They believe that the congress of the United States has no power under the Constitution to interfere with the institution of slavery in the different states.

'They believe that the congress of the United States has the power under the Constitution to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of the district.

"The difference between these opinions and those contained in the said resolutions is their reason for entering this protest.

"Representatives from the county of Sangamon."

"DAN. A. STONE, "A. LINCOLN.

To-day this reads like a very moderate expression of views regarding a very great evil, but it required no little devotion to principle to make such a declaration in those days, when any opposition to the "institution" was punished, even in New England, by social and political ostracism. Lincoln then declared his unequivocal disapproval of slavery, and in the same breath recognized the constitutional bulwark by which it was surrounded. He saw that, bad as slavery was, it could never be removed, in its own territory, except by the consent of its friends or by war or revolution.

In every great reform two elements work in turn. First the agitators, who excite the feeling of the world with little regard for legal limitation. or the possibilities of the case. Next the rebuilders, who, by gunpowder or legislation, supported by the public opinion their predecessors have created, bring to pass the changes which the time demands.

Lincoln could never have been an agitator except as agitation might work within constitutional lines. He saw, what every man now admits, that from the establishment of the United States until 1861 the congress and the government, existing by virtue of the Constitution, could act upon even so great a moral wrong as slavery, only to the extent to which the Constitution gave them power. Had not the weak tool Buchanan and the guns that fired on Sumter combined in the cause of humanity, men might have spent many years in puzzling over the problem presented by a good constitution, with one great defect, facing an awful wrong, a wrong which every good and humane nature condemned.

In this early and fearless utterance of a benevolence on the one hand, which forever marked him as the enemy of the great slave power, and on the other of a respect for the Constitution which, as he admitted, limited his own projects for good and showed him too thoughtful an ally for the ultraabolitionists, we see a presage of the fuller growth which steadied the hand that signed the Emancipation Proclamation and yet led him to view the revolted states from 1861 to 1865 not as enemies, but as communities of

brethren dominated by seditious and rebellious individuals. It is a matter to remember and weigh well that Lincoln had been reared with no prejudice against slavery; that he had seen the worst of its practical workings only during two journeys down the Mississippi, and that he well knew he could gain nothing by his gratuitous declaration, made with only one ally, in 1837, and might lose much by opposing the tide of public opinion.

In this brief biography, we have seen Lincoln receive object lessons in three of the great problems which he was to face in after years; in slavery, which was the real casus billi; in finance, under circumstances closely resembling those of the rebellion era; in the organization of a mixed army of volunteers and regulars. The Blackhawk war, the "internal improvement" craze in Illinois, and the two journeys of the young backwoodsman to New Orleans, were all but steps in a system of education by which was preparing a master mind for a surpassingly important emergency. A careful study of the life from the old Kentucky home to the fatal box at Ford's theatre, shows how good a tutor is the fate that shapes the destiny of nations-how every mental and physical quality of the future President was shaped, developed and prepared for the great service of the future by the experience through which he was day by day called upon to pass. The year 1836 found the Whig party crystallized and well advanced toward the position it occupied in later years. It found Lincoln so firmly fixed in the esteem and confidence of his friends that then and thereafter his election to the legislature was a matter of course whenever he chose to be a candidate. He was then elected by an overwhelming majority, and became a member of the body to which came both opportunity and inclination for more wild legislation than was ever accomplished by any other legislature of the state. Illinois had no debt and consequently her credit was excellent. She was undeveloped, her roads were few and bad, and nature had omitted to furnish every town with the convenience of a navigable river.

The craze for internal improvement which marked the Jackson period was as acute in Illinois as elsewhere. Clinton's ditch, in New York state, had proven a success, why should not other communities have similar advantages? Improvements would cost money, to be sure, but they would develop the country, bring settlers and produce a tax paying capacity.

The men who went to Vandalia in 1836, Lincoln among the rest, honestly believed that the future of the state demanded a hot-house policy, and that any amount of money promised to be paid and invested in roads and waterways would lift itself by the prosperity these improvements would surely create. The legislators were wrong but they were honest, and most of them paid a very extravagant price for their dabbling in finance. No sooner were they organized than they set in motion wholesale factories of money in the form of banks. Only the cost of printing and the price of

paper lay between poverty and riches. The result of the industry of the legislative body was that when the adjournment was reached, the state, from having no debt, had issued twelve million dollars in bonds, and that every man's pocket was full of wildcat bank notes, which had driven the sensitive coin out of circulation.

The legislative fiat had failed, however, to provide a market for the bonds, a substantial oasis for the currency, or a regular depth of six feet of water in the Sangamon river. It had only, in its ignorance and fatuity, laid the foundation for the sudden disasters and the long continued stringency that followed. Aside from this financial suicide, the most important act of the session was the removal of the state capital from Vandalia, a place not sufficiently central, to Springfield, Sangamon county, and Lincoln came home with his full share of the credit for this change upon the "era of universal prosperity" not yet interrupted.

