n the following principal conditions:

_First_. That the law should be adopted by a popular vote in the
District.

_Second_. A temporary system of apprenticeship and gradual emancipation
for children born of slave mothers after January 1, 1850.

_Third_. The government to pay full cash value for slaves voluntarily
manumitted by their owners.

_Fourth_. Prohibiting bringing slaves into the District, or selling them
out of it.

_Fifth_. Providing that government officers, citizens of slave States,
might bring with them and take away again, their slave house-servants.

_Sixth_. Leaving the existing fugitive-slave law in force.

When Mr. Lincoln presented this amendment to the House, he said that he
was authorized to state that of about fifteen of the leading citizens of
the District of Columbia, to whom the proposition had been submitted,
there was not one who did not approve the adoption of such a
proposition. He did not wish to be misunderstood. He did not know
whether or not they would vote for this bill on the first Monday in
April; but he repeated that out of fifteen persons to whom it had been
submitted, he had authority to say that every one of them desired that
some proposition like this should pass.

While Mr. Lincoln did not so state to the House, it was well understood
in intimate circles that the bill had the approval on the one hand of
Mr. Seaton, the conservative mayor of Washington, and on the other hand
of Mr. Giddings, the radical antislavery member of the House of
Representatives. Notwithstanding the singular merit of the bill in
reconciling such extremes of opposing factions in its support, the
temper of Congress had already become too hot to accept such a rational
and practical solution, and Mr. Lincoln's wise proposition was not
allowed to come to a vote.

The triumphant election of General Taylor to the presidency in November,
1848, very soon devolved upon Mr. Lincoln the delicate and difficult
duty of making recommendations to the incoming administration of persons
suitable to be appointed to fill the various Federal offices in
Illinois, as Colonel E.D. Baker and himself were the only Whigs elected
to Congress from that State. In performing this duty, one of his leading
characteristics, impartial honesty and absolute fairness to political
friends and foes alike, stands out with noteworthy clearness. His term
ended with General Taylor's inauguration, and he appears to have
remained in Washi