Writing and Speaking to Gain Distinction in Congress (1847–1849)

In his single, two-year term in Congress, as in the Illinois legislature, Lincoln did not leave his mark on policy, but he strengthened his reputation as a party standard bearer through legislative speeches, speaking on the campaign trail, and composing campaign literature and private letters. Congressman Lincoln’s Internal Improvements speech presented a constitutional case for a major Whig policy. He increased his experience in applying historical, legalistic, and moral argumentation in attacking the Democratic Party and its leaders, sometimes with satire. His harshest satire targeted President James Polk, and the targets of Lincoln’s other satire were the Democratic Party and Lewis Cass, the 1848 Democratic presidential candidate. Lincoln used research into the historical record to tar Polk and Cass as incompetent and morally unacceptable, and Lincoln positioned those attacks at the ends of speeches for emphasis. Lincoln’s criticism of Polk in the Mexican War speech represented a more caustic version of the legalistic, implicitly moral rhetoric seen in the attacks he had made on Usher F. Linder and Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln attributed Polk’s ineptitude first to deception then to mental confusion. The legalistic and bitter personal attacks on Polk in the Mexican War speech overshadow its moral suasion.