Josiah Gilbert Holland

“ How like the half insane mumbling of a fever dream is the whole war part of the late message! At one time telling us that Mexico has nothing whatever we can get but territory; at another, showing us how we can support the war by levying 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 ”

“ Mr. Lincoln secured the floor, and made a speech concerning the points at issue between the two parties, and the merits of the respective candidates, General Cass having received the nomination of the democratic party. It was a telling, trenchant talk, rather than a speech--more like one of his stump orations in Illinois than like his previous efforts in the House. As a campaign harangue, touching the salient features of the principal questions in debate, and revealing the weak points of one candidate and the strong points of the other, it could not have been improved. ”

“ But now at the end of about twenty months, during which time our arms have given us the most splendid successes--every department, and every part, land and water, officers and privates, 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. ”

“ Lincoln's character as an anti-slavery man can have no consistency on any basis except that of his firm belief that slaves were recognized as property under the Constitution of the United States; and those who impute to him the opposite opinion, or action based upon the opposite opinion, inflict a wrong upon his memory. [3] He recognized slaves as property not only in Congress, but on the stump and even in his business. ”

“ I suppose no one will say we should kill the people, or drive them out, or make slaves of them, or even confiscate their property? How, then, can we make much out of this part of the territory? If the prosecution of the war has, in expenses, already equaled the better half of the country, how long its future prosecution will be in equaling the less valuable half is not a speculative but a practical question, pressing closely upon us ”

“ It is interesting, at the close of a great rebellion, undertaken on behalf of slavery, to look back to this Congress, and see how, in the interests and associations of the old whig party, those men worked in harmony who have since been, or who, if they had lived, would have been, so widely separated in feeling and action. ”

“ 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 them better. ”

“ 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 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 speculative merely, let me be indulged a moment in trying to show they are not. ”

“ He found to his regret that he had not entirely pleased his constituents in his course on the questions connected with the war. It is probable that he could have secured a renomination had he himself been Willing to risk the result. That a man with his desire for public life would willingly retire from Congress at the end of a single term of service is not probable; and while it has been said that he peremptorily refused to be again considered a candidate, on account of his desire to engage more exclusively in the duties of his profession, it is not credible that this was his only motive. ”

“ The bill had also a provision, "that the municipal authorities of Washington and Georgetown, within their respective jurisdictional limits," should be "empowered and required to provide active and efficient means to arrest and deliver up to their owners all fugitive slaves escaping into said District."
If any evidence were needed to establish the fact that Mr. Lincoln regarded slaves as property under the Constitution, this bill would seem to furnish all that is desired. If he did not so regard them, this bill convicts him of friendliness rather than enmity to slavery. ”

“ Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize, and make their own 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 with, or near about them, who may oppose their movements. ”

“ My way of living leads me to be about the courts of justice; and there I have some times seen a good lawyer, struggling for his client's neck, in a desperate case, employing every artifice to work round, befog, and cover up with many words some position pressed upon him by the prosecution, which he dared not admit, and yet could not deny. ”

“ God grant he may be able to show that there is not something about his conscience more painful than all his mental perplexity."
With this speech on record, it is strange that the genuine literary abilities of the man were so long and so persistently ignored by literary people. There were men who voted for him for the presidency more than twelve years afterwards--twelve years of culture and development to him--who were surprised to find his messages grammatically constructed, and who suspected the intervention of a secretary whenever any touch of elegance appeared in his writings. ”

“ General Taylor had, beyond dispute, been nominated because be was a military hero, and not because he had any natural or acquired fitness for the presidency. The war had made him; and the whigs had seized upon this product of the war as an instrument by which they might acquire power. Mr. Lincoln a1luded to this in his speech, but showed that while the whigs had believed the war to be unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun, they had voted supplies, and sent their men. "Through suffering and death," said he, "by disease and in battle, they have endured, and fought, and fallen with you. ”

“ Indeed, he began this work before General Taylor was nominated, under the evident conviction that he would be the candidate, and the strong desire that he should be. As early in the year as February twentieth, he wrote a letter to U.F. Linder, a prominent whig orator of Illinois, on this subject. It betrays the perplexity to which more than one allusion has been made, of the whigs at the time. Mr. Lincoln says, in this letter, "In law, it is good policy to never plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you cannot. ”

“ It is noticeable here that Stephen A. Douglas took his seat in the Senate of the United States during this same session. They met first as representatives in the Illinois legislature. Mr. Douglas was the younger, the more adroit, the swifter in a political race. He had had with him the large democratic majority of the state, and had moulded it to his purposes. He had taken a step--perhaps many steps--in advance of Mr. Lincoln ”

“ In this declaration, the politician sinks, and the man rises, and seems to be what he really is--honest and conscientious.
On the fourteenth day of August, the first session of the Thirtieth Congress came to a close, and the members went home to continue and complete the campaign which they had inaugurated at Washington. The session had been one of strong excitements, particular interest attaching to every important debate in consequence of its bearing upon the question of the presidency. Mr. Lincoln had discharged his duties well--ably and conscientiously, at least. ”

“ Clay. Although he had made Mr. Clay's cause his own, and had advocated his election with an enthusiasm which no personal object could have excited in him, he received in his district a majority of one thousand five hundred and eleven votes to the nine hundred and fourteen majority which the district had given Mr. Clay in 1844. He undoubtedly was supported by more than the strength of his party, for his majority was unprecedented in the district, and has since had no parallel. It was not reached, on a much larger vote, by General Taylor in 1848. ”

“ Lincoln said, "My internal improvement colleague (Mr. Wentworth) stated on this floor the other day that he was satisfied Cass was for improvements because that he had voted for all the bills that he (Wentworth) had. So far, so good. But Mr. Polk vetoed some of these very bills; the Baltimore Convention passed a set of resolutions among other things approving these vetoes, and Cass declares in his letter accepting the nomination that he has carefully read these resolutions, and that he adheres to them as firmly as he approves them cordially. ”

“ I next consider the President's statement that Santa Anna, in his treaty with Texas, recognized the Rio Grande as the western boundary of Texas. Besides the position so often taken that Santa Anna, while a prisoner of war--a captive--could not bind Mexico by a treaty, which I deem conclusive; besides this, I wish to say something in relation to this treaty, so called by the President, with Santa Anna. If any man would like to be amused by a sight at that little thing, which the President calls by that big name, he can have it by turning to Niles' Register, volume 50, page 336. ”

“ Lincoln's participation in the Black Hawk war, in which he draws a parallel between his own bloodless experiences and those of the democratic candidate. Quoting extracts to show how General Cass had vacillated in his action on the Wilmot Proviso, he added, "These extracts show that in 1846 General Cass was for the Proviso at once, that in March, 1847, he was still for it, but not just then; and that in December he was against it altogether. This is a true index to the whole man. ”

“ A substitute for the bill was moved, and finally the whole subject was given up, and left to take its place among the unfinished business of the Congress. The reason for this is reported to have been Mr. Seaton's withdrawal from the support of the plan; and Mr. Seaton's withdrawal from the support of the plan is said to have been owing to the visits and expostulations of members of Congress from the slave states. Mr. Lincoln could hope to do nothing without the approval of the voters of the District, and to secure this approval he must secure the support of the National Intelligencer. ”

“ 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 ”