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Lincoln’s decision to represent Matson in seeking to return to slavery a family entitled to their freedom under Illinois law seems inexcusable. By 1847, Lincoln was no longer a fledgling lawyer but a respected member of the Illinois bar who was about to leave for Washington to take a seat in Congress. In the 1850s, Lincoln would repeatedly condemn Stephen A. Douglas and his famous statement that he did not care if slavery were “voted up or down.” But in the Matson case, in which Lincoln proved willing to represent either side, he came perilously close to precisely this moral and ideological neutrality regarding slavery.36

If the Matson case proves anything, it is, as Lincoln’s biographer David Donald argues, that up to this point Lincoln had not given consistent thought to the issue of slavery.37 He had, to be sure, established an antislavery reputation, in large measure because of his 1837 “protest.” But his antislavery sentiments had not yet developed to the point where they affected either his commitment to the Whig party or his law practice. But he was now entering, for the first time, an arena where he would be forced to clarify his views and make political decisions regarding slavery.

Lincoln argued the Matson case on October 16, 1847. The following day he returned to Springfield, and a week later he and his family departed for Washington to assume his seat as a member of Congress. On the way, they spent three weeks with Mary Lincoln’s family in Lexington, Kentucky. Lincoln was almost certainly in the audience when Henry Clay spoke in Lexington on November 13. Clay condemned as an act of American “aggression” the Mexican War initiated by President James K. Polk the previous year and affirmed that had he been in Congress when the declaration of war had been considered, “I never, never could have voted for that bill.” He went on to oppose the acquisition of territory for the expansion of slavery and to reiterate his “well-known” belief that slavery was “a great evil.” “I should rejoice,” he added, “if not a single slave breathed the air or was within the limits of our country.” But, he continued, abolitionist agitation only damaged the prospects for gradual emancipation. The American Colonization Society offered the “benevolent” solution to the slavery question and obviated the greatest obstacle to emancipation, “the continuance of the emancipated slaves to abide among us.” Clay reminded the audience that nearly fifty years earlier, he had proposed a plan of gradual emancipation for Kentucky.38

Twelve days later, the Lincoln family departed for Washington, where Lincoln would make his first appearance on the national stage and present his first concrete plan for addressing the issue of slavery.

III

IT WAS A PECULIARITY of nineteenth-century politics that more than a year elapsed between the election of a Congress and its initial meeting. The Thirtieth Congress, elected in 1846, assembled in December 1847 to confront the complex questions arising from the Mexican War. Although Democrats in the Senate outnumbered their opponents by almost two to one, the Whig party enjoyed a narrow margin in the House—the only time in his entire legislative career that Lincoln found himself in the majority. Both parties, however, were internally divided, especially on the question of the future expansion of slavery. In August 1846, just as the previous Congress drew to a close, Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania had proposed an amendment to an appropriation bill requiring that slavery be prohibited in any territory acquired from Mexico. The Wilmot Proviso, which passed the House but failed in the Senate, split both parties along sectional lines and ushered in a new era in which the slavery issue moved to the center stage of American politics.

In one form or another, the Proviso came before the House numerous times during Lincoln’s term in Congress. Every northern Whig supported it, while northern Democrats, evidently more wary of offending the southern wing of