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West. The completion of the Denver, Texas & Fort Worth (extension) Railroad, in process of construction to Elizabethtown, will open up a magnificent country, which will become tributary at once to Trinadad, and hasten the day when the latter will become a great smelting center. This region also abounds in iron-ore, running as high as 67 per cent. ore, which goes to show how exceptionally rich as well as abundant it is.

The reader's attention is called to the scarf pins as seen in the engrav

ing of Mr. Mathew Lynch. They are gold nuggets taken from the Lynch. Placer Mines, by Mr. Lynch himself. They are now worn and infinitely prized by his brother James; as, also, is his watch and chain, both fashioned out of the gold taken by that deceased brother from the Lynch Placer Mines before the fatal falling of that tree which caused such general and lasting lament in New Mexico and Colorado.

HENRY DUDLEY TEETOR.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

AT Alton, Illinois, in October, 1858, I first met Abraham Lincoln. It was on the day he closed the historic joint debate of that year, with Stephen A. Douglas.

My anxiety to see and hear the man whose great speech at Springfield in June had electrified the entire country was so intense that immediately after our election in Ohio I ran down over the Wabash, and saw and heard Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas in their closing debate at Alton.

I returned home at once, so as to be present and celebrate my first election to Congress.

I had accepted an invitation from the Republican Committee of Illinois to accompany Governor Chase, and speak at several points in that State

and remain until the close of the campaign in November.

The plan for the Illinois campaign was discussed and agreed upon at the Tremont House in Chicago. Here we met John Wentworth, Elihu B. Washburn, Owen Lovejoy and Joseph Medill (then as now, editor of the Chicago Tribune) and many others.

This was a memorable meeting, and from that hour Mr. Lincoln's nomination for the Presidency in 1860 became a probability.

I gave this meeting an enthusiastic account of the debate at Alton, and when I stated that although the present campaign might not result in the election of Mr. Lincoln as Senator, yet his speeches had made it impossible for Mr. Douglas to be elected

President, and that a great leader had arisen, commanded the attention of eager listeners.

Mr. Lincoln came to Ohio in the fall of 1859 to take part in the Gubernatorial campaign, and delivered memorable speeches at Columbus and Cincinnati. Under the leadership of Judge Swayne a distinct Lincoln party arose in Ohio, which in a few months became a great factor in Mr. Lincoln's nomination for the Presidency.

NORTHERN PRO-SLAVERY CHAMPIONS.

From 1844 until 1861 the slave-barons were so intrenched in the Government, that they demanded as a condition to the political recognition of any Northern leader that they publicly commit themselves by deeds as well as words to their service. They demanded that all northern aspirants to the Presidency should, in addition to their general subserviency, give undoubted evidence of their fidelity and fitness for so exalted a position, by causing to be captured and returned to the South any fugitive slaves who might be found. in the cities of their residence.

Whereupon, the partisans of Filmore, then the acting President, who after approving the fugitive slave bill was intriguing for the Whig presidential nomination in 1852, caused the officials of Filmore's own appointmenl to seize at his home in Buffalo and return a fugitive slave in order that the slave barons might know that their recently enacted slave

catching law could be executed in the city of Filmore's residence, and so executed that they could be eye-wit

to the subserviency of their allies, who everywhere in that day abounded throughout the North. The manner in which that disgraceful act was performed at Buffalo was so shocking in its brutality, that after Filmore's retirement from the Presidency, he drifted into obscurity and died unwept and unlamented.

Webster's friends in Boston joined with alacrity in sending Sims back to slavery, hoping by this shameful act of abasement to commend their great political idol to the slave-barons for President. He did not get a single vote from them in the nominating convention, and soon afterwards retired to his home in Marshfield and saw, as did Belshazzer of old, the handwriting on the wall. Wherever

he turned his eyes there appeared the sentence of doom, as out of the darkness came the hand with index finger pointing to the words, "The 7th of March."

Mr. Webster died a disappointed and humiliated man, with the personal knowledge that the slave-barons could be as exacting and false to him as to one of their own bondmen.

The pulpit was but little, if any, behind in its base subserviency. A fire-bell at night could not empty a fashionable church in Boston or New York quicker than it would then have been emptied if its parson had honestly prayed or preached for the lib

eration of the slave. So debasing and brutal was this infernal spirit, that the Rev. Dr. Dewey, of Boston, publicly declared "that if the Constitution required it, he would send his own mother back into slavery." And yet, this self-righteous worshipper of Mammon and the Constitution claimed to be an American citizen and a descendant of the Puritans !

After such a statement of our moral condition as a nation, you will not be surprised when I tell you that this reverend individual was but an exaggerated type of a whole generation of vipers, who, in 1861, rolled up their eyes in holy horror, and demanded peace at any price and our absolute submission to the terms of the slavebarons; everywhere crying out: "Give us the Constitution as it is, and the Union as it was." And many socalled statesmen in the North lifted up their voices in chorus and wept and said-Amen.

MR. LINCOLN, AS HE APPEARED ON THE PLAINS OF ILLINOIS.

