1847. CONSPICUOUS MEMBERS. 79 colloquial harangue on Presidential candidates, he amused the House with humorous stories of hogs and oxen, and with bucolic illustrations, pointed and racy, but by no means elegant.* Lincoln's quaint originality, in short, impressed his fellow-members more than the fibre of his statesmanship, which was fair and cautious; and had he been returned to another Congress it is possible he might have suffered, on becoming better known, that popular hindrance to high honors which more than one able American has lamented in his own instance, by gaining the reputation of being comical. But Lincoln showed himself, even at this homelier stage of advancement, a logician of no mean power, whose conveyance of his ideas could be clear and picturesque, and as a political counsellor he was sage and practical.† Others noticeable this session for the first time in the seats they occupied were John Bell, Stephen A. Douglas, Robert M. T. Hunter; John P. Hale, too, of New Hampshire, rosy-faced and jocular as were few public men in these times of his anti-slavery stripe. These all had served in the House, but were now elected to a Senate which held still, of the old magnates, Webster, Clayton, Calhoun, Berrien, Benton, Mangum, Crittenden, and John Davis; and among important accessions more recent, Dix, Cameron, Cass, Reverdy Johnson, and Corwin. Badger, President Harrison's brief Secretary of the Navy, was also here. In the House were John G. Palfrey, of Massachusetts, and John Minor Botts, that good Harry Clay Whig from Virginia who had figured so strongly when in Representatives' Hall before, at the time of President Tyler's apostasy. ‡ Palfrey, who was a scholar and a Whig of free-soil tendencies, joined Giddings in voting against a Whig Speaker, and for this offence was read out of the party. From Maryland, came two able representatives of opposite politics, Alexander Evans, a Whig, and Robert McLane (the son of Andrew Jackson's * See Cong. Globe, Appendix. ↑ J. G. Holland's Lincoln, c. 9. See also Hay & Nicolay. famous Secretary), a Democrat. A re-elected member of the House was Andrew Johnson, the Tennessee tailor, a rare plebeian among slaveholders. Old party names were still dominant in this Congress. The Senate, which was ruled by the Democrats, ranked Hale as its only independent; in the House there were four of this latter style, all chosen in opposition to regular nominees of the administration party; and of these one Levin, a roving citizen who had located at Philadelphia, represented a novel and sporadic movement in Atlantic cities known as "Native American." * Adverse tempest had overturned the goodly majority which sustained the President in the previous House. This winter by a fair computation the Representatives stood 118 to 110 against Polk's party. Robert C. Winthrop, a Massachusetts Whig, chosen Speaker by a margin much narrower,† made a dignified presiding officer, courteous and anxious to do his whole duty, at the same time with a sense of high lineage which repelled the envious. Windy 1848. - 1847 censure of the President and unprofitable inqui December- sition upon the motives of the Mexican war, January that red drama of iniquity, occupied this popular branch week after week to little purpose. Clay's Lexington speech supplied the Whigs with ammunition for the play of their ponderous artillery. Another document which served this prelude to a Presidential campaign was a long and elaborate statement of the official facts: this too had appeared in print shortly before Congress convened; Gallatin, that ancient survivor of the Jeffersonian period, penned it as a last appeal to his fellow-countrymen at the remarkable age of eighty-six. Resolutions. jostled one another, obstructive and obnoxious to the Executive, which stood little chance of being answered; these served as the tenter-hooks of invective speeches for home consumption. One of these, to which we have already alluded, was that of Abraham Lincoln. As to the * See 73 Niles, passim. † Supra p. 76. 1847-48. THE HOUSE CENSORIOUS. 66 81 first shedding of blood by Mexicans upon our soil," according to the President's message, "when," asked the member from Illinois "did that soil become ours?" and the drift of his few pertinent interrogatives was to throw upon Polk the difficult burden of establishing a title to the Nueces region through either Spain or France. For as a fact, so far as the United States were concerned, the title to that soil was at least clouded and disputable. Upon this thesis, in language quaint and homely, the orator made a clear, dispassionate and confident analysis of the evidence as the President had already submitted it. The first blood of the Mexican war was shed, as he showed conclusively, not upon "our soil" at all, but only upon what we claimed to be our soil, with no clear proof to support it.