ardin's friends were in any greater need of
having their feelings corrected than mine were."

[Footnote 12: From an unpublished letter to Judge James Berdan of
Jacksonville, Illinois, dated April 26, 1846. The original is now owned
by Mrs. Mary Berdan Tiffany of Springfield, Illinois.]

In May, Lincoln was nominated. His Democratic opponent was Peter
Cartwright, the famous Methodist exhorter. Cartwright had been in
politics before, and made an energetic canvass. His chief weapon against
Lincoln was the old charges of deism and aristocracy; but they failed of
effect, and in August, Lincoln was elected.

The contest over, sudden and characteristic disillusion seized him.
"Being elected to Congress, though I am grateful to our friends for
having done it, has not pleased me as much as I expected," he wrote
Speed.

LINCOLN GOES TO WASHINGTON.

In November, 1847, Lincoln started for Washington. The city in 1848 was
little more than the outline of the Washington of 1896. The Capitol was
without the present wings, dome, or western terrace. The White House,
the City Hall, the Treasury, the Patent Office, and the Post-Office were
the only public buildings standing then which have not been rebuilt or
materially changed. The streets were unpaved, and their dust in summer
and mud in winter are celebrated in every record of the period. The
parks and circles were still unplanted. Near the White House were a few
fine old homes, and Capitol Hill was partly built over. Although there
were deplorable wastes between these two points, the majority of the
people lived in this part of the city, on or near Pennsylvania Avenue.
The winter that Lincoln was in Washington, Daniel Webster lived on
Louisiana Avenue, near Sixth Street; Speaker Winthrop and Thomas H.
Benton on C Street, near Third; John Quincy Adams and James Buchanan,
the latter then Secretary of State, on F Street, between Thirteenth and
Fourteenth. Many of the senators and congressmen were in hotels, the
leading ones of which were Willard's, Coleman's, Gadsby's, Brown's,
Young's, Fuller's, and the United States. Stephen A. Douglas, who was in
Washington for his first term as senator, lived at Willard's. So
inadequate were the hotel accommodations during the sessions that
visitors to the town were frequently obliged to accept most
uncomfortable makeshifts for beds. Seward, visiting the city in 1847,
tells of sleeping on "a cot between two beds occupied by strangers."

The l