Let us look about us as we enter the old Hall of Representatives, and see into what company the backwoods-boy has come.
In the Speaker’s chair sits a dignified2-looking man, an accomplished3 parliamentarian, whom friends and opponents alike concede to be amply competent to discharge the duties of his high place—this is Robert C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, living still in a dignified and honored old age. Among the notable members of this Congress were John Quincy Adams, who had already been President, but who was willing notwithstanding to serve his country in an humble{122} place; George Ashmun, also representing Massachusetts; Jacob Collamer; Alexander H. Stephens, afterward4 Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy; Robert Toombs; Andrew Johnson, afterward associated with Mr. Lincoln as Vice-President, and upon whose shoulders fell the mantle5 of his lamented6 chief; Marsh7, Truman Smith, Wilmot, Rhett, Giddings, and others, whose names were already conspicuous8. This will give some idea of the personnel of the House; while in the Senate chamber9, at the other end of the Capitol, Webster, Calhoun, Dix, Dickinson, Hale, Crittenden, and Corwin lent weight and dignity to that co-ordinate legislative10 branch of the Government.
Such were the men with whom the young Western member was to share the labors11 of legislation. Time has given to some of them a fame which they did not then possess. Their successors of our day may, after the lapse12 of a generation, bear names as weighty; but I am afraid we shall look in vain for successors of Webster, Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, A. H. Stephens, and Crittenden.
The question will occur to my young readers, What part did Abraham Lincoln take in the national councils? Was he a cipher13, an obscure{123} member, simply filling his seat and drawing his pay, or did he take an active part in the business of the session? I will say in answer, that he was by no means a cipher. Though he did not aspire14 to be a leader—for in a new member that would have been in bad taste—he was always ready to take part when he felt called upon to do so, and his vote and words were such as he would not in after years have felt it necessary to recall or apologize for.
It is interesting to know that he arrayed himself with Mr. Giddings in favor of abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. Mr. Giddings little suspected that the plain member from Illinois, whose co-operation he had secured, was to be the instrument under Providence15 of abolishing slavery, not only in the District of Columbia, but throughout the land.
But slavery was not at that time the leading political question of the day. Parties were divided upon the subject of the Mexican war. While opposed to the war, Mr. Lincoln was in favor of voting for the necessary supplies and appropriations16, and he took care, in an elaborate speech, to explain his position. He felt that it{124} was his duty as a citizen and a patriot17 to see that the army which had been sent to Mexico should be properly sustained; but he did not for a moment concede that the war was just or necessary. As President Polk saw fit to construe18 such a vote as a formal approval of his action and of the war, Mr. Lincoln made an elaborate speech in arraignment19 of his interpretation20. As this was Mr. Lincoln’s first speech in Congress, I shall make considerable quotations21 from it, partly to show where he stood on this important question, and partly to prove to my readers that he was no novice22, but well qualified23 for the high position to which he had been elected by the suffrages24 of his fellow-citizens. I am quite aware that many of my young readers will skip this portion as uninteresting; but I hope that if in after years they are led to read this biography once more, they will count it worth while to read it.
After reviewing and controverting25 the reasons assigned by the President for the statement that Mexico had invaded our soil, and that therefore “by the act of the Republic of Mexico a state of war exists between that Government and the United States,” Mr. Lincoln proceeds:{125}
“I am now through the whole of the President’s evidence; and it is a singular fact, that if any one should declare the President sent the army into the midst of a settlement of Mexican people who had never submitted, by consent or by force, to the authority of Texas or of the United States, and that there and thereby26 the first blood of the war was shed, there is not one word in all the President has said which would either admit or deny the declaration. In this strange omission27 chiefly consists the deception28 of the President’s evidence—an omission which it does seem to me could scarcely have occurred but by design. My way of living leads me to be about the courts of justice; and there I have sometimes seen a good lawyer struggling for his client’s neck, in a desperate case, employing every artifice29 to work round, befog, and cover up with many words some position pressed upon him by the prosecution30, which he dared not admit and yet could not deny. Party bias31 may help to make it appear so; but, with all the allowance I can make for such bias, it still does appear to me that just such, and from such necessity, are the President’s struggles in this case.{126}
“Some time after my colleague (Mr. Richardson) introduced the resolutions I have mentioned, I introduced a preamble32, resolution, and interrogatories, intended to draw the President out, if possible, on this hitherto untrodden ground. To show their relevancy, I propose to state my understanding of the true rule for ascertaining33 the boundary between Texas and Mexico. It is that wherever Texas was exercising jurisdiction34 was hers; and wherever Mexico was exercising jurisdiction was hers; and that whatever separated the actual exercise of jurisdiction of the one from that of the other, was the true boundary between them. If, as is probably true, Texas was exercising jurisdiction along the western bank of the Nueces, and Mexico was exercising it along the eastern bank of the Rio Grande; then neither river was the boundary, but the uninhabited country between the two was. The extent of our territory in that region depended not on any treaty-fixed boundary (for no treaty had attempted it), but on revolution. Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing Government, and form a new one that suits{127} them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right—a right which, we hope and believe, is to liberate36 the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing Government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled, or near about them, who may oppose their movements. Such minority was precisely37 the case of the Tories of our own Revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones. As to the country now in question, we bought it of France in 1803 and sold it to Spain in 1819, according to the President’s statement. After this, all Mexico, including Texas, revolutionized against Spain; and still later, Texas revolutionized against Mexico. In my view, just so far as she carried her revolution by obtaining the actual, willing or unwilling38, submission39 of the people, so far the country was hers and no further.
