One Southerner especially caught Lincoln’s eye and ear. Alexander H. Stephens, a Whig congressman from Georgia, introduced a resolution arguing against seizing Mexican territory. The war was “a wanton outrage upon the Constitution.” In a blistering one-hour speech, Stephens attacked President Polk’s policies as “dishonorable,” “reckless,” and “disgraceful.” Young Charles Lanman, the future historian of Congress, was present in the House gallery for the first time and was captivated by the “wonderful earnestness” of Stephens’s speech. But Lanman also said to a friend seated with him that he did not think the gaunt speaker “would live to finish his speech.”
Lincoln was impressed with Alexander Stephens, a small Whig congressman from Georgia, after hearing him deliver a speech criticizing the war with Mexico.
Lincoln, too, found himself deeply impressed with Stephens’s speech. He wrote to “Billie,” “Mr. Stephens of Georgia, a little slim, pale-faced, consumptive man, with a voice like Logan’s, has just concluded the very best speech, of an hour’s length, I ever heard.” Lincoln, who always appreciated splendid oratory, concluded, “My old, withered, dry eyes, are full of tears yet.”
Lincoln was eager to see the oldest and most distinguished member of Congress. John Quincy Adams was eighty when the Thirtieth Congress convened. Adams, son of the nation’s second president, John Adams, was the only person to be elected to the House of Representatives after serving as president. He had defended the slave mutineers of the Amistad in 1839. In 1844, he finally achieved the removal of the “gag rule” that had long prevented the introduction of antislavery petitions. Adams had been feeble since a stroke in 1846, and Lincoln immediately sensed an aura of greatness about the ancient New England patriarch who would die shortly after Lincoln’s arrival.
Although diligent in his attendance in the House, Lincoln sometimes crossed over to sit in the Senate gallery and listen to the speeches. He had heard Henry Clay, not presently in the Senate, in Lexington. Now he wanted to hear the other two giants of “the Great Triumvirate.”
Lincoln was eager to see John Quincy Adams, former president and a member of the Thirtieth Congress.
The first, Daniel Webster, born in 1782, had risen to fame in New England as a lawyer and a politician. Friends said he looked like a lion, a large man with a great head—“Godlike Daniel” some called him—with black hair and black eyes. He spoke with an eloquent voice that often prompted tears in his audience, as when he spoke in 1820 at the two hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. Steeped in the Bible, Shakespeare, and Milton, Webster became a spokesman for the collective aspirations of first New England and then the Union. Lincoln was thoroughly familiar with Webster’s 1830 Senate debate with South Carolina’s Robert Hayne over states’ rights and slavery: Webster had defended the Union with these famous words, “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.”
The third member of the triumvirate, John C. Calhoun, was born two months after Webster, on March 18, 1782, on a flourishing farm in the red hills of South Carolina’s up-country. He traveled eight hundred miles north to study at Yale College, graduating in 1804. Calhoun was an angular figure, whose age accentuated his pale face and submerged eyes; his graying hair stood straight up on his head. For the past four decades Calhoun had served in both the House and Senate, as secretary of war and secretary of state, and as vice president of the United States under Presidents John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. Calhoun had earned a reputation as a “metaphysical” politician who approached issues theoretically. In the final session of the Twenty-ninth Congress, he presented a series of resolutions on slavery, and Lincoln may well have heard Calhoun speak of them during the Thirtieth Congress. Calhoun argued that Congress did not have the power to legislate on the presence of slavery in the new territories. To prevent citizens of Southern states to enter any of the territories with their property—slaves—would discriminate against the equality of the citizens of those states.
On December 12, 1847, Lincoln wrote Herndon telling him, “As soon as the Congressional Globe and Appendix [the official record of the proceedings of Congress], begins to issue, I shall send you a copy of it regularly.” He asked his law partner “to preserve all the numbers so that we can have a complete file of it.” The new congressman may have only been on the job one week, but he was already thinking of building his political files for the future.
