The Capitol Dome

40 THE CAPITOL DOME volatile issue had previously led to the imposition of the notorious "gag rule," which caused all petitions touching on the slavery issue to be immediately tabled with no discus- sion, a regulation that lasted for nearly a decade and was only overturned three years before Lincoln took his seat. 25 In early 1849 Lincoln received a petition from 60 citizens of Morgan Count y, severa l of them relig ious leaders, imploring Congress to pass a law to "prohibit and suppress the trade in human beings now carried on in the District of Columbia." 26 e first signature on the list of petition- ers was A. L. Harrington, yet the name further down the column that caught Lincoln's eye was that of Reverend Julian M. Sturtevant, an outspoken emancipationist and one of the founders of Illinois College in Jackson, not far from Springfield, widely known as a hotbed of abolition- ism. 27 It was Sturtevant's name that Lincoln wrote on the back of the petition, outlining its contents and forwarding it on to the Committee on the District of Columbia. 26 In doing so, Lincoln indirectly added more fuel to a fire that would burn ever hotter in the months and years aer he le Congress and later end up leaving an indelible mark on his presidency. Although well-liked by his fellow congressmen and occasionally even asked to join breakfast gatherings at Daniel Webster's house, Lincoln had no national standing, wealth, or chance of reelection and therefore little chance of sponsoring important legislation. 28 His attempt early on to make a splash by introducing what became know as his "Spot Resolutions" went nowhere (fig. 10). ese resolu- tions would have required the Polk Administration to iden- tify "the spot" where American blood had supposedly been shed on American soil, thereby validating going to war with Mexico in 1846. Although the resolutions echoed previous criticisms by Whig leader Henry Clay, Lincoln's political idol, the House neither debated nor adopted the measures, and Democrats dismissed them as politically motivated and unpatriotic. 29 Lincon's mundane work as a member of the Post Office and Post Roads Committee, on the other hand, did yield real if unglamorous results, centering on a piece of legisla- tion that came into existence as generically titled H.R. 260, "an act to establish certain post routes." Following this bill through House channels as it was amended, reworked, and debated, and uncovering Lincoln's role in the legislative "sausage-making," illustrates the complexities involved in reconstructing a nineteenth-century congressional career. As a committee member from the midwest, Lincoln was particularly attentive to the needs of his state for expanded federal mail service. Lincoln personally rewrote the section of the bill concerning Illinois, adding his contribution to the handwritten changes that were tacked on to chopped- up portions of the dra aer its first printing (fig. 11). e original bill had been reported out of committee on 29 February 1848, was read twice, and then submitted to the Committee of the Whole House. On 16 May 1848 addi- tional amendments were committed to the Committee of the Whole House, and two weeks later the entire piece of legislation was handed back to the Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads for additional changes. On 14 June 1848 it was reported back from committee with changes agreed to by the House before being ordered engrossed with amendments to be read a third time. 30 e bill was brought up once more in the House on 26 June, aer another Mem- ber introduced a substitution bill, but this effort failed, and H.R. 260 was sent back to the Post Office and Post Roads Committee once again. Strangely, H.R. 260 then disappeared from the con- gressional record under that number and, for unknown reasons, underwent a mysterious change of legislative dock- eting. Nearly a month later, on 19 July, Lincoln rose in the House of Representatives and introduced H.R. 599, which Fig. 10. Lincoln submitted his famous "Spot Resolutions" to the House—to no avail—on 22 December 1847 ( first page shown here).

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