It was not long after the adjournment of the legislature (of the proceedings of which we have spoken at some length) that the great panic of 1837 broke upon the United States. From New York its effects, with their attendant disasters, spread rapidly westward, and it was not long before Illinois began to reap the whirlwind for which the way had been so industriously prepared. On the tenth of May, the New York banks suspended specie payments and on the twelfth, the Bank of the United States and the various Philadelphia institutions took the same course. Even if Illinois had been in the same condition as a year earlier, with no state debt, no expensive works under way, and only specie and the National currency in circulation, the panic would have been a heavy trial. As it was, it was simply paralysis. In July the governor of Illinois called the legislature in special session, to provide means for relief. That body did just about what might have been expected, considering the legislation of its former session. It first passed laws permitting the banks of the state to suspend specie payments. A certain invariable economical rule, superior to bills and enactments, had already driven the coin circulation into retirement, thus anticipating the act of the general assembly. Having gone so far, that body, instead of suspending work upon the illtimed public improvements, actually voted new credits and new bonds to carry them on. Thus nature had already provided for one of these acts of legislation, and the rest had much better been left undone. One writer has said that Mr. Lincoln had an ambition to be the Dewitt Clinton of Illinois. Be this as it may, he was heart and soul in favor of internal improvements, as were all his colleagues, and every man, woman and child in Illinois, and he, like his fellows, needed the hard lesson of the panic of 1837 to teach him the difference between a mere printed promise to pay, founded upon nothing but the faith of a constantly changing legislature, and money.

In 1838 Lincoln was again sent to the general assembly, and was made the Whig candidate for speaker. The same honor was conferred upon him in the next legislature, but, as the Democrats were in both instances in a majority, it proved no more than an honor. In 1840 he took the stump for Harrison, and made speeches through a larger part of the state. Thus, for the first time was he known to the people beyond his own legal circuit, and even thus early, when only thirty years of age, his powers of mind and oratory suffered nothing when matched against those of the leaders of both parties. This series of speeches won him a very cordial popular recognition, and he never afterward lacked an auditory whenever he chose to address the people of his state, as he did in nearly every campaign during the twenty years before his election to the Presidency.

Lincoln's devotion to his law studies has been again and again mentioned in these pages. It was crowned early in the year 1837 by his admission to the bar. Immediately after this he removed from New Salem to Springfield, and formed a law partnership with John P. Stuart, a man who had befriended him by many kind words and by the use of his books ever since his first systematic law study began. By his admission to the bar, Lincoln had severed the last bond that held him to the old "poor white" days. He was a member of an honorable and learned profession, well equipped for its duties; he was a tried and approved legislator, and no man could deny his eligibility for any advancement open to the American citizen. How full a reward does even this seem, for the ambitious work of the barefooted Indiana farm boy, yet it was the merest apprenticeship for the greater things beyond.

Poverty was still his bedfellow, for he had not yet discharged his debts, and he was too honest to spend an unnecessary cent until they were paid. He boarded at the house of a political friend, but he could not afford a bedroom, and his lodging was in his own office, where he slept upon a narrow lounge. His road to professional success was not an easy one, either. The bar of Sangamon county was a very able one, and he was compelled to fight every step of the way against the rivalry of men quite as well prepared as he, and far more experienced. Yet, in the face of all he won his way, and the result was never in doubt from the moment he made his first essay at the bar. He speedily conquered a practice, which broadened with years and which even politics rarely caused to be neglected. In twenty years from the day of his admission he had grown to the front rank of the bar of Illinois, a state which by that time had come very nearly to its present relative position in the west, and stood unsurpassed as a trial lawyer in all the brilliant ranks of the profession.

His admission to the bar was an epoch in his life. From that time he was "Abe" Lincoln only to playful and affectionate friends or to political enemies, who were reduced to sad straits for campaign material.

Among the men of his state and time most distinguished for honesty, ability and popular influence, he was a man to be recognized, first as an equal and later many times as a superior. He had left in the soil from which he sprung the outer covering of vulgarity and ignorance, and grown to the full stature of a magnificent intellectual manhood, was ready to gather the first fruits of his long years of toilsome, self-denying labor. Among the residents of Springfield, when Lincoln made it his home, were Mr. and Mrs. Vivian S. Edwards. Mrs. Edwards was a member of a wealthy and aristocratic family of Lexington, Kentucky, and, during the year 1839, about the time of the removal of the capital from Vandalia to Springfield, her sister, Mary Todd, came to make her home in the family. By this time a warm friendship had sprung up between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. and Mrs. Edwards; the removal of the capital to Springfield made that city the center of all the former's work, and that he should see much of Miss Todd was a matter of course. That his name should come to be connected with hers was almost equally natural, and that such connection. should lead to the consideration of the matter by the persons directly concerned is not surprising. In every acquirement, grace of person and in her worldly position, Miss Todd was Lincoln's superior. She was handsome, well educated, witty and of high social standing, while he was personally unattractive and was handicapped by his family and educational disadvantages. The young lady did not lack for admirers, either, and it is an odd coincidence that among these should have been Stephen A. Douglas. When asked whether she preferred Douglas or Lincoln, Miss Todd is reported to have laughingly said, "Whichever has the better chance of being President." This was, of course, only a random remark, but many people have endeavored to magnify it to the dignity of a prophecy.

Miss Todd was a very affectionate and warm-hearted woman, but she was ambitious and clear-sighted as well. She saw in Lincoln great promise for the future, and, besides this, his ungainly figure, awkward manner and obscure origin had no weight. Her liking for him aided her in forming her judgment, and this liking grew with intimacy into a warm affection, which never wavered under any test. Lincoln was, as we know, very warm-hearted and affectionate; he longed for love and the happiness of a home life with an intense desire, and his feelings met every modest encouragement from Miss Todd. The result was an engagement of marriage, which was only destined to be carried out after much heart burning on both sides and an especially bitter struggle for Lincoln.

It was not long after this engagement was made before Lincoln found that he had not the love for Miss Todd that any woman has a right to demand from her husband. How this knowledge came to him, it is not necessary to say, but he was forced to the belief that his heart was buried