the great speech, by some declared his greatest, in its power and consequences, delivered before the Bloomington Convention, in 1856, found no record whatever. It was the beginning of his new career, and, after that, whatever he said was considered worth preserving.

By

This latter idea soon extended to many sayings which were of a conversational nature, and in dealing with any pointed presentation of them it is necessary to take into consideration the trustworthiness of the hearer who recorded them. this process, a large mass of mateials loosely attributed to Mr. Lincoln has been long since ruled out as, at best, apocryphal. Only such utterances as are believed to be authentic and fairly accurate in form of expression are included in this selection.

WILLIAM O. STODDARD.

OF THE UNION.

MANY of the utterances of Lincoln, both public and private, before and after he became President, and many of his more important public acts, can be better understood after accepting his own repeated assertions of his singleness of purpose. The very breadth of his perception of the nation's need and the unswerving character of his own determination, prevented his resulting policy from being either comprehended or approved by a multitude composed of both his friends and his enemies. Eager and enthusiastic men, some of them of great ability, felt sure and freely declared that they, would do differently, that

is, better, if they were in his place. It is interesting, therefore, at this distance of time, to look back and see how much of his success in contending with manifold obstacles, was due to the fact that he never allowed himself to lose sight, for a moment, of the one paramount duty imposed upon him, the perpetuation of American nationality in its integrity. To this all other things, including the lives of men, white or black, the accustomed forms of statutory law, and even the apparently rigid barriers of the written Constitution, must be regarded as secondary. It is now almost evident that if he had thought and acted otherwise, success would have been impossible. For instance, if he had allowed himself to place the abolition of slavery first, serving a part instead of the whole, then the whole would have been lost, slavery

would not have been abolished and the result of the civil war would not have been what it now is, a permanent and forever increasing good to the people of the entire Union, to the South even more than to the North.

SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLS., JUNE 17, 1858.

"In my opinion it (the agitation of the slavery question) will not cease until a crisis has been reached and passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.'

lieve this Government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the 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