113 "Abraham's turn now": Riddle, Lincoln Runs for Congress, p. 102.

114 "elected to congress": CW, 1:356.

114 "to keep peace": CW, 1:366.

114 "abilities and integrity": Riddle, Lincoln Runs for Congress, p. 157.

114 "grossly misrepresented him": CW, 1:384.

114 "some honest men": CW, 1:383.

114 "scoffer at, religion": CW, 1:382.

115 to the convention: New York Tribune, July 14,1847. The Chicago Daily Journal announced that this was Lincoln's "first visit to the Commercial emporium of the state." Wayne C. Temple, Lincoln's Connections with the Illinois & Michigan Ca.n.a.l, His Return from Congress in '48, and His Invention (Springfield: Illinois Bell, 1986), pp. 2223, provides the best account of Lincoln's partic.i.p.ation in the convention.

115 "homely looking man": All quotations in the two following paragraphs are from WHH, "a.n.a.lysis of the Character of Abraham Lincoln," ALQ 1 (Sept. 1941): 357359. As Herndon indicated, Lincoln's hair was usually disheveled, but on this occasion, while posing for a daguerreotype, it was carefully slicked down.

116 "the whig cause": CW, 1:341.

116 "over old times": WHH Herndon, interview with Nathaniel Grigsby, Sept. 16, 1865, HWC.

116 "sister were buried": CW, 1:378.

116 loss of his sister: For sensitive psychoa.n.a.lytical comments on Lincoln's verse and the suggestion of "incomplete mourning," I am indebted to Strozier, Lincoln's Quest for Union, pp. 2830.

116 "were certainly poetry": CW, 1:378.

118 "in liquid light": CW, 1:378379.

118 "into harmless insanity": CW, 1:384.

118 "him ling 'ring here?": CW, 1:385386.

118 frontier bear hunt: CW, 1:386389.

118 "having written them": CW, 1:392.

CHAPTER FIVE: LONE STAR OF ILLINOIS

Two valuable monographs deal with Lincoln's years in Congress: Donald W. Riddle, Congressman Abraham Lincoln (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979), which is sharply critical; and Paul Findley, A. Lincoln: The Crucible of Congress (New York: Crown Publishers, 1979), which takes a more favorable view. Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 18091858 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1928), offers many valuable details.

The best general account of the final year of Polk's administration is The Impending Crisis, 18481861, by David M. Potter (completed by Don E. Fehrenbacher) (New York: Harper & Row, 1976). There is also an excellent survey in Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union: Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 18471852 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947), chap. 1. Robert W. Johannsen, To the Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), is a spirited account of public reactions to the conflict. The standard work on dissent and opposition to the war is John H. Schroeder, Mr. Polk's War (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973).

119 "as I expected": CW, 1:391.

120 he was playing: Samuel C. Busey, Personal Reminiscences and Recollections of Forty-Six Years' Membership in the Medical Society of the District of Columbia and Residence in This City (Washington, D.C., privately printed, 1895), pp. 2527.

120 "attending to business": CW, 1:465.