of the Republican Club, under whose auspices he was to appear, he was found encased in a new and badly wrinkled suit of black, which had evidently spent too much time in a small valise. He talked freely of the unbecoming dress, and, like a boy, expressed his surprise at finding himself in the great city. On being applied to for slips containing the speech of the evening, he showed that he was not familiar with the habit of eastern speakers of supplying such slips to the press in advance, and even expressed the doubt whether any of the papers would care to publish it entire. During the interview, he referred frequently to Mr. Douglas, and in so kind and cordial a manner that it was impossible to regard him as that gentleman's personal enemy in any sense.*

Being at leisure during the day, he accepted an invitation to ride about the city. Some of the more important streets were passed through, and a number of large establishments visited. At one place, he met an old acquaintance from Illinois, whom he addressed with an inquiry as to how he had fared since leaving the West. "I have made a hundred thousand dollars, and lost all," was his reply. Then turning questioner he said: "How is it with you, Mr. Lincoln?" "Oh very well," said he; "I have the cottage at Springfield, and about eight thousand dollars in money. If they make me vice-president with Seward, as some say they will, I hope I shall be able to increase it to twenty thousand; and that is as much as any man ought to want."

In a photographic establishment on Broadway, he met and was introduced to George Bancroft, the historian. The contrast which he presented in his person and manner to this gentleman was certainly not to his advantage; but his bluff, hearty way carried all before it. He informed Mr. Bancroft that he was on his way to Massachusetts where he had a son in college, who, if report were true, already knew much more than his father.

He was to speak at Cooper Institute that night, and having caught a glimpse of the great capital and of its gigantic in*R. C. McCormick, in the New York Evening Post.

terests and affairs, it is not strange that he should have been oppressed with a sense of his own insignificance. It was one of his peculiarities that, while he was the subject of the most exalted aspirations and ambitions, and the ready undertaker of the highest and most difficult tasks, he always bore about with him a sense of his imperfections, and experienced a sort of surprise at every success. Indeed, his triumphs became the subjects of his study. They really puzzled him; and frequent conversations with others betrayed his desire to find the secrets of his own power.

But Mr. Lincoln was not more curious concerning himself, or concerning the new scenes among which he found himself, than the people of New York were concerning him. There was a great and general curiosity to see and hear him; and when he entered the hall he found the platform covered with the republican leaders of the city, and of Brooklyn, and, in his audience, many ladies. The venerable William Cullen Bryant presided, and in introducing the speaker said: "It is a grateful office that I perform, in introducing to you an eminent citizen of the West, hitherto known to you only by reputation." There was nothing in the introduction, however, which pleased Mr. Lincoln so much as Mr. Bryant's statement in the next day's Evening Post, (of which he was the editor) that for the publication of such words of weight and wisdom as those of Mr. Lincoln, the pages of that journal were "indefinitely elastic."

Mr. Lincoln began his address in a low, monotonous tone, but gaining confidence in the respectful stillness, his tones, that had long been keyed to out-of-door efforts, rose in strength and gained in clearness, until every ear heard every word. His style of speech was so fresh, his mode of statement was so simple, his illustrations were so quaint and peculiar, that the audience eagerly drank in every sentence. The backwoods orator had found one of the most appreciative audiences he had ever addressed, and the audience gave abundant testimony that they were listening to the utterances of a master.

The speech which Mr. Lincoln made on this occasion must

have cost him much labor in the preparation. The historical study which it involved-study that led into unexplored fields, and fields very difficult of exploration-must have been very great; but it was intimate and complete. Gentlemen who afterward engaged in preparing the speech for circulation as a campaign document were much surprised by the amount of research that it required to be able to make the speech, and were very much wearied with the work of verifying its historical statements in detail. They were weeks in finding the works consulted by him.

As a text for the subject of his discourse, he took the words of Senator Douglas, uttered in a speech at Columbus, Ohio, the previous autumn, viz: "Our fathers when they framed the government under which we live, understood this question (the question of slavery) just as well, and even better, than we do now." To this statement the speaker agreed, so that he and the senator had a common starting point for discussion. The inquiry was, simply: what was the understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned? As questions preliminary to this inquiry he gave these: "what is the frame of government under which we live?" and "who were our fathers. who framed the Constitution?" The frame of government is the Constitution itself, consisting of the original, framed in 1787, and twelve subsequent amendments, ten of which were framed in 1789. The thirty-nine men who framed the original Constitution are legitimately to be called the fathers, and these he took as "our fathers who framed the government under which we live." The question fully written out, which Senator Douglas thought these men understood better than we do, was: "Does the proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid the federal government control as to slavery in our federal territories?"

From this point Mr. Lincoln went on to draw from the history of Congress every recorded act of these thirty-nine men on the question of slavery. Question after question upon which these men acted was stated in brief, and it was found

that, of the thirty-nine fathers, twenty-one, a clear majority, so acted that they would be guilty of perjury if they did not believe that the federal government had power to control slavery in the territories. Two voted against special measures, but in such a way as not to show whether they believed the government possessed this power or not. Of the remaining sixteen, there is no record, but it is fair to conclude they had the same understanding with the majority, particularly as they included some of the most noted anti-slavery men of the time, among whom were Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris.

The historical argument was entirely unanswerable. It was a solid and logical statement of facts and conclusions that no sane man would undertake to controvert. The first third of the speech was devoted to this historical argument, and the remainder in about equal proportions to addresses to the southern people, and to the republicans. His remarks addressed particularly to the South were in the kindest spirit, but they were charged with a force of argument and statement that is wonderful. It is well that Mr. Lincoln be permitted to state his own attitude toward those to whom he was destined to come intc such strange and momentous relations. He said:

"You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; and the burden of proof is upon you. You produce your proof; and what is it? Why, that our party has no existence in your section-gets no votes in your section. The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue? If it does, then, in case we should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very year. You will then begin to discover, as the truth plainly is, that your proof does not touch the issue. The fact that we get no votes in your section is a fact of your making, and not of ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains so until you show that we repel you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings us to where you ought to have started-to a discussion

of the right or wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section; and so meet it as if it were possible that something may be said on our side. Do you accept the challenge? No? Then you really believe that the principle which our fathers, who framed the government under which we live, thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again upon their official oaths, is, in fact, so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without a moment's consideration.

"Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. Less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an act of Congress enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy of the government upon that subject, up to and at the very moment he penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it he wrote Lafayette that he considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing, in the same connection, his hope that we should some time have a confederacy of free states.

"Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you, who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application of it.

"But you say you are conservative-eminently conservative-while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by our fathers who framed the government under which we live; while you, with one accord, reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You have considerable variety of new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave-trade; some for a congressional slave-code for the territories; some for Congress forbidding the territories to prohibit slavery within their limits; some for maintaining slavery in the territories through the Judiciary; some for the gur-reat pur-rinciple' that, 'if one man would enslave another, no third man should object,' fantastically called 'popu