Lincoln's main assignment in congressional committee work was on Post-office and Post-roads. He plodded through the detail duties with industry. There was no more earnest worker in the ranks of Congress. On an important occasion, Lincoln stood by the Democratic Postmaster General, and opposed the policy of the Whig members of the Committee. He worked out a painstaking plan for certain postmasters receiving subscriptions for newspapers and periodicals. He declared it to be in accordance with republican institutions, which could be best sustained by the diffusion of knowledge and the due encouragement of a universal, national spirit of inquiry and discussion of public events through the medium of the public press.[233]

Lincoln prepared himself thoroughly in the logic of protection to American industries. He advanced considerably in a serious understanding of its fundamental importance. Not satisfied with old and common contention, he sounded the depths of discussion, by his quaint and original method.

He had intense sympathy for the toiler. He deemed a wise and just distribution of wealth a national duty. He pronounced that rather than production the deeper object of government. "And inasmuch," he said, "as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labor has produced them. But it has so happened, in all ages of the world, that some have labored, and others have without labor enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. That is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government."[234]

He was in advance of the thought of his day in insisting that all transportation, commerce, distribution, not essential, was a heavy pensioner upon industry, depriving it of a large proportion of its just fruits. He advocated the remedy of driving useless toil and idleness out of existence. He announced that all work done directly or indirectly in carrying articles to the place of consumption, which could have been produced in sufficient abundance, with as little effort at the place of consumption as at the place they were carried from, was useless labor.[235] These fragments show the intellectual power of a growing man of fine sympathies, the sound conviction of a benefactor of his kind.

That Lincoln rapidly adapted himself to the ways of Congress appears from the variety of the subjects he discussed. Few of the new comers were more in evidence. His speech on internal improvements reveal the secret of his power. He sought no name to sanction his opinions, he used his own illustrations and reached his conclusions unaided. He attacked the opinions of those high in power and station. President Polk maintained that the burden of improvements would be general while the benefits would be local, thus involving a pernicious inequality. The reply of Lincoln is a sign of his political wisdom. He argued that inequality was never to be embraced for its own sake; but that if every good thing was to be discarded which might be inseparably connected with some degree of inequality, then all government would have to be discarded. The Capitol, he continued, was built at the public expense, but still it was of some peculiar local advantage, and to make sure of all inequality Congress would have to hold its sessions, as the loafer lodged, "in spots about." He added that there were few stronger cases in this world of "burden to the many and benefit to the few," of "inequality," than the Presidency itself; that an honest laborer dug coal at about seventy cents a day, while the President dug abstractions at about Seventy Dollars a day, and the coal was clearly worth more than the abstractions. He declared that the true rule, in determining whether to embrace or reject anything, was not whether it had any evil in it, but whether it had more of evil than of good; that almost everything, especially of government policy, was an inseparable compound of the two; so that the best judgment of the preponderance between them was continually demanded.[236]

A great national party witnessed only the malign consequences of the internal improvement policy. To avoid its abuse, they practically advocated its abatement. Seeing only the danger of extravagance, the Democratic party was not free to contemplate prudent expenditures. Lincoln with his keen sight presented a solution indicative of statesmanship. His plan permitted the States working in a smaller sphere of activity in local improvements to cross paths and to work together in larger national matters under the guidance of sober and restrained general legislation, based on statistical information.

The keen, shrewd instinct of the politician in Lincoln shows through his strenuous advocacy of General Taylor as the Whig candidate for the Presidency. He was in the van in fighting opposition in Illinois to the silent soldier and untried statesman. In April he wrote his friend Washburne to let nothing discourage or baffle him, but, in spite of every difficulty, to send a good Taylor delegate from his circuit, and to make Baker, who was a good hand to raise a breeze, to help about it.[237] On the same day he admonished another associate in his inimitable manner. "I know our good friend Browning is a great admirer of Mr. Clay, and I therefore fear he is favoring his nomination. If he is, ask him to discard feeling, and try if he can possibly, as a matter of judgment, count the votes necessary to elect him.

"In my judgment we can elect nobody but General Taylor; but we cannot elect him without a nomination. Therefore, don't fail to send a delegate."[238]

His admiration for Clay was subdued in his zeal for political success. He would not do honor to the statesman as an idle tribute so he would put him aside and call to the leadership of the Whig party a man whose strength was largely in the uncertainty of his views, in silence not in known sincerity. He saw its cause could triumph with Taylor; that the extension of the slave power was more likely to come from the northern non-slave-holding Cass than from the southern slave-holding Taylor. To still further confound the jumble, the Whig convention avoided annunciation of distinctive principles, and even dared to vote down an affirmance of the Wilmot Proviso.[239] After the selection of "Old Rough," with Stephens, Toombs and Preston, he continued an aggressive interest in his candidacy.[240] He again pleaded with his friends for support from his State.

