October.

of 36° 30' to the Pacific shore. Behind such appeals and such arguments the administration took refuge. And with Scott's army quartered, and by this time. known to be quartered, in the palace of the Montezumas, Polk and his cabinet prepared to face à hostile House, fresh from the people, with a message which should take the strongest possible ground of defence. Treaty of peace, as yet there was none to produce, to the mortification of our government, none scarcely to expect, such was the "obstinate perseverance of Mexico," so Polk's message styled it, "in protracting the war." Most of this message, indeed, was in Polk's own words, and showed that labored strain, so characteristic of him, to make points against his adversary by perverting the facts. That the review of the year in so dignified a document as the President's message to the two houses of the American Congress should be either so impartial or so reserved as not to wound the sensibili. ties of posterity, could not for an instant lodge in the narrow chamber of this President's nature; but (applying the poet's phrase) to party he gave what was meant for mankind. Turning the tu quoque upon the Whigs, in opening his narrative, he alleged that Congress "with great unanimity" had declared that "war existed by act of Mexico." He further assumed that Congress must have meant him to acquire additional territory, since deferred claims of our citizens were to be pressed for payment, and Mexico being destitute of money, could have paid them off in nothing but a territorial cession. A state of war, he continued, must abrogate pre-existing treaties, and a treaty of peace should settle all points of difference; and hence the treaty he had sought was liberal enough, because while taking more land from Mexico than our claims covered, he offered to be liberal about the war expenses and pay a round sum besides. Moreover, if we did not take from Mexico what territory we wanted, some European power would plunder her in her weakness, and that would violate the Monroe doctrine. But, after all this web of sophistry and mis

1847.

THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.

75

representation, the administration was forced to confess that it had conquered without extorting an acknowledgment of defeat; that while Mexico panted in our iron grasp, and her soil was overrun by our armies, all our proposals for peace and a treaty had met with so little favor that orders had lately been sent for Trist's recall; and with a large deficit to report already for the current year, and future expenditures to estimate, whose probable millions could not easily be figured up, against which somewhat less than half a million had been screwed out at our military custom-house in Vera Cruz, the President could pledge nothing to Congress but his word that he should make no more overtures of peace at present, but wait for Mexico to initiate them.*

December.

Such was the sentiment and such the crestfallen tone of the President's message when the Thirtieth Congress first assembled. After so "just a war" on our part, originating in Mexico's "invasion of the territory of Texas" and "shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil," thereby compelling us "in self-defence to repel the invader," after his personal willingness at every stage of the unavoidable conflict to terminate it "by a just peace" (which comprised, as he admitted, a greater acquisition from our belligerent than either our spoliation claims or the amplest boundary of Texas called for), — Polk's official conclusion was that we must appropriate the territory of Mexico permanently, and do justice to ourselves and to her people by giving her a stable, responsible and free government under our authority;" that we must prosecute the war "with increased energy and power in the vital parts of the enemy's country;" and that in pursuance of a less forbearing policy than hitherto, we must not only draw our supplies from the enemy without paying for them, but convert her internal revenues to our own use as

* See President's message, Dec. 7, 1847; Congressional Globe; 73 Niles, 228.

we have already converted the customs, and levy contributions until her people yield to the pressure and

consent to our terms.*

December 6.

This long but eagerly read message of some eighteen thousand words was telegraphed to Cincinnati verbatim in sixteen hours, and published by the press of that city on Thursday morning, having been read in Congress on Tuesday. For the electric wire now operated westward from Philadelphia to St. Louis. At noon of Monday the 6th, a quorum met in both wings of the capitol, all but seven of the House answering to the roll. Vice-President Dallas called the Senate to order. Three ballots sufficed to organize the popular branch against the administration, Robert C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, being chosen speaker by 110 votes or a bare majority, against Linn Boyd and the scattering candidates. Thomas J. Campbell was elected clerk in place of French, the late incumbent. These were both Whigs and candidates of the Whig caucus. Samuel F. Vinton, of Ohio, a member of ripe years and experience in the House, who had declined to contend with Winthrop for the first prize, received with party approbation the distinction of Winthrop's selection for chairman of the ways and means, and leader upon the floor.

