"His power of comparison was large, and he rarely failed, in a legal discussion, to employ that mode of reasoning. The framework of his mental and moral being was honesty, and a wrong cause was poorly defended by him. The ability which some eminent lawyers possess, of explaining away the bad points of a cause, by ingenious sophistry, was denied him. In order to bring into full activity his great powers, it was necessary that he should be convinced of the right and justice of the matter which he advocated. When so convinced, whether the cause was great or small, he was usually successful. He read law books but little, except when the cause in hand made it necessary; yet he was usually selfreliant, depending on his own resources, and rarely consulting his brother lawyers, either on the management of his case or on the legal questions involved.

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'Mr. Lincoln was the fairest and most accommodating of practitioners, granting all favors which were consistent with his duty to his client, and rarely availing himself of an unwary oversight of his adversary.

"He hated wrong and oppression, everywhere, and many a man whose fraudulent conduct was undergoing review in a court of justice has writhed under his terrific indignation and rebukes."

Judge Drummond, United States District Judge for Illinois, has given his thoughtful estimate as follows:

"With a probity of character known to all, with an intuitive insight into the human heart, with a clearness of statement which was in itself an argument, with uncommon power and felicity of illustration-often, it is true, of a plain and homely kind-and with that sincerity and earnestness of manner which carried conviction, he was, perhaps, one of the most successful jury lawyers we ever had in the State. He always tried a case fairly and honestly. He never intentionally misrepresented the evidence of a witness nor the argument of an opponent. He met both squarely, and if he could not explain the one or answer the other, substantially admitted it. He never misstated the law, according to his own intelligent view of it. Such was the transparent candor and integrity of his nature, that he could not well or strongly argue a

be called very learned in his profession, and yet he rarely tried a cause without fully understanding the law applicable to it; and I have no hesitation in saying he was one of the ablest lawyers I have ever known."

Equally emphatic is the remainder of their testimony and that of other able jurists. With one accord they delineate a lawyer who was so born as well as so made, and explain the mental peculiarities which enabled a barefooted, log-cabin boy to become so deeply interested in reading the Revised Statutes of Indiana.

It is recorded of Mr. Lincoln, as one of the noteworthy characteristics of this period of busy practice, that the abolitionists could at any time apply to him for legal help in cases arising out of the Fugitive Slave Law, or otherwise affecting the rights of colored people. Other eminent lawyers declined a kind of practice so full of peril to their political ambitions. Lincoln did not yet know that he was himself an abolitionist, but he could not shut his heart to the appeal of an oppressed human being, black or white.

CHAPTER XIV.

The Compromises of 1850-The Breakdown of the Whig Party-Lincoln and Politics-The Pierce Administration-Eulogy on Henry Clay-The Kansas-Nebraska Bill.

WHEN Abraham Lincoln's Congressional term ended, March 3d, 1849, it looked as if he had turned away from politics. He even said so himself, and there was certainly no apparent prospect for political honors in Illinois for a Whig who was more than suspected of holding heretical opinions upon the subject of slavery. He was personally as popular as ever, but it seemed manifest to all men that his future career lay among courts and law cases.

The great field of national politics was undergoing a process of transformation and of preparation, and over it hung a deepening cloud which contained a greater storm than most men were willing to believe. The year 1850 witnessed the death of President Taylor, the accession of President Fillmore, and the nominal accord of the Whig and Democratic parties upon the compromise measures which seemed to give the slave power so much, but which really gave it nothing. Hardly were these adopted before the more acute Southern leaders discovered that, while they had lost all the newly acquired territory except Texas, the best part of

the price they obtained for it, the Fugitive Slave Law, was of no value, except as a powerful agency for stirring up anti-slavery feeling at the North. It was the most tremendous weapon which could have been placed in the hands of the extreme abolitionists, and they were everywhere making the most of it.

How Mr. Lincoln felt with reference to the great political movement which he was watching, but in which he seemed destined to take no part, may be understood from conversations which have been recorded. His old and intimate friend, Judge Stuart, relates that, in the year 1850, he and Lincoln were discussing the course of legislation in Washington. "The time will come, said Lincoln, "when we must all be Democrats or abolitionists. time comes my mind is made up. The slavery question cannot be compromised."

When that

What he evidently meant was that even by the current compact between the parties the great issue had been merely postponed, and that the day of final settlement must surely come. Judge Stuart replied that his mind also was made up, and intimated that it was not in favor of abolition. They were perfect types of the two wings of the old Whig Party.

Mr. Herndon's testimony presents a much more vivid picture of the mental processes through which his law partner was advancing toward the position which he was so soon to assume before the country. "Mr. Lincoln and I were going to Petersburg, in 1850, I think. The political world was dead; the

compromises of 1850 seemed to have sealed the negro's fate. Things were stagnant, and all hope for progress in the line of freedom seemed to be crushed out. Lincoln was speculating with me about the deadness of things and the despair which arose out of it, and deeply regretting that his human strength and power were limited by his nature to rouse and stir up the world. He said gloomily, despairingly, sadly: How hard, oh, how hard it is to die and leave one's country no better than if one had never lived for it! The world is dead to hope, deaf to its own death struggle, made known by a universal cry. What is to be done? Is anything to be done? Who can do anything? And how is it to be done? Did you ever think on these things?'"'

He and others like him had builded more wisely than they knew, and the state of things was by no means so hopeless as it seemed.

There had been from the beginning a vast and by no means inactive popular sense of right warring against slavery. It had enacted the ordinance of 1787, shutting out the evil from the Northwestern Territory. It had eradicated slavery from several of the original thirteen States. It had fought for and won the Missouri Compromise of 1820, prohibiting slavery in new States to be formed north of the latitude of 36° 30'. It had now recently assured the freedom of California and Oregon, and was practically restricting the area of the institution to its old limits, including Texas, after a manner and with a force which was clearly understood to pen it