In this, as in all measures designed to cripple the institution of slavery, Lincoln voted with the friends of freedom, although he did not take an active part in the debate. He seemed to be w iting and watching, after his usual cautious fashion. Later in the

session, he introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. He thought it a shame and a disgrace that traffic in slaves should be carried on right under the shadow of the Capitol in which the National Congress assembled to transact the public business. And, like many another Northern man, his heart was stirred with indignation to see coffles, or gangs, of slaves, handcuffed and linked in chains, passing through the streets of Washington on the way to the South. This was a good time to test the feeling of the House of Representatives. His bill provided that no person from without the District should be held to slavery in it; and that no person thereafter born in the District should be held in slavery anywhere. It also provided for the gradual emancipation of the slaves then in the District, the owners of the same being paid for them by the Government of the United States. The bill was to be voted on by the inhabitants of the District before it should be a law. The bill seems to us, in these days of enlightenment, very moderate. It recognized property in persons, for it provided that the Government should buy and free the slaves. But the bill was framed so that it might, if possible, pass Congress, not as an expression of what Lincoln thought was just and right to the slave and the slaveholder. But, temperate though the bill was, it excited a

storm of opposition. The Southern members were determined that no bill that was calculated to weaken slavery in any way, or to imply that slavery was not everything that was lovely and of good report, should ever pass Congress, if they could help it. Lincoln's bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia never came to a vote. Soon after, Congress adjourned and Lincoln, his term of office being out, went home to Illinois. When he was to return to the national capital, twelve years later, it would be to remain until slavery was abolished from one end of the republic to the other.

As

Lincoln was not a candidate for re-election. his was the only Whig district in the State, and was full of ambitious and able men who were Whigs, it had become the custom of the party to give the office of Congressman to no man twice in succession. Any man who wanted it for a second time was thought greedy. Edward D. Baker had just returned from the Mexican War, covered with the honors he had gained on the battlefield of Cerro Gordo. He was nominated and elected to succeed Lincoln. For the first and last time in his life, Lincoln became an applicant to an appointive office. Taylor was now President, and, according to the custom of the time, all the Democrats were to be turned out of office and their places given to Whigs who had done service in the campaign. Lincoln, with a plenty of ideas concerning public improvements and with some experience as a surveyor of lands, thought he would like to be the Commissioner of the General Land Office, a place in which he

would have charge of the sale and distribution of the lands belonging to the United States Government. To the surprise of his friends, and to his own great disappointment, which he did not attempt to conceal, Lincoln was refused the office he sought, but was offered that of Governor of the Territory of Oregon. This place, however, he declined. It was not to his taste, and, most likely, he was beginning to see that he had a greater work on this side of the Rocky Mountains. Moreover, Mrs. Lincoln was decidedly opposed to going to the Pacific coast. She had had enough of frontier life. Years afterward, when her husband had become President, she did not fail to remind him that her advice, when he was wavering, had restrained him from "throwing himself away" on a distant territorial governorship. The bait held out to Lincoln at that time was that Oregon would soon come into the Union as a State and that he could probably return as a United States Senator. This glittering prospect made him pause until his wife's opposition determined him. It is a curious coincidence that, when Lincoln was President, Edward D. Baker, who was Lincoln's friend and his successor in Congress, went to Oregon from California and was elected United States Senator from that State.

During Lincoln's term in Congress, lasting from December, 1847, to March, 1849, he retained his home in Springfield, his wife being in Washington with him only on brief visits. Their eldest son, Robert Todd, was born August 1, 1843; the second, Edward Baker, was born March 10, 1846; the third,

William Wallace, December 21, 1850; and the fourth, Thomas, April 4, 1853. Of these, the second died in infancy; the third died while his father was President; the fourth survived his father, dying at the age of nineteen. The eldest, Robert, Secretary of War under Garfield and under Arthur, is the sole survivor of the family. When Lincoln returned to Springfield from Congress, he found his law practice fallen away, so that, to use his own expression, he had to begin all over again. But he had gained reputation during his Congressional term, and he rebuilt his practice with ready skill and untiring industry. He had bought a house and lot in Springfield, and there established himself and his family under a roof of his own, which he was never to leave until he left it for the last time, when he went to take up his residence in the White House at Washington. We are told that it was a pleasant and sunny home, where love and order reigned. In the society of his children Lincoln took great delight. It cannot be said that his was a stern rule. It was well-nigh impossible for him to exercise any right of government with his children. They were passionately fond of their father; but it must be admitted that censorious visitors sometimes went away wondering why he so "indulged" his boys. Perhaps he remembered his own hard childhood and the scanty joys and comforts of those dark years.

As we have seen, Mr. Lincoln's father, Thomas Lincoln, was se led near Decatur, Macon County, Illinois, where his son Abraham, assisted by Thomas Hanks, had fenced in, with rails of their own split

ting, a small section of a new farm. After Abraham went out to seek his own fortune, his father moved several times, never long satisfied to remain in one place. He finally settled in "Goose Nest Prairie," a small farming community in Coles County, Illinois, where he remained until his death, in 1851, at the age of seventy-three. Whatever he had thought of the abilities of his son, who had bothered him with his youthful habit of speech-making and his proclivity to "talking politics," Thomas Lincoln lived to see him one of the best-known men and leading lawyers of the State. As soon as he could spare anything from his own earnings, after his load of debt was lifted, Lincoln helped his parents continually. He bought lands for them, sent them good gifts, and in many ways showed his filial affection to the end of their stay on earth.

It may be said here that there were other members of the Lincoln family, not holding so strong a claim on Abraham's generosity, that were helped by the warm-hearted man. John Johnston, Abraham's step-brother, appears to have been an unthrifty and easy-going person who needed a lift, and got it, now and again, from the frugal and not over-rich Springfield lawyer. In a letter to John, written about the time when he returned from Congress, Lincoln said: "At the various times when I have helped you a little, you have said to me, 'We can get along very well now,' but in a short time I find you in the same difficulty again." And in the most friendly and affectionate way he went on to show how the difficulty was in his unwillingness to work for small pay,