naked, impudent absurdity, and we speak of it accordingly.  But if, when the war had begun, and had become the cause of the country, the giving of our money and our blood, in common with yours, was support of the war, then it is not true that we have always opposed the war.  With few individual exceptions, you have constantly had our votes here for all the necessary supplies.  And, more than this, you have had the services, the blood, and the lives of our political brethren in every trial and on every field.  The beardless boy and the mature man, the humble and the distinguished—­you have had them.  Through suffering and death, by disease and in battle, they have endured, and fought and fell with you.  Clay and Webster each gave a son, never to be returned.  From the State of my own residence, besides other worthy but less known Whig names, we sent Marshall, Morrison, Baker, and Hardin; they all fought and one fell, and in the fall of that one we lost our best Whig man.  Nor were the Whigs few in number or laggard in the day of danger.  In that fearful, bloody, breathless struggle at Buena Vista, where each man’s hard task was to beat back five foes or die himself, of the five high officers who perished, four were Whigs.  In speaking of this, I mean no odious comparison between the lion-hearted Whigs and the Democrats who fought there.  On other occasions, and among the lower officers and privates on that occasion, I doubt not the proportion was different.  I wish to do justice to all.  I think of all those brave men as Americans, in whose proud fame, as an American, I, too, have a share.  Many of them, Whigs and Democrats, are my constituents and personal friends; and I thank them—­more than thank them—­one and all, for the high, imperishable honor they have conferred on our common State.”

During the second session of the Thirtieth Congress Mr. Lincoln made no long speeches, but in addition to the usual routine work devolved on him by the committee of which he was a member, he busied himself in preparing a special measure which, because of its relation to the great events of his later life, needs to be particularly mentioned.  Slavery existed in Maryland and Virginia when these States ceded the territory out of which the District of Columbia was formed.  Since, by that cession, this land passed under the exclusive control of the Federal government, the “institution” within this ten miles square could no longer be defended by the plea of State sovereignty, and antislavery sentiment naturally demanded that it should cease.  Pro-slavery statesmen, on the other hand, as persistently opposed its removal, partly as a matter of pride and political consistency, partly because it was a convenience to Southern senators and members of Congress, when they came to Washington, to bring their family servants where the local laws afforded them the same security over their black chattels which existed at their homes.  Mr. Lincoln, in his Peoria speech in 1854, emphasized the sectional dispute with this vivid touch of local color: