• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Both partisan and sectional loyalties affected these debates. In the wake of the strong showing by the Free Soil party, many northern congressmen desired to demonstrate their antislavery credentials. Lincoln had always feared the disruptive effects of sectional antagonism on party politics. Moreover, with his congressional term soon coming to an end, he was actively seeking a patronage appointment from President-elect Taylor, whose allies were attempting to suppress discussion of slavery. How these considerations influenced his course it is impossible to say. But in these December votes, Lincoln diverged sharply from nearly all the other northern Whigs. Thus, forty-nine northern Whigs voted in favor of allowing Palfrey to introduce his bill abolishing slavery in the District; only six, including Lincoln, opposed. Lincoln was one of ten northern Whigs to vote to table Giddings’s bill for abolition, while fifty-five opposed. Only four northern Whigs, Lincoln among them, voted in favor of tabling the Gott resolution, while fifty-five voted against. And when the House adopted the Gott resolution, the votes of northern Whigs stood 65 to 3, with Lincoln among the tiny minority. Only George W. Dunn and Richard W. Thompson of Indiana, among the most conservative of northern Whigs, matched Lincoln’s voting record. Lincoln’s “anti-slavery education,” the Radical Republican George W. Julian later remarked in his memoirs, “had scarcely begun.”50

Had the debate ended here, Lincoln would probably be remembered as one of those politicians Giddings chastised as so desperate for jobs with the new administration that they went along with the president-elect in seeking to suppress the slavery issue. But early in January 1849, even as Lincoln continued his quest for a government job, Giddings recorded in his diary that Lincoln had begun “preparing resolutions to abolish slavery in the D. C.” Lincoln met at least twice with Giddings at their boardinghouse for advice on a draft bill, and the two visited Washington’s Whig mayor, William W. Seaton, to talk about the plan. On January 10, 1849, when the motion to reconsider the vote approving the Gott resolution for the abolition of the slave trade in the District came before the House, Lincoln announced that if reconsideration passed (thus killing the resolution), he planned to introduce his own bill. He claimed it had been approved by fifteen “leading citizens” of the capital. He then read his bill to the House.51

Lincoln’s plan provided that all slave children born in the District after January 1, 1850, would labor as “apprentices” for their owners until they reached adulthood (the exact age to be determined), when they would become free. All living slaves would remain in that condition unless freed by the owners, in which case the federal government would pay monetary compensation. Slaves could not be removed from the District or brought in from outside it, except by officers of the government and citizens of slaveholding states in transit. At the same time, Washington’s authorities would provide “active and efficient” support for the capture of fugitive slaves. The entire proposal would be voted on by the “free white male citizens” of the capital the following April. Later that day, Lincoln voted with the majority to reconsider and thus kill the Gott resolution. He was one of seventeen northern Whigs to do so, while fifty opposed the motion.52

Lincoln never explained why he suddenly shifted from voting “squarely on the side of the South,” as Julian later put it, to collaborating with Giddings. Nor did Lincoln reveal how he drew up his proposal. But its various elements clearly reflected both his own long-standing views and the experience of previous emancipations. In providing for approval by the white residents Lincoln adhered to the condition he had laid out in his 1837 “protest.” Compensation, as noted in chapter 1, was a feature of most previous emancipations. One of Lincoln’s 1860 campaign biographies explained that Lincoln had opposed the earlier Palfrey bill for abolition