ment first with
enlightened souls, who stamp them with their approval. In God's own time
they will be organized into law, and thus woven into the fabric of our
institutions."

[Illustration: A. Lincoln.]

In 1836 he met Stephen A. Douglas for the first time, at the State
capital. In 1837 he was admitted to the bar, in 1838 re-elected to the
Legislature, and again in 1840. The capital had been removed from
Vandalia to Springfield, and in partnership with John T. Stuart he began
the practice of law in that city in 1839. On November 4, 1842, he was
married to Mary Todd, daughter of Hon. Robert S. Todd. In the
presidential campaigns of 1840 and 1844 he canvassed the State as a
presidential elector on the whig ticket; and in both campaigns was
pitted, in joint debate, against Stephen A. Douglas. In 1846 he was
elected to the thirtieth Congress, and was the only whig representative
in that body from Illinois. On January 12, 1848, he made his first
speech in Congress, on a resolution which he offered calling on the
president to provide a statement relating to the war with Mexico. On
January 16, 1849, he introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the
District of Columbia and to compensate the owners of the liberated
slaves. He declined a re-election to Congress, and in 1849 was an
unsuccessful candidate for United States senator. In 1850 he refused to
accept the appointment as Governor of Oregon, tendered him by President
Fillmore. For a few years he gave no attention to political matters, but
the introduction in Congress of the bill to admit Nebraska and Kansas to
the Union, and the agitation for the repeal of the "Missouri
Compromise," aroused his interest, and in a short time he became the
leader of a new party in the State. All who opposed the repeal of that
compromise, of whatever party, were known as "Anti-Nebraska" in the
beginning, but gradually they began to call themselves "Republicans,"
and as such they carried most of the "Free State" elections of 1854.
Senator Douglas, in defending his course on the "Nebraska Bill," made
speeches through Illinois. On October 1, 1854, Lincoln, in reply to one
of these speeches, in speaking of slavery said:

"I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just
influence in the world; it enables the enemies of free institutions to
taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our
sincerity; is at war with the vital principles of civic liberty;
contr