majority of the Whig votes in Congress. To oppose the war policy until war was declared; in good faith to support the war as soon as it had become the war of the American people; and to strive for a just and beneficent peace as the contest was decided, — that was the course, if frankly and faithfully followed by the Whigs, to secure to the opposition party a consistent, patriotic, and strong position.
In spite of the vacillation and weakness of their conduct, the Whigs won a remarkable success in the congressional elections of 1846. In the twenty-ninth Congress the Democrats had a majority exceeding sixty votes in the House of Representatives. The elections of 1846 transformed that majority into a minority of eight; and this while the party in power was carrying on a victorious war. It was strange, but not inexplicable. Although the bulletins from the theatre of operations reported victory after victory, the popular conscience, at least in the North, was uneasy, and the shouts of triumph could not silence its voice, which said that the war was unjust in its origin, and that slavery was its object. Moreover, the shuffling character of Polk's diplomacy, and his apparent consciousness of guilt, urging him incessantly in his public utterances to defend the government as to the causes of the war, repelled the popular heart; and thus an administration victorious in the field was defeated at the ballot-box. There were among the new members elected in 1846 two men destined to fame, — Abraham Lincoln of