* a claim The President sent a message to Congress in the middle of December, explaining why he had withheld his approval from a bill which passed on the last day of the previous Congress for river and harbor improvements. Monroe's famous message of 1822 had confined the constitutional scruple to improvements which were purely internal; † but Polk, pursuing that stricter rule which Andrew Jackson initiated, enlarged the objection to improvements like the present. The House, in retort, passed a resolution affirming, by more than a two-thirds vote, that river and harbor improvements were just and constitutional. ‡ The House in January called upon the Executive to furnish whatever correspondence had been held with Santa Anna; and the Executive declined to comply. General Taylor's correspondence with the War Department was called for, likewise General Scott's; all this, of course, to show the grievances of those officers against the War Department. Meantime through all this opprobrious criticism, the government struggled to carry the measures which seemed indispensable, - a loan bill, which was re * Congressional Globe. VOL. V. 73 Niles; Globe. t Vol. iii. p. 254. ported in the House, and a bill for ten more regiments, in the Senate. The doughty Cass called up the latter bill on the 30th of December. Calhoun wished a resolution considered first, which he had submitted,* to the effect that Mexico ought not to be held as a subjugated province, nor incorporated into the United States on a footing of equality. The debate on these two subjects occupied the Senate in January. Crittenden offered an amendment to the new regiment bill preferring volunteers to regulars; but Jefferson Davis supported Cass against it and the amendment was defeated. Calhoun made an impressive speech on his resolution, to show that the Mexican race was unfit to mingle with the Anglo-American. Hale and Clayton made strong speeches against raising more forces for subjugation. Other opponents of the administration. spun out debate as though to gain time were their object. Meanwhile in the House finance was uppermost. The bill over which this branch dallied proposed to borrow eighteen and a half millions as a war loan. February. Wilmot proposed to levy a direct tax until the war debt was paid off; this was voted down by about three to one. The money market outside grew stringent and feverish; and a call was raised for more Treasury notes. After passing votes of thanks to Taylor and Scott, and giving new members time to air their maiden speeches, the House went seriously to work. On the 17th of February a proposal to authorize the issue of new Treasury notes for present difficulties was voted down by a majority of one, Speaker Winthrop voting with other conservative Whigs against the supply of sinews for an "irresponsible national bank," and the House at length granted the loan and sent its bill to the Senate.” † This sort of opposition to the Mexican war was not after all so very terrible. Nor did it quite come up to the Holmes of South Carolina had (doubtless in concert with Calhoun) offered a similar resolution in the House. † Congressional Globe. 1848. WHIGS OPPOSE PRUDENTLY. 83 sonorous programme of stopping supplies unless the Executive could make its justification clear. In truth the Whigs, like their distinguished leader, were trimmers from instinct, and placed prudent limitations to the contest they waged against slave extension and inhumanity. Proud of their national fellowship they permitted tacit differences to exist among them on the subject most dislocating of all. They took into their reckoning, as every national party must, the wind which blew from all quarters of the compass. Northern sentiment, therefore, they diluted so that the product should be national sentiment. The election of a Speaker had shown that even in the House opposition was not harmonious. And the Presidential campaign now approaching, a record of promise. more than performance was in order. Clay came to Washington this winter in person to argue cases before the black gowns in the pillared basement, and confer with political friends. Many sharp-sighted Whigs, who saw in Buena Vista's hero the rising sun, were for as non-committal a platform as possible. "Throw the reins," they would say, "on the horse's neck and he will take us through in safety." And once again the Massachusetts Daniel, whose utterances had been so bold when far away from the capital, seemed to shrink as he entered the lion's den. He had his own chances to calculate, and, if one must be plain, he overcalculated them greatly. To origi nate was not his forte in political legislation. A resolve of the previous session, which forbade the annexation by war of any new territory whatsoever, was introduced, and known as Berrien's resolve, because Webster would not put his own idea into shape. And where was Webster now, with his breathlessly awaited speech to stop the war? The winter was far advanced before he came to Washington at all; and then he seemed most occupied in thumping the dust out of his briefs in the court room under the Senate chamber. One declaration did Ashmun, of Massachusetts, propose and carry in the House, that this war had been "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States." It was |