tation of war to its present high position, amongst the nations of the earth, and I wish in conclusion to say of him; he crystalized sentiment, gave it a focal point. Following his action at Decatur, at Bloomington he made his wonderful speech which certainly gave the party public form. I heard this great speech of his. He was not great in rhetoric, but his mode of speaking was new. He was full of philosophy and got into the souls of men. He produced a new manner of politics. He rose up as a prophet. That was his great force and strength. He caught the wandering thoughts of troubled men and gave them continuity, and for this he was in my judgment the builder of the party in Illinois, the state in which it first took shape and rose to national prominence.

Mr. J. O. Cunningham, of Urbana, being called upon spoke as follows:

I was present at the convention on May 29, 1856, though not as a delegate, but as an observer. I came here in the company of Mr. Lincoln, who had been in attendance upon the courts of Champaign and Vermilion counties during weeks previous. At that time the only way of reaching Bloomington from the eastern counties, by public conveyance, was by way of the Wabash railroad to Decatur and by the Illinois. Central railroad to Bloomington.

A number of delegates and others from the eastern counties, mostly young men, happened on the Wabash train with Mr. Lincoln and arrived at Decatur about the middle of the afternoon. No train coming to Bloomington until the next morning, made it necessary that we spend the afternoon and night at Decatur. The afternoon was spent by Mr. Lincoln in sauntering about the town and in talking of his early experiences there twenty-five years before. After a while he proposed going to the woods then a little way south or southwest of the village, in the Sangamon bottoms. His proposition was assented to and all went to the timber. A convenient log by the side of the road, in a patch of brush, afforded seats for the company, where the time was spent listening to the playful and familiar talks of Mr. Lincoln.

We spent the night at the Oglesby House, at Decatur, and early the next day a train took us to Bloomington. Mr. Lincoln was very solicitous to meet some of his old Whig friends from southern Illinois, whom he hoped to enlist in the new political movement, and searched the train to find such. He was gratified in finding some one from the south and it is believed that Jesse K. Dubois, afterwards nominated as auditor of public accounts, was the man.

Arriving at Bloomington many were found awaiting the opening of the convention, largely from the northern counties, among whom there existed a most intense feeling upon the situation in Kansas. Lawrence had been sacked but recently by the ruffianly pro-slavery men and the greatest outrages perpetrated upon free state settlers.

The evening previous to the convention Governor Reeder arrived in town, having been driven a fugitive from the territory he had been commissioned to govern, and spoke to a large crowd of listeners in the street from an upper piazza. He was moderate and not denunciatory in his address, only delineating the violence he had witnessed and suffered. Dispatches were received and often publicly read to the crowds at the hotels and on the streets and excitement over the situation was intense. No convention in Illinois ever assembled under circumstances of greater excitement.

One circumstance in the nomination of Colonel Bissell was peculiar. Long before the day of the convention there existed no doubt as to the nominee for governor. Colonel Bissell had earned a most enviable reputation as a gallant soldier in the war with Mexico and as having backed Jefferson Davis down in a dueling affair the latter had provoked with Bissell, was outspoken upon the issues most prominent in political discussions, and people had settled it before that he was to be the standard bearer in the state campaign. The temporary organization had hardly been effected when Mr. Munsell, a delegate from Edgar county, whose name has been read here today as a delegate, sprang to his feet and nominated Colonel Bissell for governor, regardless of the usage in such cases.

The people having settled this part of the business in advance, the nomination was confirmed with a yell, after which the business of a permanent organization of the convention, with General Palmer as permanent president, was proceeded with.

During the absence of the committees many speeches were made. Lovejoy (and by the way Owen Lovejoy was the greatest stump speaker I ever listened to,) Browning, Cook, Williams, Arnold and among them one Emory, a free state refugee from Kansas, all made speeches. Owing to the inflamed condition of public sentiment, the audience had become much wrought up in feeling when it came the turn of Mr. Lincoln to make his speech,—the so-called "Lost Speech." I thought it then a great speech and I now think it a great speech, one of the greatest and certainly one of the wisest ever delivered by him. Instead of adding, as he might have done, and as most speakers would have done, to the bitterness and exasperation his audience felt, as a manner of gaining control of the audience, he mildly and kindly reproved the appeal to warlike measures invoked by some who had spoken before him, and before entering upon the delivery of his great arraingnment of the slavery question and of the opposing party, he said: "I'll tell you what we will do, we'll wait until November and then shoot paper ballots at them." This expression, with his conciliatory and wise declarations greatly quieted the convention and prepared the members for the well considered platform which was afterwards presented and adopted.

This morning I received by mail from a friend what is said to have been a contribution from the Mr. Emory to a Kansas paper, giving his version of the convention and of the speech of Mr. Lincoln. I am sure this meeting will be glad to have it read here.

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"I got off the cars May 28 at Bloomington. I learned that the Missouri river was shut up for free-state men and that there was to be the next day a big gathering of the friends of freedom from all parts of Illinois. I here met Governor Reeder who had got out of the territory in the disguise of an Irish hod-carrier. My own home city had been sacked and our newspaper office demolished and the types and printing-presses thrown into the raging Kaw.

