put down here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family connections." This referred, of course, to the family into which he had married, but to a group of friends Lincoln laughingly protested, "I do not remember of but one of my relatives who ever came to see me, and while he was in town he was accused of stealing a jews-harp."

When, at last, his time came, Lincoln put forth every effort to succeed Baker in Congress. He wrote to several active men in each precinct and saw that the local paper did not neglect him. He was a shrewd and close campaigner, missing no points in the fight and keeping a sharp eye on all the details of the contest.

In the election he carried his own county by the largest majority ever given to a Whig candidate up to that time, and won the district by a liberal margin. Then, as the first flush of victory passed away, he sadly admitted, "It has not pleased me as much as I expected."

IN CONGRESS

Lincoln, taking his seat, December, 1847, entered a Congress notable for distinguished members. As the only Whig from Illinois, he was singled out and welcomed by the leaders.

His delight in the great library at the Capitol. — President
Polk's Mexican War policy challenged by the new member,
although his course cost him his popularity at home. — The
House roaring with laughter over his stump speech on the floor
in the campaign of 1848. Speaking in Massachusetts in the
summer of that year. Affected by the Free-soil movement in
that state.
His unsuccessful effort in 1849 to abolish slavery
and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. - Seeking an
appointment under President Taylor in 1849 and his fortunate
failure.

LINCOLN was thirty-eight when he took his seat in Congress and entered upon another grade in the university of life.

The time was well chosen for him. The eloquence of Webster still contended with the philosophy of Calhoun for the mastery of a Senate, in which sat many other noted men, among them, Benton and Cass, Tom Corwin, Sam Houston in his Navajo blanket, Jefferson Davis and Simon Cameron, Hannibal Hamlin, and John A. Dix. Stephen A.

Douglas received his promotion to the upper chamber the day Lincoln entered the lower.

Robert C. Winthrop was the Speaker of the House, and under him sat Alexander H. Stephens, Robert Toombs, Collamer of Vermont, and Andrew Johnson. Horace Greeley was added to the membership by a special election. Above all, the name of John Quincy Adams still illuminated the roster of the House, and it was while Lincoln was a member that the “old man eloquent” fell, mortally stricken at his post of duty in the hall of representatives, worn out by a life of service to the republic.

The new Congressman from Illinois was totally unknown to his fellow-members. As the only Whig from his state, however, he received a special welcome from his party associates, and this, with his natural gift for winning men, soon marked him out from the crowd. He attracted the favor of Daniel Webster and was a guest at several of the great expounder's Saturday breakfasts. He needed. only to tell his first story in the lounging room at the Capitol to gain attention there, and within a few weeks he was the recognized champion of the story-tellers of Congress.

The Congressional Library and the Library of the Supreme Court, with their great stores of books, were like a gold mine in his eyes. More than once

the attendants were amused to see him tie up a lot of books in his bandanna handkerchief, stick his cane through the knot, and go forth to his boarding house with the bundle over his shoulder, just as in other days he had carried his wardrobe while tramping from job to job.

James K. Polk was President and the Mexican War in progress. Many people believed it was an unjust war and brought on for the purpose of gaining more territory for slavery and adding more slave states to the Union. The President insisted that the war was forced upon the United States by Mexico, that she had invaded our territory and shed the blood of our citizens on our soil. His opponents denied this. They contended that the President had sent American soldiers beyond the established boundaries of the country, and that the Mexican troops had only tried to repel them from what Mexico rightfully regarded as her own soil.

Without waiting to follow the lead of older members, Lincoln drew up and presented a series of resolutions before his first month in Congress was at an end. These are known to history as the "spot resolutions," in which the question is sharply pressed upon President Polk as to whether the spot to which he had sent American soldiers and where the first blood of the war was shed was

within the established boundaries of the United States.

After a few weeks he addressed the House in support of his resolutions, delivering a sober argument in behalf of them and giving a searching review of the case. He called upon the President to answer the questions candidly, reminding him that he sat where Washington sat and ought to answer as Washington would answer. If the questions should be evaded, the country must accept the evasion as a confession that the war was wrong and that the President hoped to conceal the wrong beneath military glory "that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood, that serpent's eye that charms to destroy," and he gave it as his opinion that Polk was "a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man."

This speech, made when the country was ringing with cheers for the victory of American arms, brought upon Lincoln's head the censure of many of his friends and constituents, to one of whom, a clergyman, he wrote, asking if the precept "whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them" is "obsolete, of no force, of no application." Much as he opposed the sending of an army into Mexico, all the appropriations for supporting the soldiers in the field received his vote, and to capture