This law required Williams, in his role as United States Attorney, to oversee the capture of runaway slaves and their return to their owners in the South.

[8] While still serving in Kansas, Williams traveled to Washington, D.C., and, on May 29, 1862, paid a last visit to his old friend Lincoln in the White House.

[citation needed] Unfortunately for the Whigs, Democrat James K. Polk of Tennessee won the presidential election.

Lincoln spoke to the convention in support of the United States charging higher tariffs on imported goods, a major Whig position at the time.

[14] In the 1848 presidential election, Lincoln was backing General Zachary Taylor, a Mexican War hero, for the Whig Party nomination.

Lincoln had sent the following letter in support of Williams's nomination: Washington, March 8, 1849 Hon: John M. Clayton Secretary of State Dear Sir: We Recommend that Archibald Williams, of Quincy, Illinois, be appointed U.S. District Attorney for the District of Illinois, when that office shall become vacant.

A. Lincoln[17] Joining with his friend and fellow Quincy lawyer Orville Browning, Williams in 1841 helped to defend Mormon leader Joseph Smith from being extradited to Missouri to face possible execution for alleged crimes.

[18] Joseph Smith was the founder of the Latter Day Saints movement (Mormons), and he and his church were unpopular because of the voting power of his supporters and their belief in men having multiple wives.

Williams and Browning switched sides and helped to defend in court the accused murderers of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

[19] Shortly afterward, Williams chaired a meeting in Quincy that sought to arrange for a peaceful departure of the Mormons from Illinois to the far western Utah Territory.

[20] Williams appointed a delegation of Quincy citizens that traveled to Nauvoo and convinced the new Mormon leader, Brigham Young, to leave Illinois for Utah in an orderly manner.

Brigham Young said the Mormons could not leave immediately, but when "grass grows and water runs," both signs of spring.

A historian noted: "James W. Singleton of Mount Sterling, Archibald Williams of Quincy, and David M. Woodson of Carrollton aggressively upheld the Whig cause against the attacks of various capable Democratic opponents.

[citation needed] In the early 1850s, United States Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois sought the adoption of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

[citation needed] For his part, Williams ran for the United States House of Representatives in 1854 on a strong anti-Nebraska platform.

On the other hand, Richardson was a close political ally of Stephen Douglas and had strongly backed popular sovereignty for Nebraska in the United States House.

On October 31, 1854, Lincoln arrived in Quincy to give a speech in support of Williams's candidacy for the United States House of Representatives.

In a letter to a friend and political ally, Lincoln wrote: "I am here now going to Quincy, to try to give Mr. [Archibald] Williams a little life.

After 1854, Williams and Lincoln and other anti-Nebraskans took the lead in forming the Republican Party in Illinois around the issue of "no slavery in the territories."

Lincoln wrote a letter in which he said he was ready to "fuse" with other anti-slavery groups according to "principles" adopted at a public meeting in Quincy.

[citation needed] Williams argued a case before the United States Supreme Court on December 6 and 7, 1855.

The issue in dispute dealt with rival claims for lands and centered on whether the question of "bad faith" in the matter should be decided by a judge or by a jury.

The Court ruled in Wright v. Mattison[31] that "bad faith" should not be decided by the judge but by the jury, which had been the precedent.

[33] While attending the convention, Lincoln and Williams slept in the same bed at the Bloomington home of David Davis, a close friend of both men.

A historian noted: "At Bloomington, Lincoln, Williams, his old associate in the Legislature, [and] T. Lyle Dickey, of Ottawa, Illinois, a good lawyer, went to [David] Davis's house and lived there during the Convention.

[35] Some historians argued that Williams, Orville H. Browning, and Lincoln did not exactly "found" the Illinois Republican Party at Bloomington in 1856.

"[36] At Bloomington, Williams, Browning, and Lincoln made "No slavery in the territories" the watchword of an emerging state political party that previously had abolitionist tendencies.

All three times, Douglas pointed to Williams as an Illinois Republican who would have been an acceptable alternate choice to Lincoln in that contest.

He has already spoken at Macomb, Oquawka, Monmouth, Cameron, Galesburg, and other points ... to large assemblages; and everywhere, he has created enthusiasm and confidence among our friends and animated the lukewarm ...

[41] On December 25, 1859, a number of leading Republicans in Quincy, Illinois, including Williams, met with Horace Greeley, a prominent national journalist and editor of the New York Tribune.