CHAPTER XIV.

THE winter of 1858 and 1859 found Mr. Lincoln at leisure. His absorption in political pursuits had materially interfered with his professional business, although he retained all that he had the disposition to attend to. At this point occurred one of those strange diversions that were so characteristic of the man. He sat down and wrote, in the form of a lecture, a comprehensive history of inventions, beginning with the handiwork in brass and iron of Tubal Cain, and ending with the latest products of inventive art. This lecture he delivered at Springfield, and, in a single instance, in another city, but there the public delivery of it ceased. Whether he undertook this to detach his mind from subjects which had held it so long, or whether he did it to be able to meet the invitations that came to him from many quarters to address the winter lyceums, does not appear. The effort does not seem to have been a satisfactory one to himself, and it is easy to see that it was not likely to be particularly attractive to the lecture-going public. Reading lectures and delivering stump speeches are very different styles of effort; and the most effective political orators often surprise themselves as much as they do their audiences by their dryness and dreariness upon the platform of the lecturer. The facts of the matter are principally interesting as showing the natural drift of Mr. Lincoln's mind when diverted from professional and political pursuits.

This diversion was only temporary. Mr. Lincoln had become a political man. Whatever may have been his inclina

tions at this time, he felt that he was in the hands of the party to which he had just given the ripest and best efforts of his life. He was a representative man, and was already regarded by the great masses of the new party at the West as their best man for the next presidential campaign. His senatorial contest had done much to make his name known to the politicians of the nation. Political men everywhere had read his masterly debates with Senator Douglas, and had given him his position among the best politicians and most notable political orators of the time. While this is true, it is also true that east of the Alleghanies he was not much known among the people. He had not been much in public office; and his field of action and influence was so distant that they had heard but little about him. If they had been told that within two years Abraham Lincoln would be elected president of the United States, three out of every four would have inquired who Abraham Lincoln was. At the West all was different. erybody knew "Old Abe." He was the people's friend— the man of the people—the champion of freedom and free labor-the man who had beaten the "little giant" in the popular vote of the democratic state of Illinois. His peculiarities were as well known to the people of the West as if he had been the member of every man's family. To look upon him was to look upon a lion. To shake hands with him or to hear him speak, was a great privilege-a subject of self-gratulation or neighborly boasting.

Ev

On the 17th of May, 1859, we find Mr. Lincoln answering a letter addressed to him by Dr. Theodor Canisius, a German citizen of Illinois, who, with an eye to the future, inquired concerning Mr. Lincoln's views of the constitutional provision recently adopted in Massachusetts, in relation to naturalized citizens, and whether he opposed or favored a fusion of the republicans and other opposition elements in the approaching campaign of 1860. Mr. Lincoln replied that, while he had no right to advise the sovereign and independent state of Massachusetts, concerning her policy, he would say that so far as he understood the provision she had consummated, he

was against its adoption in Illinois, and in every other place where he had a right to oppose it. "As I understand the spirit of our institutions," said Mr. Lincoln, "it is designed to promote the elevation of men. I am, therefore, hostile to anything that tends to their debasement. It is well known that I deplore the depressed condition of the blacks, and it would, therefore, be very inconsistent for me to look with approval upon any measure that infringes upon the inalienable rights of white men, whether or not they are born in another land, or speak a different language from our own." As to the inquiry touching the fusion of all the opposition elements, he was in favor of it, if it could be done on republican principles, and upon no other condition. "A fusion upon any other platform," the letter proceeds, "would be as insane as unprincipled. It would thereby lose the whole North, while the common enemy would still have the support of the entire South. The question in relation to men is different. There are good and patriotic men and able statesmen in the South whom I would willingly support, if they would place themselves on republican ground; but I shall oppose the lowering of the republican standard even by a hair's breadth."