This was one of those epochs of popular revulsion when a high surge seems to sweep away from this chamber the familiar set. Of 228 members of the present House, less than 100 had served in the one preceding, and the proportion of new members was very great; though respectable, perhaps, when put to proof, rather than famous. In the delegations from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, were many of these novices; from New York, Ohio, and Kentucky, too; while from the West came several strangers of striking figure and physiognomy, all in the prime of early manhood.

One of these last was Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, a Whig whom journalists likened to a lonely sycamore

* See President's message, Dec. 7, 1847; Congressional Globe; 73 Niles, 228

1847.

LINCOLN AND JEFFERSON DAVIS.

77

among the forest Democracy of his State. By a singular coincidence, two men, the antipodes of one another, and destined to a world-wide renown, entered this winter the opposite portals of the capitol; both unconscious, no doubt, of the collision time had in store for them, and, for the present conjunction, hardly passing the salute of acquaintance. These two men were Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, born in the same slave State, the one of poor-white pedigree, the latter of patrician, and taken in tender years to opposite points of the compass. Lincoln had educated himself in the bitter school of privation, while Davis's training was a military one at the cost of the general government. Two men more different in traits and physiognomy at the present time it would be hard to discover. Davis, of wiry and compact frame and medium height, combined the easy manners of a Southern gentleman whose position was assured with the firm and erect carriage of a soldier, conscious of the distinction he had won in the late war, by individual gallantry and his marriage connection with Taylor. Davis had served lately in the House, but, resigning his seat to lead a Mississippi regiment, he came back as a Senator to fill a vacancy, under the temporary appointment of the Governor, and was confirmed by the legislature of his State. His cast of mind was rigid and strongly Southern; cotton formed the staple of his political economy, and Calhoun was his ideal of a statesman. His heart was consecrated to expanding the area for slave States, and for that patriarchal system of labor as to whose eternal fitness he felt no doubt whatever. He was precocious in hardening into that tenacious, inflexible attachment to precepts, which in these waxen days of Northern sensibility won so many concessions for the sake of national harmony. As an instance of rigidity worthy a disciple of the South Carolinian, Davis had just declined a commission from the President, as brigadier-general of volunteers, on the ground that only a State could confer such a title; and the first impression he made this winter in senatorial

debate was as a martinet who praised regular troops above volunteers as soldiers, in words that intimated quite offensively that "the lower grades of men" were the better kind for such as himself to handle.*

What, if he ever encountered him, this haughty scion. of the Democracy thought of that gaunt, awkward, illdressed Whig of the other House, who was easy-humored and companionable, but shy of drawing-room receptions, we have no means of knowing. Had not Abraham Lincoln been pulled out of slave soil while his roots were tender he would have died unknown. But poverty in a free territory helped make a man of him. This Con. gress saw the first and last of him in legislative life, for he declined to run another term, and his district reverted to the Democrats. Singular and striking in personal appearance, as those who met him in these years observed, - not supposing that observation of much consequence, a kind but shrewd sagacity and droll humor were his salient traits. Above all, he imaged to the mind a steadfast honesty of purpose, and genuineness. In a single year he was pronounced a universal favorite among men who could appreciate whatever was rare, racy, and unique, and take a rough diamond upon its own intrinsic worth. Bad taste blurred the dignity of his efforts as a debater during this brief national episode, as when one enters the fashionable circle in a homespun suit. He showed himself clear-headed, a master of resources, nor did he fear to measure himself against statesmen of renown; but the flavor of the stump and village grocery detracted from one who trained with the party of gentility. In one speech of this session he dissected the President's partisan statement of the causes of the Mexican War, and, after a favorite process of logical reasoning convicted Polk out of his own mouth. But in another he flung dignity to the winds, and in a sort of

* Alfriend's Life of Jefferson Davis; Cong. Globe, 1847-48 Davis, while in the House, had alluded in the same supercilious way to the "tailor and blacksmith," though intending no personal offence; and this called out Andrew Johnson in reply. Alfriend, ib.