with his election
to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1834. He remained there
until elected to Congress in 1840, where he served ten years. In 1847 he
was elected Speaker by the Whigs. In 1850 Winthrop was appointed Senator
to take Daniel Webster's place, but he was defeated in his efforts to be
re-elected. Candidate for governor in the same year, he was also
defeated. He retired from politics after this, though often offered
various candidacies. Winthrop was especially noted as an orator.]

The charge that Hardin, Baker, and Lincoln tried to ruin one another in
this contest for Congress has often been denied by their associates, and
never more emphatically than by Judge Gillespie, an influential
politician of the State. In an unpublished letter Judge Gillespie says:
"Hardin was one of the most unflinching and unfaltering Whigs that ever
drew the breath of life. He was a mirror of chivalry, and so was Baker.
Lincoln had boundless respect for, and confidence in, them both. He knew
they would sacrifice themselves rather than do an act that could savor
in the slightest degree of meanness or dishonor. Those men, Lincoln,
Hardin, and Baker, were bosom friends, to my certain knowledge....
Lincoln felt that they could be actuated by nothing but the most
honorable sentiments towards him. For although they were rivals, they
were all three men of the most punctilious honor, and devoted friends. I
knew them intimately, and can say confidently that there never was a
particle of envy on the part of one towards the other. The rivalry
between them was of the most honorable and friendly character, and when
Hardin and Baker were killed (Hardin in Mexico, and Baker at Ball's
Bluff) Lincoln felt that in the death of each he had lost a dear and
true friend[11]."

[Footnote 11: From an unpublished letter by Joseph Gillespie, owned by
Mrs. Ellen Hardin Walworth of New York City.]

[Illustration: COURTHOUSE AT PETERSBURG, MENARD COUNTY, WHERE LINCOLN
WAS NOMINATED FOR CONGRESS.]

After Hardin's withdrawal, Lincoln went about in his characteristic way
trying to soothe his and Hardin's friends. "Previous to General Hardin's
withdrawal," he wrote one of his correspondents,[12] "some of his
friends and some of mine had become a little warm; and I felt ... that
for them now to meet face to face and converse together was the best way
to efface any remnant of unpleasant feeling, if any such existed. I did
not suppose that General H