As soon as the war was ended and the treaty of peace was sent to the Senate, this subject assumed a new interest and importance, and a resolution embodying the principle of the Wilmot proviso was brought before the House by Mr. Harvey Putnam, of New York, but no longer with the same success. The South was now solid against it, and such a disintegration of conscience among Northern Democrats had set in, that whereas only three of them in the last Congress had seen fit to approve the introduction of slavery into free territory, twenty-five now voted with the South against maintaining the existing conditions there. The fight was kept up during the session in various places; if now and then a temporary advantage seemed gained in the House, it was lost in the Senate, and no permanent progress was made.
What we have said in regard to the general discussion provoked by the Mexican war, appeared necessary to explain the part taken by Mr. Lincoln on the floor. He came to his place unheralded and without any special personal pretensions. His first participation in debate can best be described in his own quaint and simple words: "As to speech- making, by way of getting the hang of the House, I made a little speech two or three days ago on a post-office question of no general interest. I find speaking here and elsewhere about the same thing. I was about as badly scared, and no worse, as I am when I speak in court. I expect to make one within a week or two in which I hope to succeed well enough to wish you to see it." He evidently had the orator's temperament—the mixture of dread and eagerness which all good speakers feel before facing an audience, which made Cicero tremble and turn pale when rising in the Forum. The speech he was pondering was made only four days later, on the 12th of January, and few better maiden speeches—for it was his first formal discourse in Congress—have ever been made in that House. He preceded it, and prepared for it, by the introduction, on the 22d of December, of a series of resolutions referring to the President's persistent assertions that the war had been begun by Mexico, "by invading our territory and shedding the blood of our citizens on our own soil," and calling upon him to give the House more specific information upon these points. As these resolutions became somewhat famous afterwards, and were relied upon to sustain the charge of a lack of patriotism made by Mr. Douglas against their author, it may be as well to give them here, especially as they are the first production of Mr. Lincoln's pen after his entry upon the field of national politics. We omit the preamble, which consists of quotations from the President's message.
Resolved by the House of Representatives, That the President of the United States be respectfully requested to inform this House:
First. Whether the spot on which the blood of our citizens was shed, as in his messages declared, was or was not within the territory of Spain, at least after the treaty of 1819, until the Mexican revolution.
Second. Whether that spot is or is not within the territory which was wrested from Spain by the revolutionary government of Mexico.
Third. Whether that spot is or is not within a settlement of people, which settlement has existed ever since long before the Texas revolution and until its inhabitants fled before the approach of the United States army.
Fourth. Whether that settlement is or is not isolated from any and all other settlements by the Gulf and the Rio Grande on the south and west, and by wide uninhabited regions in the north and east.
Fifth. Whether the people of that settlement, or a majority of them, or any of them, have ever submitted themselves to the government or laws of Texas or of the United States, by consent or by compulsion, either by accepting office, or voting at elections, or paying tax, or serving on juries, or having process served upon them, or in any other way.
Sixth. Whether the people of that settlement did or did not flee from the approach of the United States army, leaving unprotected their homes and their growing crops, before the blood was shed, as in the messages stated; and whether the first blood so shed was or was not shed within the inclosure of one of the people who had thus fled from it.
Seventh. Whether our citizens whose blood was shed, as in his messages declared, were or were not at that time armed officers and soldiers, sent into that settlement by the military order of the President, through the Secretary of War.