"By many, and often, it has been said they would not abide the nomination of Taylor; but since the deed has been done, they are fast falling in, and in my opinion we shall have a most overwhelming glorious triumph. One unmistakable sign is that all the odds and ends are with us—Barburners, Native Americans, Tyler men, disappointed office-seeking Locofocos, and the Lord knows what. This is important, if in nothing else, in showing which way the wind blows. Some of the sanguine men have set down all the states as certain for Taylor but Illinois, and it as doubtful. Cannot something be done even in Illinois? Taylor's nomination takes the Locos on the blind side. It turns the war thunder against them. The war is now to them the gallows of Haman, which they built for us, and upon which they are doomed to be hanged themselves."[241]

According to a peculiar and prevalent method in the House, of spending public money for personal or partisan purposes, Lincoln availed himself of the privilege of making a campaign speech. It has met with varied comment. Lamon freely and soberly passes this judgment. "Few like it have ever been heard in either of those venerable chambers. It is a common remark of those who know nothing of the subject, that Mr. Lincoln was devoid of imagination; but the reader of this speech will entertain a different opinion. It opens to us a mind fertile in images sufficiently rare and striking, but of somewhat questionable taste. It must have been heard in amazement by those gentlemen of the House who had never known a Hanks, or seen a New Salem."[242]

Herndon, twenty years later, pronounced it a masterpiece and declared that one who would read it would lay it down convinced that Lincoln's ascendency for a quarter of a century among the political spirits in Illinois was by no means an accident, and would not wonder that Douglas, with all his forensic ability, averted, as long as he could, a contest with a man whose plain, analytical reasoning was not less potent than his mingled drollery and caricature were effective.[F]

Lincoln entered on the hard job of showing that it was sound doctrine for the President to shun defined public opinions and allow Congress its own way without hindrance from the chief executive. The history of the United States has been a vigorous answer to this contention. As President he made short shrift of that policy, though his splendid statement of the Whig position may well attract more than passing attention. He maintained that the Democrats were in favor of laying down in advance a platform as a unit, and then of forcing the people to ratify all of its provisions, however unpalatable some of them might be; that the Whigs were in favor of making Presidential elections, and the legislation of the country distinct matters; so that the people could elect whom they pleased, and afterwards legislate just as they pleased. The difference, he insisted, was as clear as noon day, and that leaving the People's business in their hands was the true Republican position.[243]

No more dramatic attack during the entire session, arraigning the Democratic candidate was made than in this speech for his attitude on the Wilmot resolution. "In 1846," says Lincoln, "General Cass was for the proviso at once; that in March, 1847, he was still for it, but not just then; and that in December, 1847, he was against it altogether. This is a true index to the whole man. When the question was raised in 1846, he was in a blustering hurry to take ground for it. He sought to be in advance, and to avoid the uninteresting position of a mere follower; but soon he began to see glimpses of the great Democratic ox-goad waving in his face, and to hear indistinctly, a voice saying, 'Back! Back, sir! Back a little!' He shakes his head and bats his eyes, and blunders back to his position of March, 1847; but still the goad waves, and the voice grows more distinct and sharper still, 'Back, sir, Back, I say! Further back!'—and back he goes to the position of December, 1847, at which the goad is still, and the voice soothingly says, 'So! Stand at that!'"[G]

That Lincoln had not fully forgotten the form of utterance that angered Darbey and has bothered most biographers since, appears in the following selection: "Like a horde of hungry ticks you have stuck to the tail of the Hermitage lion to the end of his life; and you are still sticking to it, and drawing a loathsome sustenance from it, after he is dead. A fellow once advertised that he had made a discovery by which he could make a new man out of an old one, and have enough of the stuff left to make a little yellow dog. Just such a discovery has General Jackson's popularity been to you. You not only twice made President out of him out of it, but you have had enough of the stuff left to make Presidents of several comparatively small men since; and it is your chief reliance now to make still another."[244]

At least it may be said that he was not the aggressor or the sole participant in such a "scathing and withering style,"[245] nor is it at all hard to find like statements and oratory in every period of our history. This is almost the last time that the historian need halt in his comment on the expression of Lincoln. Years of experience brought him to a higher conception of public utterances. When the subject matter bade exalted expression he grew to the occasion with amazing avidity.

