Neither can any one who has not traveled over this
precise ground appreciate the accuracy of every trivial
detail, or the self-denying impartiality with which
Mr. Lincoln has turned from the testimony of ‘the
fathers’ on the general question of slavery,
to present the single question which he discusses.
From the first line to the last, from his premises
to his conclusion, he travels with a swift, unerring
directness which no logician ever excelled, an argument
complete and full, without the affectation of learning,
and without the stiffness which usually accompanies
dates and details. A single, easy, simple sentence
of plain Anglo-Saxon words, contains a chapter of
history that, in some instances, has taken days of
labor to verify, and which must have cost the author
months of investigation to acquire.”
From New York Lincoln went to fill other engagements
to speak at several places in New England, where he
met the same enthusiastic popular reception and left
the same marked impression, especially upon his more
critical and learned hearers. They found no little
surprise in the fact that a Western politician, springing
from the class of unlettered frontiersmen, could not
only mold plain strong words into fresh and attractive
phraseology, but maintain a clear, sustained, convincing
argument, equal in force and style to the best examples
in their college text-books.
THE CHARLESTON CONVENTION
The great political struggle between the North and
the South, between Freedom and Slavery, was approaching
its culmination. The “irrepressible conflict”
had shifted uneasily from caucus to Congress; from
Congress to Kansas; incidentally to the Supreme Court
and to the Congressional elections in the various
States; from Kansas it had come back with renewed
intensity to Congress. The next stage of development
through which it was destined to pass was the Presidential
election of 1860, where, necessarily, the final result
would depend largely upon the attitude and relation
of parties, platforms, and candidates as selected
and proclaimed by their National conventions.
The first of these National conventions was that of
the Democratic party, long appointed to meet at Charleston,
South Carolina, on April 23, 1860. The fortunes
of the party had greatly fluctuated. The repeal
of the Missouri Compromise had brought it shipwreck
in 1854; it had regained victory in the election of
Buchanan, and a majority of the House of Representatives
in 1856; then the Lecompton imbroglio once more caused
its defeat in the Congressional elections of 1858.
But worse than the victory of its opponents was the
irreconcilable schism in its own ranks—the
open war between President Buchanan and Senator Douglas.
In a general way the Southern Democracy followed Buchanan,
while the Northern Democracy followed Douglas.
Yet there was just enough local exception to baffle
