ombe. The Whigs were now happy in having "diverted the war-thunder
against the Democrats" by running for the Presidency General Taylor, a
good soldier who did not know whether he was a Whig or a Democrat, but
who, besides being a hero of the war, was inoffensive to the South, for
he lived in Louisiana and had slaves of his own. It is characteristic
of the time that the Democrats, in whose counsels the Southern men
prevailed, now began a practice of choosing Northern candidates, and
nominated General Cass of Michigan, whose distinction had not been won
in war. The Democratic Congressmen in this debate made game of the
Whigs, with their war-hero, and seem to have carried a crude manner of
pleasantry pretty far when Lincoln determined to show them that they
could be beaten at that game. He seems to have succeeded admirably,
with a burlesque comparison, too long to quote, of General Cass's
martial exploits with his own, and other such-like matter enhanced by
the most extravagant Western manner and delivery.

Anyone who reads much of the always grave and sometimes most moving
orations of Lincoln's later years may do well to turn back to this
agreeable piece of debating-society horse-play. But he should then
turn a few pages further back to Lincoln's little Bill for the gradual
and compensated extinction of slavery in the District of Columbia,
where Washington stands. He introduced this of his own motion, without
encouragement from Abolitionist or Non-Abolitionist, accompanying it
with a brief statement that he had carefully ascertained that the
representative people of the district privately approved of it, but had
no right to commit them to public support of it. It perished, of
course. With the views which he had long formed and continued to hold
about slavery, very few opportunities could in these years come to him
of proper and useful action against it. He seized upon these
opportunities not less because in doing so he had to stand alone.

His career as a Congressman was soon over. There was no movement to
re-elect him, and the Whigs now lost his constituency. His speeches
and his votes against the Mexican war offended his friends. Even his
partner, the Abolitionist, Mr. Herndon, whose further acquaintance we
have to make, was too much infected with the popularity of a successful
war to understand Lincoln's plain position or to approve of his giving
votes which might seem unpatriotic. Lincoln wrote back to hi