This speech revealed Lincoln to Congress. It gained prestige among the fulminations of the session. The Baltimore American named it the "crack speech of the day." It labeled Lincoln as a very able, acute, uncouth, honest, upright man and a tremendous, wag withal.[246]

His reputation as a Congressman and orator, begot him the honorable privilege of addressing in September, the same audience in the east that often listened to the triumphant Webster. Only a faint echo of these speeches of the Illinois representative remains.

A representative Boston newspaper reports him as saying that the people of Illinois agreed entirely with the people in Massachusetts on the slavery question, except, that they did not think about it as constantly; that all agreed that slavery was an evil, which could not be affected in the slave states; but that the question of the extension of slavery to new territories was under control. In opposition to this extension Lincoln believed that the self-named "Free Soil" party was far behind the Whigs; that the "Free Soil" men in claiming that name, indirectly attempted a deception, by implying that Whigs were not free soil men; that in declaring that they would "do their duty and leave the consequences to God," merely gave an excuse for taking a course they were not able to maintain by fair argument. Making this declaration, he further argued, did not show what their duty was, that if it did there would be no use for judgment; that men might as well be made without intellect, and when divine or human law did not clearly point their duty, they had no means of finding out what it was by using their most intellectual judgment of the consequences, and that if there were divine law or human law for voting for Martin Van Buren, then he would give up the argument.[247]

New England testified to its liking for the western advocate of Taylor. The Boston Advertiser stated that at the close of his masterly speech, the audience gave three enthusiastic cheers for Illinois, and three more for the eloquent Whig member from that state.[248] His Boston speech was so effective "that several Whigs who had gone off on the 'Free Soil' fizzle returned again to the Whig ranks."[249]

Ida Tarbell contends that at this time Lincoln first experienced the full meaning of the "Free Soil" sentiment, as Massachusetts was then quivering under the impassioned protests of the great Abolitionists, and Sumner was beginning to devote his life to freedom and was speaking often at riotous meetings. Miss Tarbell further maintains Lincoln was sensitive to every shade of popular feeling in New England, and was stirred as never before on the question of slavery; that he heard Seward's speech in Tremont Temple, and that night, as the two men sat talking, said gravely to the great anti-slavery advocate:

"Governor Seward, I have been thinking about what you said in your speech. I reckon you are right. We have got to deal with this slavery question, and got to give much more attention to it hereafter than we have been doing."[250]

This evidence does not prove that Lincoln then began to take radical ground on the slavery question. Ten years before in the Illinois Legislature, he made his protest, and later at every opportunity when circumstances favored. His hatred to slavery had long been kindled. He needed little inspiration from the New York orator on New England soil to start his indignation. His statement to Seward shows that he was ready for radical conduct as soon as the event permitted the onslaught. He rejoiced at the growth of the public opinion that betokened the doom of the artificial institution. But he did not need to sit at the feet of eastern teachers. The New England trip was an incident, not an epoch in his career.

The second session of this Congress was rather free from turbulence. Lincoln was a silent spectator. He went with his party on the main issues and voted for the Wilmot Proviso "about 42 times."[251] The Northern Democrats in the House returned in a resentful spirit at the support rendered Taylor by eight slave states. They were not backward in supporting legislation to exclude slavery from California and New Mexico.[252] The Senate, true to its love of vested interests speedily disposed of the proposal.

During the session a New York representative let loose a resolution with the clanging preamble of a "law rooting out the slave trade in the District of Columbia."[253] Lincoln was one of three or four northern Whigs who voted to lay this exuberant measure on the table.[254]

As the sole Whig representative of his State, coming from a constituency hardly distinguished for its anti-slavery sentiments, while most Whigs even from the New England states were silent; no external duty beckoned him; no powerful organization called him to ride the storm by branding the jealous institution. Selfish ambition whispered prudence and calmed the voice of protest.

But within the very shade of the Capitol, the slave girl was coined into drachmas. He felt the world shame that had come upon the nation by this blot on its professions. The desire to strike another blow grew strong in him. As he tried a decade before in the legislative halls of Illinois, so now in the national assembly, in a very home of slavery, he rang forth his hate of the old injustice. Still he did not give way to an outburst of vengeance; he husbanded his anger; thought only of the consequence, planned with wisdom the most effective stab at the national disgrace.

The politician walked hand in hand with the patriot. He gathered discordant elements to the support of a common cause calling forth admiration at the unrivalled policy. He consecrated to the high purpose of dedicating the national Capitol to a free citizenship, a devotion and sagacity that made him the peer of any strategist of his day. He conceived and carried out a daring plan of securing the support to his astounding proposal of the Mayor of Washington, a representative of the intelligent slave-holding citizens of that community. With equal skill, he secured the reinforcement of the radical Giddings, who says in his diary that Lincoln's bill to abolish slavery was approved by all; that he believed it as good a bill as we could get at this time, and was willing to pay for slaves in order to save them from the southern market, as he supposed every man in the District would sell his slaves if he saw that slavery was to be abolished.[255] Lincoln held together two such leaders in advocacy of the same measure affecting the sore subject, thus revealing the supreme tactician, who in later years held to the public service a Seward, a Stanton and a Chase in the same cabinet.