“Now, sir, for the purpose of obtaining the{128} very best evidence as to whether Texas had actually carried her revolution to the place where the hostilities40 of the present war commenced, let the President answer the interrogatories I proposed, as before mentioned, or some other similar ones. Let him answer fully41, fairly, and candidly42; 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. As a nation should not, and the Almighty43 will not be evaded44, so let him attempt no evasion45, no equivocation46; and if, so answering, he can show that the soil was ours where the first blood of the war was shed—that it was not within an inhabited country, or, if within such, that the inhabitants had submitted themselves to the civil authority of Texas or of the United States, and that the same is true of the site of Fort Brown—then I am with him for his justification47. In that case, I shall be most happy to reverse the vote I gave the other day. I have a selfish notion for desiring that the President may do this; I expect to give some votes in connection with the war, which, without his so doing, will be of doubtful propriety48, in my own{129} judgment49, but which will be free from the doubt, if he does so.
“But if he can not or will not do this—if on any pretense50, or no pretense, he shall refuse or omit it—then I shall be fully convinced of what 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; that he ordered General Taylor into the midst of a peaceful Mexican settlement, purposely to bring on war; that originally having some strong motive—what I will not stop now to give my opinion concerning—to involve the two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny51 by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory—that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood—that serpent’s eye that charms to destroy—he plunged52 into it, and has swept on and on, till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued53, he now finds himself he knows not where. How like the half-insane mumbling54 of a fever dream is the whole war part of the last message! At one time telling us that Mexico has nothing whatever{130} that we can get but territory; at another showing us how we can support the war by levying55 contributions on Mexico; at one time urging the national honor, the security of the future, the prevention of foreign interference, and even the good of Mexico herself, as among the objects of the war; at another, telling us that ‘to reject indemnity56 by refusing to accept a cession57 of territory would be to abandon all our just demands, and to wage the war, bearing all its expenses, without a purpose or definite object.’
“So then, the national honor, security of the future, and everything but territorial58 indemnity, may be considered no purposes and indefinite objects of the war! But having it now settled that territorial indemnity is the only object, we are urged to seize, by legislation here, all that he was content to take a few months ago, and the whole province of Lower California to boot, and to still carry on the war—to take all we are fighting for, and still fight on. Again the President is resolved, under all circumstances, to have full territorial indemnity for the expenses of the war; but he forgets to tell us how we are to get the excess after those expenses shall have surpassed the value{131}
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THE YOUNG RAIL SPLITTER. Page 57.
of the whole of the Mexican territory. So, again, he insists that the separate national existence of Mexico shall be maintained; but he does not tell us how this can be done after we shall have taken all her territory. Lest the questions I here suggest be considered speculative59 merely, let me be indulged a moment in trying to show they are not.
“The war has gone on some twenty months, for the expenses of which, together with an inconsiderable old score, the President now claims about one-half of the Mexican territory, and that by far the better half, so far as concerns our ability to make anything out of it. It is comparatively uninhabited, so that we could establish land offices in it, and raise money in that way. But the other half is already inhabited, as I understand it, tolerably densely60 for the nature of the country; and all its lands, or all that are valuable, already appropriated as private property. How, then, are we to make anything out of these lands with this incumbrance on them, or how remove the incumbrance? I suppose no one will say we should kill the people, or drive them out, or make slaves of them, or even confiscate61 their{132} property? How, then, can we make much out of this part of the territory? If the prosecution of the war has, in expenses, already equalled the better half of the country, how long its future prosecution will be in equalling the less valuable half is not a speculative but a practical question, pressing closely upon us, and yet it is a question which the President seems never to have thought of.
“As to the mode of terminating the war and securing peace, the President is equally wandering and indefinite. First, it is to be done by a more vigorous prosecution of the war in the vital parts of the enemy’s country; and, after apparently62 talking himself tired on this point, the President drops down into a half-despairing tone, and tells us ‘that, with a people distracted and divided by contending factions63, and a government subject to constant changes, by successive revolutions, the continued success of our arms may fail to obtain a satisfactory peace.’ Then he suggests the propriety of wheedling64 the Mexican people to desert the counsels of their own leaders, and, trusting in our protection, to set up a government from which we can obtain a satisfactory peace, telling us that{133} ‘this may become the only mode of obtaining such a peace.’ But soon he falls into doubt of this too, and then drops back on to the already abandoned ground of ‘more vigorous prosecution.’ All this shows that the President is in no wise satisfied with his own positions. First, he takes up one, and, in attempting to argue us into it, he argues himself out of it; then seizes another, and goes through the same process; and then, confused at being able to think of nothing new, he snatches up the old one again, which he has some time before cast off. His mind, tasked beyond its power, is running hither and thither65, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it can settle down and be at ease.