Lincoln also took advantage of the free mailing privileges for members of Congress by sending to his constituents copies of many speeches. He sent out 7,080 copies of his own speeches, as well as 5,560 copies of speeches by other members, including Daniel Webster.
JOSHUA GIDDINGS, THE CONGRESSMAN FROM OHIO, used Ann Sprigg’s boardinghouse as a place to bring antislavery congressmen together. In addition to Lincoln, eight other Whigs boarded there, including several leading abolitionists. Their presence guaranteed that slavery was a regular topic of conversation at meals. Lincoln had never before been around so many able politicians with such deep and earnest moral convictions about slavery.
Samuel C. Busey, a young medical doctor who took his meals at the boardinghouse, found himself intrigued with Lincoln’s manner in conversations. Busey said that Lincoln would often interrupt tense conversations with an anecdote that had a healing effect on everyone, including the disputants. “When about to tell an anecdote during a meal he would lay down his knife and fork, place his elbows upon the table, rest his face between his hands, and begin with the words, ‘that reminds me.’ ” As Lincoln began, “everybody prepared for the explosions sure to follow.” Lincoln had the ability to influence “the tenor of the discussion” so that the parties engaged would either separate in good humor or continue the conversation free of discord. Dr. Busey recalled that Lincoln’s “amicable disposition made him very popular with the household.”
SPEECHES REMAINED AT the heart of the daily working of the House of Representatives in this sixth decade after the nation’s founding. Both the House and Senate still retained a parliamentary ethos that would entirely disappear in the next century. Modern-day tourists, on their first visit to Congress, might be shocked to learn that a speaker often speaks to an empty chamber. In Lincoln’s time, visitors lined up to hear such celebrated speakers as the Great Triumvirate orate grandly on the leading issues of the day. The best legislators were by common agreement the best speakers, persons who could persuade their colleagues in long, well-attended speeches.
Most congressmen and senators prepared their speeches carefully, spending hours and sometimes days writing and rewriting. But they never read their speeches. A contemporary observer reported, “They would have been laughed out of the House had they come into the hall with, and attempted to read a written speech.” This was not a possibility. “These men met each other face to face,” speaking with eloquence and passion.
Good speaking and good listening, however, did not always go together. Maria Horsford, the wife of New York Whig congressman Jerediah Horsford, in writing home to her children, described the high intensity and noise of the House chamber. “The confusion and noise of the House of Representatives is wearying. … I never saw a district school dismissed at noon so rude and noisy … more like a hundred swarms of bees.” The noise was continually punctuated by cries of “Speaker”—“Speaker”—“Speaker” in voices rising “higher and higher.”
On the second day of the session, President Polk delivered his third annual message to Congress, the vast majority of it dealing with the war with Mexico. Calling the United States “the aggrieved nation,” Polk claimed, “History presents no parallel of so many glorious victories achieved by any nation within so short a period.” Indeed, by the time Lincoln heard Polks message, the fighting was all but over. General Zachary Taylor had won victories at Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, and Monterrey, and fought off a Mexican attack at Buena Vista in February 1847. General Winfield Scott had led an expedition of ten thousand U.S. soldiers to capture Veracruz and then led an
assault on the capital, Mexico City, securing the surrender of the Mexican defenders on September 14, 1847.
Polk came to Congress seeking ratification of his plan to demand that Mexico pay the United States an indemnity in a cession “of a portion of her territory.” The president appealed to the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the cession of Florida of 1819 as precedents. He rejected the attacks of critics who said that the United States should take the high moral ground of accepting no territory. Polk replied, “The doctrine of no territory is the doctrine of no indemnity … and if sanctioned would be a public acknowledgment that our country was wrong and that the war declared by Congress with extraordinary unanimity was unjust and should be abandoned—an admission unfounded in fact and degrading to the national character.”
