,—in questions on the right of petition, in questions as to the District of Columbia, in many questions as to the Territories.

Mr. Lincoln was charged by his enemies in later years, when political hostility was hunting sharply for material out of which to make capital against him, with lack of patriotism, alleging that he voted against the war. The charge was sharply and clearly made by Judge Douglas, at the first of their joint discussions in the Senatorial contest of 1858. In his speech at Ottawa, he said of Mr. Lincoln, that "while in Congress he distinguished himself by his opposition to the Mexican war, taking the sile of the common enemy against his own country and when he returned home he found that the indigna tion of the people followed him everywhere.”

No better answer can be given to this charge than that which Mr. Lincoln himself made, in his reply to this speech. He says: "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 whenever they asked for any money or land-warrants, or any thing to pay the soldiers there, during all that time I gave the same vote that Judge Douglas did. You can think as you please as to whether

that was consistent. Such is the truth, and the Judge has a right to make all he can out of it. But when he, 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."

We need no more thorough refutation of this imputa tion upon his patriotism than is embodied in this clear and distinct denial. It required no little sagacity, at that time, to draw a clear line of demarcation between supporting the country while engaged in war, and sustaining the war itself, which Mr. Lincoln, in common with the great body of the party with which he was connected, regarded as utterly unjust. The Democratic party made vigorous use of the charge everywhere. The whole foundation of it, doubtless, was the fact which Mr. Lincoln states, that, whenever the Democrats tried to get him "to vote that the war had been righteously begun, he would not do it. 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 tena city 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 poli tical history. It is always popular, because it always seems patriotic, to stand by the country when engaged in war—and the people are not invariably disposed to judge eniently of efforts to prove their country in the wrong as against any foreign power. In this instance, Mr. Lincoln 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 series of resolutions 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.

As a part of the history of Mr. Lincoln's Congressional career, we give these resolutions, omitting the preamble, which simply reproduces the language employed by President Polk in his message, to convey the impression that the Mexicans were the aggressors, and that the war was undertaken to repel invasion, and to avenge the shedding of the blood of our fellow-citizens on our own soil The quaint phraseology of the resolutions stamps them as the production of Mr. Lincoln's pen. They read as follows:

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 messages 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 by the Gulf and the Rio Grande on the south and west, and by wide uninhabited regions on the north and east.

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

6th. Whether the people of that settlement did or did not flee from the approach of the United States army, leaving unprotected their homes ant their growing crops, before the blood was shed, as in the messages stated; and whether the first blood so shed, was or was not shed within the enclosure of one of the people who had thus fled from it.

7th. Whether our citizens, whose blood was shed, as in his messages 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 O sent into that settlement after General Taylor had more than once

intimated to the War Department that, in his opinion, no such moven:ert was necessary to the defence or protection of Texas.

These resolutions, which Mr. Polk would have found it very inconvenient to answer, were laid over, under the rule, and were never acted upon, although Mr. Lincoln commented on them in a speech, made January 12, 1848, which, by the way, was his first formal appearance in the House. In this speech he discussed, in his homely but forcible manner, the absurdities and contradictions of Mr. Polk's message, and exposed its weaknesses.

In these times, when questions of so much greater mag nitude and importance have overshadowed those which occupied or agitated the public mind twenty years ago, it seems strange that political opponents could even then have compelled Mr. Lincoln to defend his course in Congress, as having been prompted by patriotic motives. The nation which has been plunged into mourning by his sudden and violent death, would now regard as gratuitous and puerile any argument, the purpose of which should be to prove that Mr. Lincoln's action upon this Mexican question was governed by the same inflexible ideas of honor and right which ruled him so unwaveringly throughout his entire public career, and which have since made his memory sacred.

On

A Whig from conviction, Mr. Lincoln acted consistently with his party upon all questions of public concern. June 20, 1848, after the nomination of General Cass as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, Mr. Lincolr made an able speech in support of the line of policy the Whigs had pursued regarding internal improvements. He ridiculed mercilessly the position taken by General Cass upon this important question, and, in concluding his remarks, thus stated his own views, while he dealt a severe blow at the same pseudo chivalric spirit of the South, which he has since been chiefly instrumental in humbling to the dust. He said:

How to do something, and still not to do too much, is the desideratum Let each contribute his mite in the way of suggestion. The late Sils

Wright, in a letter to the Chicago convention, contributed his, which was worth something; and I now contribute mine, which may be worth nothing. At all events, it will mislead nobody, and therefore will do no harm. I would not borrow money. I am against an overwhelming, crushing system. Suppose that, at each session, Congress shall first determine how much money can, for that year, be spared for improvements; then apportion that sum to the most important objects. Su far all is easy; but how shall we determine which are the most important? On this question comes the collision of interests. I shall be slow to acknowledge that your harbor or your river is more important than mine, and vice versa. To clear this difficulty, let us have that same statistical information which the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Vinton] suggested at the beginning of this session. In that information we shall have a stern, unbending basis of facts—a basis in nowise subject to whim, caprice, or local interest. The pre-limited amount of means will save us from doing too much, and the statistics will save us from doing what we do in wrong places. Adopt and adhere to this course, and, it seems to me, the difficulty is cleared.

One of the gentlemen from South Carolina [Mr. Rhett] very much deprecates these statistics. He particularly objects, as I understand him, to counting all the pigs and chickens in the land. I do not perceive much force in the objection. It is true, that if every thing be enumerated, a portion of such statistics may not be very useful to this object. Such products of the country as are to be consumed where they are produced, need no roads and rivers, no means of transportation, and have no very proper connection with this subject. The surplus, that which is produced in one place to be consumed in another; the capacity of each locality for producing a greater surplus; the natural means of transportation, and their susceptibility of improvement; the hindrances, delays, and losses of life and property during transportation, and the causes of each, would be among the most valuable statistics in this connection. From these it would readily appear where a given amount of expenditure would do the unost good. These statistics might be equally accessible, as they would be equally useful, to both the Nation and the States. In this way, and by these means, let the Nation take hold of the larger works, and the States the smaller ones; and thus, working in a meeting direction, discreetly, but steadily and firmly, what is made unequal in one place may be equalized in another, extravagance avoided, and the whole country put on that career of prosperity which shall correspond with its extent of territory, its natural resources, and the intelligence and enterprise of its people.

The nomination of General Taylor as the Whig candidate for the Fresidency, by the Convention of that party at Philadelphia, to which Mr. Lincoln was a delegate, fairly opened the campaign, and Congress prolonged its