It is to be remembered in this connection that Massachusetts was a representative republican state, and, regarding the ignorant foreign population, particularly of the eastern states, as holding the balance of power between the democratic and republican parties, which it never failed to exercise in the interest of the former and in the support of African slavery, had instituted measures which rendered naturalization a more difficult process. This embarrassed the republicans of the West, who were associated with a large and generally intelligent German population, with leanings toward the republican party rather than to the democratic. Hence this letter to Mr. Lincoln and his reply, which latter undoubtedly had its office in shaping public opinion, and in bringing the foreign population of the West into hearty sympathy with Mr. Lincoln himself.

It was during this year that the movement for making Mr.

Lincoln the republican candidate for the presidency took form. He was present as a spectator at the Illinois state republican convention held at Decatur on the tenth of May. When he entered the hall, he was greeted with such enthusiasm as few defeated men are favored with. There was no mistaking the high honor and warm affection in which the audience held him, and no doubting the fact that they regarded that which was nominally his defeat as a great triumph, whose fruits would not long be delayed. He had hardly taken his seat when Governor Oglesby of Decatur announced that an old. democrat of Macon County desired to make a contribution to the convention. The offer being at once accepted, two old fence-rails were borne into the convention, gaudily decorated, and bearing the inscription: "ABRAHAM LINCOLN, the rail candidate for the presidency in 1860. Two rails from a lot of three thousand, made in 1830, by Thomas Hanks and Abe Lincoln-whose father was the first pioneer of Macon County."

The effect of this upon an audience already excited can be imagined by those only who have been familiar with the effect of similar melo dramatic incidents under similar circumstances. The cheers were prolonged for fifteen minutes, or until the strength of the enthusiastic assembly was exhausted. Mr. Lincoln was called upon to explain the matter of the rails, which he did, repeating the story already in the reader's possession-the story of his first work in Illinois, when he helped to build a cabin for his father, and to fence in a field of corn.

It is the misfortune of great men who are candidates for office, that appeals must be made by them, or on their behalf, to the groundlings. It was a great misfortune to Mr. Lincoln that he was introduced to the nation as pre-eminently a railsplitter, and that it was deemed necessary to his political fortunes that he should be called such. There is no question that the designation belittled him in the eyes of all people of education and culture, at home and abroad. And this, not because there was any prejudice among these people against

labor, and not because they attached the slightest dishonor to Mr. Lincoln on account of his early poverty and humble pursuits. Splitting rails was in no way allied to the duties of the presidency. The ability to split rails did not add to moral or intellectual power. The fact that Mr. Lincoln had split rails did not increase his qualifications for office. Mr. Lincoln himself regretted that, while he was splitting these rails, he had not been in school or college. He felt that he should have been very much better fitted for the great duties that had been devolved upon him if, instead having devoted the best of his youth to splitting rails and other manual labor, he had enjoyed the advantages of a thorough education. The country took Mr. Lincoln at the estimate of his friends; and those friends thrust him before the country as a man whose grand achievement was the splitting of many rails. It took years for the country to learn that Mr. Lincoln was not a boor. It took years for them to unlearn what an unwise and boyish introduction of a great man to the public had taught them. It took years for them to comprehend the fact that in Mr. Lincoln the country had the wisest, truest, gentlest, noblest, most sagacious president who had occupied the chair of state since Washington retired from it. At this very period he said to Judge Drummond of Chicago, who had remarked to him that people were talking of him for the presidency: "It seems as if they ought to find somebody who knows more than I do." The rails and that which they symbolized were what troubled him, and, in his own judgment, detracted from his qualifications for the high office.

The latter part of 1859 and the first months of 1860 were broken by travel through various portions of the country, during which he delivered some of the best and most elaborate speeches of his life. He visited Kansas, and was received by her people with the honor due to one who had done brave battle for her freedom. On entering Leavenworth, although the weather was most inclement, he was met by a large procession of people, and escorted to his hotel, while a dense crowd gathered upon the sidewalks that lined the passage.