oved of slavery; it was at Alton
in Illinois that, in 1836, Elijah Lovejoy, an Abolitionist publisher,
had been martyred by the mob which had failed to intimidate him. In
1837, when the bold agitation of the Abolitionists was exciting much
disapproval, the Illinois Legislature passed resolutions condemning
that agitation and declaring in soothing tones the constitutional
powerlessness of Congress to interfere with slavery in the Southern
States. Now Lincoln himself--whether for good reasons or bad must be
considered later--thoroughly disapproved of the actual agitation of the
Abolitionists; and the resolutions in question, but for one merely
theoretical point of law and for an unctuous misuse of the adjective
"sacred," contained nothing which he could not literally have accepted.
The objection to them lay in the motive which made it worth while to
pass them. Lincoln drew up and placed on the records of the House a
protest against these resolutions. He defines in it his own quite
conservative opinions; he deprecates the promulgation of Abolition
doctrines; but he does so because it "tends rather to increase than
abate the evils" of slavery; and he lays down "that the institution of
slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy." One man alone
could he induce to sign this protest with him, and that man was not
seeking re-election.

By 1842 Lincoln had grown sensibly older, and a little less ready, we
may take it, to provoke unnecessary antagonism. Probably very old
members of Free Churches are the people best able to appreciate the
daring of the following utterance. Speaking on Washington's birthday
in a Presbyterian church to a temperance society formed among the
rougher people of the town and including former drunkards who desired
to reform themselves, he broke out in protest against the doctrine that
respectable persons should shun the company of people tempted to
intemperance. "If," he said, "they believe as they profess that
Omnipotence condescended to take upon Himself the form of sinful man,
and as such die an ignominious death, surely they will not refuse
submission to the infinitely lesser condescension, for the temporal and
perhaps eternal salvation of a large, erring, and unfortunate class of
their fellow creatures! Nor is the condescension very great. In my
judgment such of us as have never fallen victims have been spared more
from the absence of appetite than from any mental or moral superiori