The Taylor
administration, realizing its ingratitude, at length, in September,
offered him the governorship of the recently organized territory of
Oregon; but he replied:
"On as much reflection as I have had time to give the subject, I cannot
consent to accept it."
VII
Repeal of the Missouri Compromise--State Fair Debate--Peoria
Debate--Trumbull Elected--Letter to Robinson--The Know-Nothings--Decatur
Meeting--Bloomington Convention--Philadelphia Convention--Lincoln's Vote
for Vice-President--Fremont and Dayton--Lincoln's Campaign
Speeches--Chicago Banquet Speech
After the expiration of his term in Congress Mr. Lincoln applied himself
with unremitting assiduity to the practice of law, which the growth of
the State in population, and the widening of his acquaintanceship no
less than his own growth in experience and legal acumen, rendered ever
more important and absorbing.
"In 1854," he writes, "his profession had almost superseded the thought
of politics in his mind, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise
aroused him as he had never been before."
Not alone Mr. Lincoln, but, indeed, the whole nation, was so
aroused--the Democratic party, and nearly the entire South, to force the
passage of that repeal through Congress, and an alarmed majority,
including even a considerable minority of the Democratic party in the
North, to resist its passage.
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