Born, February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Ky.
Education, defective.
Profession, a lawyer.
Have been a captain of volunteers in Black Hawk War.
Postmaster in a very small office.
Four times a member of the Illinois legislature, and a member of the Lower House of Congress.
In Congress he voted against the iniquitous Mexican War, although his stand cost him a re-election. He wrote to Herndon, his partner:
Would you have voted what you felt and knew to be a lie? I know you would not. Would you have gone out of the House—skulked the vote? I expect not.
Lincoln returned to private life with his popularity shattered but with his conscience whole. Apparently his principles had mustered him out of public life forever.
Time went on. Stephen A. Douglas had brought about in Congress a repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which was an agreement that slavery should be kept out of all territory north of a certain parallel. Lincoln was riding circuit when the news of the repeal of this last safeguard against slavery was brought to him. A friend who occupied the same room with him that night told afterward how Lincoln spent the evening discussing the repeal and what it meant to the country. When this friend woke up in the morning he
