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he so far bowed to necessity as to concur in the votes for the supplies to the troops. His antagonism was summed up in his famous Spot Resolutions' proposed by him on December 27, 1847. Polk had declared that the Mexicans had invaded the United States territory, and had spilt the blood of United States citizens on their own soil. Lincoln, in a series of sarcastic but terribly earnest questions, invited the President to specify the spot on which this had taken place; and, subsequently, took occasion to deliver a long speech in support of them. In 1848 he declined to stand again for Congress; it was believed that he and certain other statesmen had made an agreement to allow each other an unopposed return till each had served in Congress once. For the next six years his life was uneventful. He received the offer of the governorship of Oregon; but his wife dissuaded him from accepting it. If he had gone to Oregon, he would probably not have been President of the United States. The great events connected with the legislation as to slavery called Lincoln once more to the rostrum. In 1854, Senator Douglas, whom Lincoln had been opposing for nearly twenty years, brought forward and carried the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, repealing a measure of 1850 which had checked the northern advance of slavery. Lincoln sprang to the front to denounce it. He was elected to the Illinois Legislature, but resigned in order to become a candidate for the United States Senate. It had been one of the ambitions of his life to become a senator; but when his keen and practised eye saw that he himself would not be elected, while his standing injured the chances of his fellow-thinker, Judge Trumbull, he withdrew his name as candidate. Trumbull became United States senator; Abraham Lincoln became the leader of the Republican party.

The great question that tore the nation in dissension was the question of slavery. Abraham Lincoln had been opposed to slavery from his youth; but he had not approved the principles of the Abolitionists. He had never for a moment thought of placing the black races on an equality with the white; and, indeed, his motive in opposing slavery was not the advantage of the negroes, but the good of the whites. The former he would have shipped off to Liberia or elsewhere as soon as possible; the nation would be happier and more united without its slaves. The retrograde motion of Douglas's bill quickened Lincoln's convictions. He fiercely opposed it. He followed Douglas through the country, debating with him, and carrying on a duel of oratory. He spoke as he had never spoken before; probably he had never spoken before out of such depths of sincerity. He was forced to declare himself on one side or another; he became an Abolitionist.

On June 16, 1858, Lincoln was chosen as candidate for senator by the Illinois Republican Convention. Next day he enunciated clearly and fearlessly his position :—“ “ A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half-slave and halffree. I do not expect this Union to be dissolved,—I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, north as well as south.' He had taken up an unmistakeable position. Το

adopt the words of his opponent Douglas, used on a different occasion, he had checked all his baggage, and had taken a through ticket.' The speech throughout was ahead both of his times and his party. But a man of Lincoln's caution did not speak for mere transitory effect. He saw that a struggle was impending between the North and the South; the champions of either side must be clear and radical in their views; and Lincoln was ready to be the champion of the North.

The popular opinion even in the Republican party is well indicated by a story told by Lamon in his Life of Lincoln. A certain Dr. Long entered Lincoln's office a day or two after the delivery of the speech. ""Well, Lincoln," said he, "that foolish speech of yours will kill you, will defeat you in this contest, and probably for all offices for all time to come. I am sorry, sorry-very sorry; I wish it was wiped out of existence. Don't you wish it now?" Mr. Lincoln had been writing during the Doctor's lament; but at the end of it he laid down his pen, raised his head, lifted his spectacles, and with a look, half quizzical, half contemptuous, replied, "Well, Doctor, if I had to draw a pen across and erase my whole life from existence, and I had one poor gift or choice left as to what I should save from the wreck, I should choose that speech, and leave it to the world unerased.'

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Douglas was Lincoln's opponent; and on November 2, 1858, Douglas was elected, in virtue, however, only of an old apportionment law, which neutralized Lincoln's actual majority of 4000 votes. The latter felt the disappointment keenly. In his own quaint words, he felt like the boy that stumped his toe; it hurt too bad to laugh, and he was too big to cry.'

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Lincoln during the canvass had extended his popularity; and in the following winter he kept himself before the public by lecturing. His subject was a very comprehensive one; but he was not successful as a lecturer. Lamon says that 'part of the lecture was humorous, a very small part of it actually witty, and the rest of it so commonplace that it was a genuine mortification to his friends.' In February 1860 he delivered an address in New York. pleased by the invitation to do so, which showed that he was heard of and known in the east; and the sensible advice of his friends confined him to political subjects, on which he could say something valuable. He received an enthusiastic welcome, and notwithstanding his awkward figure, clad in a new suit of shining black, still creased from its confinement in his portmanteau, his speech was a success. newspapers praised him; and as he went through New England, speaking at various towns, he was everywhere heartily welcomed. The Manchester Mirror describes his appearance: 'He is far from prepossessing in personal appearance, and his voice is disagreeable, and yet he wins your attention and good-will from the start. He indulges

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in no flowers of rhetoric, no eloquent passages. a wit, a humorist, or a clown, yet so great a vein of pleasantry and good-nature pervades what he says, gilding over a deep current of practical argument, that he keeps his hearers in a smiling mood, with their mouths open, ready to swallow all he says. His sense of the ludicrous is very keen, and an exhibition of that is the clincher of all his arguments, not the ludicrous acts of persons, but ludicrous ideas. Hence he is never offensive, and steals away willingly into his train of belief people who were opposed to him.

For the first half-hour his opponents would agree with every word he uttered; and from that point he began to lead them off, little by little, until it seemed as if he had got them all into his fold.'

The most triumphant scene in the canvass occurred at the meeting of the Republican State Convention at Decatur on 9th and 10th May. It had met to select a candidate for the Presidency. Abraham Lincoln was present, but had modestly seated himself near the door. On the opening of the meeting Governor Oglesby rose, and, amid an expectant silence, said he was given to understand that a prominent citizen, whom Illinois should ever delight to honour, was present, and he proposed that the assembly should invite him to a seat on the platform. Pausing for a moment, the governor looked down upon the people, and then shouted the name, 'Abraham Lincoln.' A roar of applause followed; and, almost before the motion was seconded and passed, strong hands were laid on the modest Lincoln, and he was hoisted above the heads of the people, and safely landed on the platform. The excitement and enthusiasm were intense, the cheering and shouting were deafening, and Lincoln stood bowing and blushing, and looking one of 'the most diffident and worst-plagued men' in existence.

By and by Governor Oglesby rose again. There was an old Democrat outside, he said, who had something he wished to present to the Convention. Amid shouts of 'Receive it! receive it!' the door was thrown open, and old John Hanks marched triumphantly in, bearing on his shoulder two small triangular heart rails, surmounted by a banner with the inscription :-'TwO RAILS FROM A LOT MADE BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND JOHN HANKS IN THE SANGAMON BOTTOM, IN

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