Freshmen congressmen sometimes struggled to find their speaking voices in the new terrain of the nation’s capital. But Lincoln, only one week after he took his seat in the Thirtieth Congress, wrote a third time to Herndon, declaring, “As you are all so anxious for me to distinguish myself, I have concluded to do so, before long.”
Two weeks after Polk’s annual message, on December 22, 1847, Lincoln rose to introduce a series of eight resolutions asking the president to inform the House about specific actions of the United States. Lincoln’s speech began by using direct quotes from President Polk’s message to Congress of May 11, 1846, and his annual message to Congress in December 1846 and 1847. Lincoln’s purpose was to challenge the president’s veracity. The burden of the first-term congressman’s remarks was contained in his preface to the resolutions: “This House desires to obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which to establish whether the particular spot of soil on which the blood of our citizens was so shed, was, or was not, our own soil, at that time.” Lincoln was directly challenging the president’s assertion that the Mexicans fired the first shot in the war. He used the word “spot” again in the first resolution, as well as in the second and in the third, driving home his point that the spot was not on our soil but actually on the soil of Mexico, thus making the United States the initial aggressor. Lincoln’s resolutions were not remarkable, offering a summary of objections that had been heard by other Whigs in the hallways of Washington and in newspapers throughout the country. But because of Lincoln’s use of the innocuous word “spot,” the challenges would become known as the “spotty” resolutions. He was only getting started.
THE WHIGS’ ATTACKS on “Mr. Polk’s War” resumed in the new year. On January 3, 1848, in the course of a debate on a resolution offering thanks to General Taylor, Congressman George Ashmun of Massachusetts proposed an amendment stating that the war with Mexico had been “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States.” The amendment received the votes of eighty-five Whigs, including Lincoln.
Nine days later, Lincoln rose again, this time to speak to the broader implications of the war. In a thoroughly prepared speech, Lincoln articulated the difference between supporting the troops and supporting the president and his policies. He stated that back in May 1846, he believed that whatever concerns there might be about the constitutionality or necessity of the war, “as citizens and patriots,” persons should “remain silent on that point, at least until the war had ended.” He said he continued to hold this view until he took his seat in Congress and heard President Polk “argue every silent vote given for supplies, into an endorsement of the justice and wisdom of his conduct.”
Lincoln challenged President Polk’s assertion that Mexican troops fired the first shot in the war with Mexico. Lincoln demanded to know whether the particular “spot of soil” where the blood was shed was in the United States.
Lincoln told the House that he had examined all of the president’s messages to see if Polk’s assertions about precedents measured up to the truth. “Now I propose to show, that the whole of this,—issue and evidence—is, from the beginning to end, the sheerest deception.” After analyzing six propositions of the president’s evidence, Lincoln offered his own precedent. “Let him answer with facts, and not with arguments. Let him remember he sits where Washington sat, and so remembering, let him answer as Washington would answer.” In the heat of a present-day controversy, Lincoln found it useful to appeal to the founding fathers.
In escalating rhetoric, Lincoln went on to question both Polk’s motives and conscience. “I more than suspect already, that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong—that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him.” Lincoln concluded with a final pummel. President Polk “is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man,” he said. Lincoln’s strong words against the sitting president spread quickly beyond the nation’s capital.
BACK IN ILLINOIS, Lincoln’s forceful assault on President Polk took Lincoln’s friends and foes by surprise. Yes, many Whigs were against the war, but after Lincoln’s speech many people in his district came to believe his words bordered on treason. Illinoisans, proud of the effort of the American troops, resented what they said was Lincoln’s failure to support them.
From so long a distance, Lincoln’s votes were misrepresented by his local opponents and misunderstood by many of his friends. Lincoln went on to vote yes on all bills to fund the troops and their supplies. On January 12, 1848, he gave a speech meant to show that one could support the troops and not the president, a distinction difficult to communicate in a time of patriotic fever.
