an extraordinary success; and at the polls, in August, the district gave him a majority of 1,511.  In the latest presidential campaign it had given Clay a majority of 914; and two years later it gave Taylor a majority of 1,501.  Sangamon County gave Lincoln a majority of 690, the largest given to any candidate from 1836 to 1850, inclusive.  Moreover, Lincoln was the only Whig who secured a place in the Illinois delegation.

Though elected in the summer of 1846, it was not until December 6, 1847, that the Thirtieth Congress began its first session.  Robert C. Winthrop was chosen speaker of the House, by 110 votes out of 218.  The change in the political condition was marked; in the previous House the Democrats had numbered 142 and the Whigs only 75; in this House the Whigs were 116, the Democrats 108.  Among the members were John Quincy Adams, Andrew Johnson, Alexander H. Stephens, Howell Cobb, David Wilmot, Jacob Collamer, Robert Toombs, with many more scarcely less familiar names.  The Mexican war was drawing towards its close,[56] and most of the talking in Congress had relation to it.  The whole Whig party denounced it at the time, and the nation has been more than half ashamed of it ever since.  By adroit manoeuvres Polk had forced the fight upon a weak and reluctant nation, and had made to his own people false statements as to both the facts and the merits of the quarrel.  The rebuke which they had now administered, by changing the large Democratic majority into a minority, “deserves,” says von Holst, “to be counted among the most meritorious proofs of the sound and honorable feeling of the American nation."[57] But while the administration had thus smirched the inception and the whole character of the war with meanness and dishonor, the generals and the army were winning abundant glory for the national arms.  Good strategy achieved a series of brilliant victories, and fortunately for the Whigs General Taylor and General Scott, together with a large proportion of the most distinguished regimental officers, were of their party.  This aided them essentially in their policy, which was, to denounce the entering into the war but to vote all necessary supplies for its vigorous prosecution.

Into this scheme of his party Lincoln entered with hearty concurrence.  A week after the House met he closed a letter to his partner with the remark:  “As you are all so anxious for me to distinguish myself, I have concluded to do so before long,” and what he said humorously he probably meant seriously.  Accordingly he soon afterward[58] introduced a series of resolutions, which, under the nickname of “The Spot Resolutions,” attracted some attention.  Quoting in his preamble sundry paragraphs of the President’s message of May 11, 1846, to the purport that Mexico had “invaded our territory” and had “shed the blood of our citizens on our own soil” he then requested the President to state “the spot” where these and other alleged occurrences had taken place.