He persuaded the slave holder that it was wiser to adopt his measure than in later years confront the danger of more exacting legislation. He convinced the Abolitionists that his law was the best then attainable. His alarming proposition was as innocent in expression as patience and wisdom could make it. It provided for the ultimate emancipation of all slaves born after 1850 and the manumission of existing slaves on full payment to willing owners. After soberly providing for the return of all fugitive slaves the whole plan was made dependent upon the approval of a popular vote.[256]

The slaveholders were more illiberal than the Abolitionists. They spurned all compromise. They would admit no suggestion that laid bare the injustice of their institution. They knew that when an inroad was once made, its days would be numbered; that compromise was the dawn of the end. They brought all their power into being. The social influences of Washington were called into polite requisition and the Mayor, under this duress, withdrew his sanction.[257] The biographers, who knew Lincoln in the days of trial, have given expression to a splendid tribute to his constancy. "Fifteen years afterwards, in the stress and tempest of a terrible war, it was Mr. Lincoln's strange fortune to sign a bill sent him by Congress for the abolition of slavery in Washington; and perhaps the most remarkable thing about the whole transaction was that while we were looking politically upon a new heaven and a new earth,—for the vast change in our moral and economical condition might justify so audacious a phrase,—when there was scarcely a man on the continent who had not greatly shifted his point of view in a dozen years, there was so little change in Mr. Lincoln. The same hatred of slavery, the same sympathy with the slave, the same consideration for the slaveholder as the victim of a system he had inherited, the same sense of divided responsibility between the South and the North, the same desire to effect great reforms with as little individual damage and injury, as little disturbance of social conditions as possible, were equally evident when the raw pioneer signed the protest with Dan Stone of Vandalia, when the mature man moved the resolution of 1849 in the Capitol and when the President gave the sanction of his bold signature of the act which swept away the slave shambles from the City of Washington."[258]

He warred against slavery not the slave holder. He took full account of the conditions leading to the ownership of human property. He realized that it was a legacy of a former age, that it was not a product of present and individual responsibility, that it was a national fault not a private one, that the slave holder was the victim of the system not the cause. So he would not have the change come with a rush lest it might not be abiding. He was willing to wait. Lincoln knew that progress is a slow and labored process and that haste is often the companion of reaction. He would awaken no just and general resentment, a resentment that still lingers in the hearts of men from a war-won emancipation. It would have been well for the North and South had this measure of gradual compensated emancipation have become the settled policy of the nation. The most cankerous conflict of the age might have been spared and the problems resulting therefrom less perplexing. Like a wise surgeon, he dared an early operation rather than delay the necessity of a more drastic remedy. When passion forged to the front as the guide, when North and South had ample occasion to dwell on mutual wrongs, when the Constitution of the Union ceased to be the prevailing measure of the individual and general welfare, the days of peace were being numbered. Lincoln realized that compromise is only available when wisely adapted to opposing forces at the fitting time.

Thus, there stood forth in Congress a man who subdued his passion for the Declaration of Independence and yet who was not willing that the down-trodden should eternally remain in the darkness of vicarious government. He knew that slavery could not always dwell in the seat of government, that the time would come when there would be no human chattel on American soil. Still, Lincoln did not shift to others the whole burden of bringing the day to pass, but took his stand against the iniquity of human bondage with sublime wisdom. He tempered but did not dull his sense of justice. He struck a second blow at the national evil, a sign that he still was true to his vow at New Orleans and his protest at Vandalia.

Like other legislators, Lincoln was obliged to deal with the issue of handing out offices as party spoil. Trade and industry were still in their infancy and had not yet begun to attract the activity of the aspiring. The highway to general distinction and to honor was largely that of public office. Hence, there ensued, in the words of Lincoln, a "wriggle and struggle for office" and an effort to find "a way to live without work."[259]

The attitude of Lincoln in days when the Jackson theory was in its full vigor is noteworthy. As the sole Whig representative, beside Colonel Baker, Lincoln asked, in 1849, to be heard on all appointments in Illinois. His remarkable action is seen in the following letter: "Mr. Bond I know to be personally every way worthy of the office; and he is very numerously and most respectably recommended. His papers I send to you; and I solicit for his claims a full and fair consideration. Having said this much, I add that in my individual judgment the appointment of Mr. Thomas would be better.... I add that from personal knowledge I consider Mr. Bond every way worthy of the office, and qualified to fill it. Holding the individual opinion that the appointment of a different gentleman would be better, I ask especial attention and consideration for his claim, and for the opinions expressed in his favor by those over whom I can claim no superiority."[260] As Congressman he selected a postman of a village with the same precision that he later did a war minister.