The Democratic Illinois State Register in Springfield tore into Lincoln. “Thank heaven, Illinois has eight representatives who will stand by the honor of the nation.” Recalling the military heroism of Illinois soldiers, the Register said of Lincoln, “He will have a fearful account to settle with them, should he lend his aid in an effort to neutralize their efforts and blast their fame.” The Register printed what they hoped would be Lincoln’s political epitaph: “Died of Spotted Fever.”
Even Billy Herndon expressed concern about his law partner’s vote for the Ashmun Amendment, firing off a letter on January 19, 1848. Lincoln replied immediately, “If you misunderstand, I fear other friends will also.” Lincoln told Herndon, “I will stake my life, that if you had been in my place, you would have voted just as I did.” He asked Hern-don, “Would you have voted what you felt you knew to be a lie?”
What really upset Lincoln was the way Polk and the Democrats shrewdly tried to conflate support for the war and voting to send supplies for the troops. “I have always intended, and still intend, to vote supplies,” Lincoln told Herndon. The Democrats, he said, “are untiring in their effort to make the impression that all who vote supplies … of necessity, approve the President’s conduct in the beginning of it.” The Whig position, as Lincoln explained, “from the beginning, made and kept the distinction between the two.”
Herndon wrote a second letter and Lincoln replied again. It was obvious now that the partners did not agree on whether any president becomes the “sole judge” in initiating war. Lincoln defended the “provision of the Constitution giving war-making power to Congress.” He told Herndon, “Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure.”
IN MARCH 1848, Lincoln’s curiosity about his ancestors in America became jogged by correspondence from a long-lost relative named Solomon Lincoln. In replying to a letter of inquiry from Solomon Lincoln, Lincoln wrote, “We have a vague tradition, that my greatgrand father, John Lincoln, went from Pennsylvania to Virginia; and that he was a quaker. Further back than that, I have never heard anything.” His curiosity aroused, Lincoln decided to ask James McDowell, the former governor of Virginia and now a colleague in the House, “whether he knew persons of our name there.” McDowell replied he did know of a David Lincoln. Lincoln wrote a second letter to Solomon Lincoln three weeks later telling him of this new discovery.
Lincoln,
“much gratified,” received a letter from David Lincoln on March 30, 1848. He quickly replied, “There is no longer any doubt that your uncle Abraham, and my grandfather was the same man.” Lincoln peppered David Lincoln with questions. “Was he or not, a Quaker? About what time did he emigrate from Berks count, Pa. to Virginia? Do you know any thing of your family (or rather I may now say, our family) farther back than your grandfather?” Far from being uninterested in his family background, Lincoln wanted to find out more. Ironically, Solomon Lincoln wrote to Abraham Lincoln from Hingham, Massachusetts, where Lincoln’s ancestors first settled in America—a fact that Abraham Lincoln would never know.
IN THE SPRING OF 1848, Mary Lincoln and their boys left Washington and returned to Lexington. She had grown weary of her confinement in Ann Sprigg’s boardinghouse, where much of the time she found herself alone with her two small children. Lincoln attended sessions of Congress during the day and often spent his evenings in Whig caucuses.
The correspondence between Abraham and Mary from the spring of 1848—some of the few letters between them that have survived—reveals how their affection grew stronger in absence. Lincoln wrote on April 16, 1848, “In this troublesome world, we are never quite satisfied. When you were here, I thought you hindered me in attending to business but now, having nothing but business—no vanity—it has grown exceedingly tasteless to me.” Lincoln admitted, “I hate to stay in the old room by myself.” He wanted to include a greeting from others, but remembered that not everyone at Ann Sprigg’s thought kindly of her, so he wrote, “All the house—or rather all with whom you were on decided good terms—send their love to you. The others say nothing.” He also asked Mary, in the future, “Suppose you do not prefix the “Hon” to the address on your letters to me any more.”
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