But none of these contented him; he was always struggling towards
something better.
While keeping shop he began to study law, and when he was not
weighing out pounds of tea and sugar he had his head deep in some
dry book. While trying his hand at other jobs, too, he still went
on studying law, and at length he became a lawyer.
Even before this he had taken great interest in politics and had
sat in the Illinois House of Representatives, and at length in
1846 he was elected to Congress. But he only served one term in
the House, after which he returned to his law business and seemed
for a time to lose interest in politics.
But the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill aroused him again.
As a boy he had been to New Orleans. There he had seen the slave
market. He had seen negro parents parted from their children, and
sold to different masters. He had seen them chained like criminals,
beaten and treated worse than beasts of burden, and from these
sights he had turned away with an aching heart. "Boys," he said, to
his companions, "let's get away from this. If ever I get a chance
to hit that thing, I'll hit it hard."
And he did not forget what he had seen; the memory of it was a
constant torment and a misery to him. And now the chance had come,
and he hit "that thing" hard.
In 1858 he challenged Douglas, the author of the Kansas-Nebraska
Bill, to go round the country with him and make speeches on the
great subject of the day: Douglas to take one side of the question
and Lincoln the other.
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