Part 4 (1/2)
In that same year the Mexican War broke out. Hardin became colonel of one of the three regiments of Illinois volunteers called for by President Polk, while Baker raised a fourth regiment, which was also accepted. Colonel Hardin was killed in the battle of Buena Vista, and Colonel Baker won great distinction in the fighting near the City of Mexico.
Like Abraham Lincoln, Douglas was also elected to Congress in 1846, where he had already served the two preceding terms. But these redoubtable Illinois champions were not to have a personal tilt in the House of Representatives. Before Congress met, the Illinois legislature elected Douglas to the United States Senate for six years from March 4, 1847.
VI
First Session of the Thirtieth Congress--Mexican War--”Wilmot Proviso”--Campaign of 1848--Letters to Herndon about Young Men in Politics--Speech in Congress on the Mexican War--Second Session of the Thirtieth Congress--Bill to Prohibit Slavery in the District of Columbia--Lincoln's Recommendations of Office-Seekers--Letters to Speed--Commissioner of the General Land Office--Declines Governors.h.i.+p of Oregon
Very few men are fortunate enough to gain distinction during their first term in Congress. The reason is obvious. Legally, a term extends over two years; practically, a session of five or six months during the first, and three months during the second year ordinarily reduce their opportunities more than one half. In those two sessions, even if we presuppose some knowledge of parliamentary law, they must learn the daily routine of business, make the acquaintance of their fellow-members, who already, in the Thirtieth Congress, numbered something over two hundred, study the past and prospective legislation on a mult.i.tude of minor national questions entirely new to the new members, and perform the drudgery of haunting the departments in the character of unpaid agent and attorney to attend to the private interests of const.i.tuents--a physical task of no small proportions in Lincoln's day, when there was neither street-car nor omnibus in the ”city of magnificent distances,” as Was.h.i.+ngton was nicknamed. Add to this that the princ.i.p.al work of preparing legislation is done by the various committees in their committee-rooms, of which the public hears nothing, and that members cannot choose their own time for making speeches; still further, that the management of debate on prepared legislation must necessarily be intrusted to members of long experience as well as talent, and it will be seen that the novice need not expect immediate fame.
It is therefore not to be wondered at that Lincoln's single term in the House of Representatives at Was.h.i.+ngton added practically nothing to his reputation. He did not attempt to s.h.i.+ne forth in debate by either a stinging retort or a witty epigram, or by a sudden burst of inspired eloquence. On the contrary, he took up his task as a quiet but earnest and patient apprentice in the great workshop of national legislation, and performed his share of duty with industry and intelligence, as well as with a modest and appreciative respect for the ability and experience of his seniors.
”As to speech-making,” he wrote, ”by way of getting the hang of the House, I made a little speech two or three days ago on a post-office question of no general interest. I find speaking here and elsewhere about the same thing. I was about as badly scared, and no worse, as I am when I speak in court. I expect to make one within a week or two in which I hope to succeed well enough to wish you to see it.” And again, some weeks later: ”I just take my pen to say that Mr. Stephens of Georgia, a little, slim, pale-faced consumptive man with a voice like Logan's, has just concluded the very best speech of an hour's length I ever heard. My old, withered, dry eyes are full of tears yet.”
He was appointed the junior Whig member of the Committee on Post-offices and Post-roads, and shared its prosaic but eminently useful labors both in the committee-room and the House debates. His name appears on only one other committee,--that on Expenditures of the War Department,--and he seems to have interested himself in certain amendments of the law relating to bounty lands for soldiers and such minor military topics. He looked carefully after the interests of Illinois in certain grants of land to that State for railroads, but expressed his desire that the government price of the reserved sections should not be increased to actual settlers.
During the first session of the Thirtieth Congress he delivered three set speeches in the House, all of them carefully prepared and fully written out. The first of these, on January 12, 1848, was an elaborate defense of the Whig doctrine summarized in a House resolution pa.s.sed a week or ten days before, that the Mexican War ”had been unnecessarily and unconst.i.tutionally commenced by the President,” James K. Polk. The speech is not a mere party diatribe, but a terse historical and legal examination of the origin of the Mexican War. In the after-light of our own times which s.h.i.+nes upon these transactions, we may readily admit that Mr. Lincoln and the Whigs had the best of the argument, but it must be quite as readily conceded that they were far behind the President and his defenders in political and party strategy. The former were clearly wasting their time in discussing an abstract question of international law upon conditions existing twenty months before. During those twenty months the American arms had won victory after victory, and planted the American flag on the ”halls of the Montezumas.” Could even successful argument undo those victories or call back to life the brave American soldiers who had shed their blood to win them?
It may be a.s.sumed as an axiom that Providence has never gifted any political party with all of political wisdom or blinded it with all of political folly. Upon the foregoing point of controversy the Whigs were sadly thrown on the defensive, and labored heavily under their already discounted declamation. But instinct rather than sagacity led them to turn their eyes to the future, and successfully upon other points to retrieve their mistake. Within six weeks after Lincoln's speech President Polk sent to the Senate a treaty of peace, under which Mexico ceded to the United States an extent of territory equal in area to Germany, France, and Spain combined, and thereafter the origin of the war was an obsolete question. What should be done with the new territory was now the issue.
This issue embraced the already exciting slavery question, and Mr.