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* the morrow came in that Illinois town May 29, 1856. It was full of excited men-the very air was surcharged with disturbing forces; men of all parties met face to face on the streets, in the overflowing hotels and about the

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depot platforms of the incoming trains. Anti-Nebraska. Democrats, Free-Soil Whigs and Abolitionists were all there. There was Palmer and Lovejoy and Browning, well known names whom I had often heard of before. The large hall-Major's-was crowded almost to suffocation. as I took my seat on one of the rear benches. John M. Palmer was chairman and made a speech that took him out of the Democratic party for the time being. Browning was called for and he enjoined upon us 'to ever remember that slavery itself was one of the compromises of the constitution, and was sacredly protected by the supreme law.' After this, rather a cold dose to be administered just at that time, Owen Lovejoy appeared and carried the convention by a storm of eloquent invective and terrific oratory. The committee on resolutions was then announced and while this was being done I felt a touch on my shoulder when a young man said he was going to call me out to talk while the committee was out, adding that I must stop when I saw the committee come in, as it had been arranged to have "a fellow up here from Springfield, Abe Lincoln, make a speech. He is the best stump-speaker in Sangamon county.' This young man was Joseph Medill a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, as I afterward learned. I had no thought of anything of this kind, but of course I was prepared to tell the story of bleeding Kansas, there in the house of her friends. But two things bothered me all the time I was speaking; one was, I was trying to pick out Mr. Lincoln who was to follow me, for he was the best stump-speaker in Sangamon county, as I had just been told and I had never heard his name before. Added to this, was the watching I kept up at the hall doors of the committee room to be sure to have a fitting end to my rather discursive talk on that now notable occasion when the party standing for free-Kansas was born in Illinois and when a great man appeared as the champion of the Kansas cause As I stepped aside, Mr. Lincoln was called for from all sides. I then for the first time, and the last, fixed my eyes on the great president. I thought he was not dressed very neatly, and that his gait in walking up to the platform was sort of swinging. His hair was sort of rather rough and the stoop of his shoulders was noticeable; but what took me most was his intense serious look. He at once held his big audience and handled it like the master he was before the people pleading in a great and just cause. Today, that 'Lost Speech' looks quite conservative; his chief contention all through it was that Kansas must come in free, not slave, he said he did not want to meddle with slavery where it existed and that he was in favor of a reasonable fugitive slave law. I do not now recall how long he spoke, none of us did, I judge. He was at his best and the mad insolence of the slave power as at that time exhibited before the country furnished plenty of material for his unsparing logic to effectively deal with before a popular audience. Men that day hardly were able to take the true gauge of Mr. Lincoln. He had not yet been recognized as a great man and so we were not a little puzzled to know where his power came from. He was not eloquent, like Phillips, nor could he electrify an audience like Lovejoy, but he could beat them both in the deep and lasting convictions he left on the minds of all who chanced as I did to listen to him in those dark days, now receding into the mystic past." JAMES S. EMORY.

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On the close of the afternoon exercises at the church the photograph of the delegates present was taken which is herewith published.

Pres. Davis:

Abraham Lincoln,

One of the delegates from Pike county was John G. Nicolay, editor of the Pike County Free Press, afterwards private secretary to Mr. Lincoln during his candidacy in 1860, and also private secretary to the president until Mr. Lincoln's death. He was also author of a tenvolume Life of Mr. Lincoln.

The paper on "Abraham Lincoln" has been prepared by Mr. Nicolay, but owing to ill health he is unable to be with us. His paper will be read by Mr. Prince, secretary of this society.

BY JOHN G. NICOLAY.

WASHINGTON, D. C., May 19, 1900.

Ezra M. Prince, Esq., Secretary McLean County Historical Society, Bloomington, Illinois.

MY DEAR SIR-I received with great pleasure your invitation to address a meeting to be held in your city on the 29th of May, in commemoration of the Bloomington convention of 1856. I am deeply disappointed at finding myself unable to respond in person to your flattering request, but my regret is mitigated by your kind permission to send you some words of greeting by mail.

In this, the closing year of the Nineteenth Century, the anniversary celebration you have appointed, is most opportune and most instructive. It will afford the occasion to recall and record the conspicuous role which the state of Illinois was called upon to play in American politics nearly half a century ago; to review the mighty changes in national thought, national legislation, and national destiny which have occurred, and to

John G. Nicolay was born in Essingen, Bavaria, February 26, 1832. Came to United States in 1838. At 16 entered the office of the Pike county, Illinois, Free Press and while still in his minority became editor and proprietor of that paper. In 1856 became assistant to O. M. Hatch, Secretary of State of Illinois. In 1860 became private secretary of Mr. Lincoln and remained with him as his private secretary until his assassination. United States Consul at Paris from 1865 to 1869. Afterwards for sometime editor Chicago Republican. Marshal Supreme Court of the United States from 1872 to 1887. Author, with John Hay of "Abraham Lincoln," a history of ten volumes, the Standard Life of Lincoln.