The activity of Lincoln in securing the nomination and election of Taylor commanded the regard of some leading politicians. They advised his candidacy for the General Land Office. Lincoln was poorly equipped to seek the favor of those dispensing patronage. He was not gifted with assiduity or forwardness so often essential to bearing away the palm. Seldom has a hunter for alluring official service so gently put obstacles in the way of his success. Though it is claimed he was even eager for the prize, he was careful to a nicety, to avoid a false position, while others were bending every effort and using every means at their disposal.

To several friends he wrote the following unique letter: "Some months since I gave my word to secure the appointment to that office of Mr. Cyrus Edwards, if in my power, in a case of a vacancy; and more recently I stipulated with Colonel Baker that if Mr. Edwards and Colonel J. L. D. Morrison could arrange with each other for one of them to withdraw, we would jointly recommend the other. In relation to these pledges, I must not only be chaste, but above suspicion. If the office shall be tendered to me, I must be permitted to say: 'Give it to Mr. Edwards, or if so agreed by them, to Colonel Morrison, and I decline it; if not, I accept.' With this understanding you are at liberty to procure me the offer of the appointment if you can; and I shall feel complimented by your effort, and still more by its success."[261]

But even his patience gave way when Justin Butterfield, a late opponent of Taylor, was considered for the place. He burst forth with the statement that if anything should be given to the State, it should be so given as to gratify friends, and to stimulate them to future exertions, and that it would mortify him deeply if General Taylor's administration should trample all his wishes in the dust merely to gratify friends of Clay.[262]

It was not surprising that the laggard procedure of Lincoln lost him this place. Political offices, like opportunity, do not wait long. And so it came to pass that the former opponent of the President was selected in the place of one who was his earnest advocate from the beginning. Though not backward in his claim for an elective office, he was still little inclined to play the servile part in an appointive position. He was willing enough to submit to the democratic judgment of his fellow men when he was given a public opportunity to present his claim, but he timidly shrank from a personal solicitation of a Presidential favor.

His final letter on the history of this affair is rather tinged with another sorrow. Mr. Edwards being offended with him, he wrote that the better part of one's life consisted of his friendships; that at a word he could have had the office any time before the Department was committed to Mr. Butterfield; and that word he forbore to speak chiefly for Mr. Edwards' sake,—losing the office that he might gain it, and that to lose his friendship, by the effort for him would oppress him very much, were he not sustained by the utmost consciousness of rectitude.[263]

The selection of Butterfield for the General Land Office did not shake the efforts of the friends of Lincoln to secure recognition of his valiant services in the Whig ranks. He was tendered the governorship of Oregon by Fillmore. The new land held forth enticing political promises, it was soon to become a state and a senatorship was a fair prospect. Close associates advised acceptance. Lamon says that Lincoln saw it all, and would have accepted "if his wife consented," but she refused to do so; and that time has shown that she was right.[264] What part Lincoln would have played in history if he had become a senator from Oregon may be interesting but none the less vain speculation. If the Lincoln and Douglas debates had been shifted from the prairies of Illinois to the national arena at Washington, who can say that Lincoln and Douglas might not have become rivals for the Presidency? It has been quite the fashion to assume that the Senate would have been destructive to the future of Lincoln, overlooking the plain fact that the National Assembly was the home of the renown of Douglas and his ladder to the Presidential nomination. Lincoln was not spoiled by the highest office in the land and there is no surety that the senate would have proved the grave of his career.

Two scant years of Congressional life worked a change in the politician from Illinois. He had come in a subdued mood to mingle in national affairs. Shrinkingly, he measured his humble equipment with that of illustrious legislators in Washington. While he left a respectable, but not an eminent record of achievement, he departed with a store of confidence in his worth. His intimate association with northern and southern leaders, his sure, inner knowledge of national legislative methods, his insight into the uncompromising character of the slavery controversy were not wasted in the part he was soon to play in events that would shake the very foundation of the nation.

Still, he returned to Springfield unhonored. In the opinion of his constituency, he made a series of blunders. His attitude on the war lost the district to the Whig party. His "Spot Resolutions" had become a by-word in the community, they were liberally satired in song and story. The political career of Lincoln had seemingly come to an inglorious conclusion.