I present you this dark and sad picture in order that I may show you more distinctly the colossal form and plain but manly face of Abraham Lincoln. Behold him, as at the tomb of the martyred Lovejoy and on the plains of Illinois he emerges unheralded from the shadow of this national degradation and national dishonor, and with the words of truth and soberness on his lips, proclaims: "A house divided against itself can

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not stand." "I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free." That was the keynote which touched the hearts and anointed the eyes of millions. It was in that dark hour the fitly spoken word, and like an eternal ray of light it illuminated the dim and shadowy future.

THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS JOINT DEBATES.

In this spirit, and on this elevated moral plane, Mr. Lincoln met Mr. Douglas and conducted his great campaign in Illinois, and successfully drove him from every controverted position. Subsequently, in his des peration, Mr. Douglas declared "that he did not care whether slavery was voted up or voted down."

Mr. Lincoln did care, the great heart of the nation cared, every honest man in the world cared whether slavery was voted up or voted down. And when I heard Mr. Lincoln proclaim at Alton "that it was a question between right and wrong," his face glowed as if tinged with a halo, and to me he looked the prophet of hope and joy, when with dignity and emphasis he said: "That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever

continue to struggle, until the common right of humanity shall ultimately triumph."

The tongues of these two men have been silent for a quarter of a century. The one who did care "whether slavery was voted up or voted down" will live in the grateful remembrance of his countrymen and mankind; while he who declared "that he did not care" will only be remembered as the man whom Abraham Lincoln defeated for President. RESULT OF THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN 1860.

Two years after his defeat for Senator, Mr. Lincoln was nominated and elected President, receiving 180 electoral votes and Judge Douglas but 12 electoral votes. Breckinridge of Kentucky received 72 votes, and Bell of Tennessee 39 votes.

If Mr. Lincoln had not received a majority of all the electoral votes cast, the choice of a President would, as provided by that indefensible and and anti-democratic provision of our Constitution, have devolved on the House of Representatives, each State having one vote (except where the Congressional delegation was equally divided), in which event its vote would be lost. The choice of a President at that time by the House would have been limited to either Lincoln, Breckinridge or Bell. The conspirators put Breckinridge electoral tickets in the Northern States with the deliberate purpose of excluding Douglas from the three high

est, and thus keeping him out of the contest in the House.

An election by the House of Representatives of a President for 1860-61 was part of the original programme of the conspirators when they deliberately divided the Democratic party at Charleston and Baltimore and determined to defeat Douglas. Nothing is more certain, had that election gone into the House of Representatives, than that Mr. Lincoln would not have been chosen President, as the Republicans could not have commanded the votes of a sufficient number of States to elect him.

With Mr. Buchanan in the President's office, to obey the orders of the conspirators until they had accomplished their purpose, the result would have been a so-called compromise and the election of Breckinridge.

In the light of all that has happened, no mortal man can even now presage what would have been the ultimate result had Breckinridge at that time been clothed with the power of the Presidential office.

That this country would have become a consolidated slave empire during the administration of Breckinridge is more than probable. The pro-slavery amendment to our National Constitution, which was submitted by the Northern compromisers of the Thirty-sixth Congress (and ratified by the vote of Ohio), would have been engrafted into the National Constitution, and slavery thus en

trenched could not have been abolished except by the consent of every State, thus practically making slavery constitutional and perpetual, with no remedy for its abolition but armed. revolution. Fortunately for the future of the Republic, Mr. Lincoln's election defeated this deeply laid plot of the pro-slavery conspirators and their subsequent mad rebellion, and war on the Union enabled him and the National Congress to abolish slavery and make the nation all free, instead of all slave.

From the day of Mr. Lincoln's inauguration until the tragic close of his eventful life, no one who did not know and often see him, can portray the tremendous mental and physical strain under which he labored, nor can human tongue describe the innumerable petty annoyances to which he was subjected, nor the intrigues and conspiracies, which he encountered and mastered.

MR. LINCOLN AND THE RADICAL WING OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

While Mr. Lincoln was beyond all question, as deeply impressed with the necessity of saving the Union as any one of the great men with whom I served, there were often radical differences of opinion as to the best means to be adopted to that end. This was in large part the result of early political training and political affiliation of the men, who were leaders in the Republican party.

The advanced or radical wing of the Republican party was made up

largely of men who had been the recognized leaders of the anti-slavery wing of the Democratic party. Such men as Rantoul, Sumner and Boutwell, of massachusetts; Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine; Hale, of New Hampshire; David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania; General Dix and Governor Fenton, of New York; Chase and others in Ohio; Julian, of Indiana; Trumbull, of Illinois; Doolittle, of Wisconsin; Bingham and Beaman, of Michigan; Frank P. Blair and Gratz Brown, of Missouri, and many others whom I need not name.

These men were all trained in the school of Jefferson, and our personal and political affiliations had been with the anti-slavery wing of the Democratic party.

Mr. Lincoln has been trained in the old Whig party, and Henry Clay, its great compromising chief, was his early political leader, and he voted. for General Scott for President in 1852, notwithstanding the platform on the subject of slavery. I voted that year for Hale and Julian, because of the offensive Democratic platform, which was no more objectionable than that of the Whigs.

I have not read either of those platforms since 1852, but if young students of political history will go. into any library and read them, they will be found practically duplicates, and so subservient to the slave-barons, as to make the cheek of every true American blush with shame to-day. When Mr. Lincoln came into the

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