“Again, it a singular omission in the message, that it nowhere intimates when the President expects the war to terminate. At its beginning, General Scott was, by this same President, driven into disfavor, if not disgrace, for intimating that peace could not be conquered in less than three or four months. But now, at the end of about twenty months, during which time our arms have given us the most splendid successes—every department{134} and every part, land and water, officers and privateers, regulars and volunteers, doing all that men could do, and hundreds of things which it had ever before been thought that men could not do; after all this, this same President gives us a long message without showing us that, as to the end, he has himself even an imaginary conception. As I have before said, he knows not where he is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably66 perplexed67 man. God grant he may be able to show that there is not something about his conscience more painful than all his mental perplexity?”
It will be seen that, new as he is to the halls of Congress, Mr. Lincoln speaks with the freedom, and in the assured tone, of a veteran member. I have nothing to say as to the sentiments contained in these extracts. I wished my readers to see what sort of a speech the Illinois Congressman68, trained in the backwoods, and almost absolutely without educational advantages, was able to make. It will be conceded that the result, all things considered, is remarkable69. When, twelve years later, he was nominated for the post of Chief Magistrate70, it was a fashion among many, in both political{135} parties, to speak of him as an obscure member of Congress, who had never attracted any attention during his service in the House. This was not correct. He took a prominent part in legislation of all kinds, and made himself acquainted with whatever subjects came up for consideration.
It has often been said that fact is stranger than fiction, and I am tempted35 to remark that the new Congressman who so boldly criticised President Polk for his management of the war, was far from dreaming that he himself would be subject to similar attacks when, as President, the management of a far more important war devolved upon him.
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1
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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mantle
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| n.斗篷，覆罩之物，罩子；v.罩住，覆盖，脸红 | |
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6
lamented
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| adj.被哀悼的，令人遗憾的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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marsh
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| n.沼泽，湿地 | |
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conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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10
legislative
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| n.立法机构，立法权；adj.立法的，有立法权的 | |
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11
labors
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| v.努力争取(for)( labor的第三人称单数 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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12
lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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13
cipher
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| n.零；无影响力的人；密码 | |
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14
aspire
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| vi.(to，after)渴望，追求，有志于 | |
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providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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appropriations
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| n.挪用（appropriation的复数形式） | |
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patriot
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| n.爱国者，爱国主义者 | |
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construe
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| v.翻译，解释 | |
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arraignment
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| n.提问，传讯，责难 | |
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interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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quotations
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| n.引用( quotation的名词复数 )；[商业]行情（报告）；（货物或股票的）市价；时价 | |
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novice
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| adj.新手的，生手的 | |
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qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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suffrages
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| （政治性选举的）选举权，投票权( suffrage的名词复数 ) | |
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controverting
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| v.争论，反驳，否定( controvert的现在分词 ) | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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omission
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| n.省略，删节；遗漏或省略的事物，冗长 | |
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deception
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| n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计 | |
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artifice
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| n.妙计，高明的手段；狡诈，诡计 | |
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prosecution
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| n.起诉，告发，检举，执行，经营 | |
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bias
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| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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preamble
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| n.前言；序文 | |
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ascertaining
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的现在分词 ) | |
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jurisdiction
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| n.司法权，审判权，管辖权，控制权 | |
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tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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liberate
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| v.解放，使获得自由，释出，放出；vt.解放，使获自由 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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hostilities
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| n.战争；敌意(hostility的复数)；敌对状态；战事 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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candidly
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| adv.坦率地，直率而诚恳地 | |
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almighty
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| adj.全能的，万能的；很大的，很强的 | |
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evaded
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| 逃避( evade的过去式和过去分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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45
evasion
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| n.逃避，偷漏(税) | |
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46
equivocation
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| n.模棱两可的话，含糊话 | |
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justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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propriety
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| n.正当行为；正当；适当 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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pretense
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| n.矫饰，做作，借口 | |
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scrutiny
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| n.详细检查，仔细观察 | |
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52
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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53
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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54
mumbling
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的现在分词 ) | |
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55
levying
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| 征（兵）( levy的现在分词 )； 索取； 发动（战争）； 征税 | |
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56
indemnity
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| n.赔偿，赔款，补偿金 | |
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57
cession
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| n.割让，转让 | |
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territorial
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| adj.领土的，领地的 | |
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speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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densely
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| ad.密集地；浓厚地 | |
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61
confiscate
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| v.没收(私人财产)，把…充公 | |
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62
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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factions
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| 组织中的小派别，派系( faction的名词复数 ) | |
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64
wheedling
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| v.骗取（某物），哄骗（某人干某事）( wheedle的现在分词 ) | |
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thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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66
miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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Congressman
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| n.（美）国会议员 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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magistrate
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| n.地方行政官，地方法官，治安官 | |
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