Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865; Presidents -- United States -- Biography; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
When Congress came together again in December, there was such a change
in the temper of its members that no one would have imagined, on
seeing the House divided, that it was the same body which had
assembled there a year before. The election was over; the Whigs were
to control the Executive Department of the Government for four years
to come; the members themselves were either reflected or defeated; and
there was nothing to prevent the gratification of such private
feelings as they might have been suppressing during the canvass in the
interest of their party. It was not long before some of the Northern
Democrats began to avail themselves of this new liberty. They had
returned burdened with a sense of wrong. They had seen their party put
in deadly peril by reason of its fidelity to the South, and they had
seen how little their Southern brethren cared for their labors and
sacrifices, in the enormous gains which Taylor had made in the South,
carrying eight out of fifteen slave States. They were in the humor to
avenge themselves by a display of independence on their own account,
at the first opportunity. The occasion was not long in presenting
itself. A few days after Congress opened, Mr. Root, of Ohio,
introduced a resolution instructing the Committee on Territories to
bring in a bill "with as little delay as practicable" to provide
territorial governments for California and New Mexico, which should
"exclude slavery there-from." This resolution would have thrown the
same House into a panic twelve months before, but now it passed by a
vote of 108 to 80--in the former number were all the "Whigs from the
North and all the Democrats but eight," and in the latter the entire
South and the eight referred to.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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