Lincoln was doubtless gratified that the Whigs had taken a position upon it so consonant with his own convictions. Already, in the previous Congress, the body of the Whig members had joined a small group of antislavery Democrats in fastening upon an appropriation bill the famous ”Wilmot Proviso,” that slavery should never exist in territory acquired from Mexico, and the Whigs of the Thirtieth Congress steadily followed the policy of voting for the same restriction in regard to every piece of legislation where it was applicable. Mr. Lincoln often said he had voted forty or fifty times for the Wilmot Proviso in various forms during his single term.
Upon another point he and the other Whigs were equally wise. Repelling the Democratic charge that they were unpatriotic in denouncing the war, they voted in favor of every measure to sustain, supply, and encourage the soldiers in the field. But their most adroit piece of strategy, now that the war was ended, was in their movement to make General Taylor President.
In this movement Mr. Lincoln took a leading and active part. No living American statesman has ever been idolized by his party adherents as was Henry Clay for a whole generation, and Mr. Lincoln fully shared this hero-wors.h.i.+p. But his practical campaigning as a candidate for presidential elector in the Harrison campaign of 1840, and the Clay campaign of 1844, in Illinois and the adjoining States, afforded him a basis for sound judgment, and convinced him that the day when Clay could have been elected President was forever pa.s.sed.
”Mr. Clay's chance for an election is just no chance at all,” he wrote on April 30. ”He might get New York, and that would have elected in 1844, but it will not now, because he must now, at the least, lose Tennessee which he had then, and in addition the fifteen new votes of Florida, Texas, Iowa, and Wisconsin.... In my judgment, we can elect n.o.body but General Taylor; and we cannot elect him without a nomination.
Therefore don't fail to send a delegate.” And again on the same day: ”Mr. Clay's letter has not advanced his interests any here. Several who were against Taylor, but not for anybody particularly before, are since taking ground, some for Scott and some for McLean. Who will be nominated neither I nor any one else can tell. Now, let me pray to you in turn. My prayer is that you let nothing discourage or baffle you, but that, in spite of every difficulty, you send us a good Taylor delegate from your circuit. Make Baker, who is now with you, I suppose, help about it. He is a good hand to raise a breeze.”
In due time Mr. Lincoln's sagacity and earnestness were both justified; for on June 12 he was able to write to an Illinois friend:
”On my return from Philadelphia, where I had been attending the nomination of 'Old Rough,' I found your letter in a ma.s.s of others which had acc.u.mulated in my absence. By many, and often, it had 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--Barnburners, 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 on which they are doomed to be hanged themselves.”
n.o.body understood better than Mr. Lincoln the obvious truth that in politics it does not suffice merely to nominate candidates. Something must also be done to elect them. Two of the letters which he at this time wrote home to his young law partner, William H. Herndon, are especially worth quoting in part, not alone to show his own zeal and industry, but also as a perennial instruction and encouragement to young men who have an ambition to make a name and a place for themselves in American politics:
”Last night I was attending a sort of caucus of the Whig members, held in relation to the coming presidential election. The whole field of the nation was scanned, and all is high hope and confidence.... Now, as to the young men. You must not wait to be brought forward by the older men.
For instance, do you suppose that I should ever have got into notice if I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men? You young men get together and form a 'Rough and Ready Club,' and have regular meetings and speeches.... Let every one play the part he can play best,--some speak, some sing, and all 'holler.' Your meetings will be of evenings; the older men, and the women, will go to hear you; so that it will not only contribute to the election of 'Old Zach,' but will be an interesting pastime, and improving to the intellectual faculties of all engaged.”
And in another letter, answering one from Herndon in which that young aspirant complains of having been neglected, he says:
”The subject of that letter is exceedingly painful to me; and I cannot but think there is some mistake in your impression of the motives of the old men. I suppose I am now one of the old men; and I declare, on my veracity, which I think is good with you, that nothing could afford me more satisfaction than to learn that you and others of my young friends at home are doing battle in the contest, and endearing themselves to the people, and taking a stand far above any I have been able to reach in their admiration. I cannot conceive that other old men feel differently.
Of course I cannot demonstrate what I say; but I was young once, and I am sure I was never ungenerously thrust back. I hardly know what to say.
The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow me to a.s.sure you that suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situation.
There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury. Cast about, and see if this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known to fall into it.”
Mr. Lincoln's interest in this presidential campaign did not expend itself merely in advice to others. We have his own written record that he also took an active part for the election of General Taylor after his nomination, speaking a few times in Maryland near Was.h.i.+ngton, several times in Ma.s.sachusetts, and canva.s.sing quite fully his own district in Illinois. Before the session of Congress ended he also delivered two speeches in the House--one on the general subject of internal improvements, and the other the usual political campaign speech which members of Congress are in the habit of making to be printed for home circulation; made up mainly of humorous and satirical criticism, favoring the election of General Taylor, and opposing the election of General Ca.s.s, the Democratic candidate. Even this production, however, is lighted up by a pa.s.sage of impressive earnestness and eloquence, in which he explains and defends the att.i.tude of the Whigs in denouncing the origin of the Mexican War:
”If to say 'the war was unnecessarily and unconst.i.tutionally commenced by the President,' be opposing the war, then the Whigs have very generally opposed it. Whenever they have spoken at all they have said this; and they have said it on what has appeared good reason to them.