saying, ’You might have any amount of land, money in your pocket, or bank-stock, and while travelling around nobody would be any wiser; but if you had a darkey trudging at your heels, everybody would see him and know that you owned a slave.  It is the most ostentatious way of displaying property in the world; if a young man goes courting, the only inquiry is as to how many negroes he owns.’  The love for slave property was swallowing up every other mercenary possession.  Its ownership not only betokened the possession of wealth, but indicated the gentleman of leisure who scorned labor.  These things Mr. Lincoln regarded as highly pernicious to the thoughtless and giddy young men who were too much inclined to look upon work as vulgar and ungentlemanly.  He was much excited, and said with great earnestness that this spirit ought to be met, and if possible checked; that slavery was a great and crying injustice, an enormous national crime, and we could not expect to escape punishment for it.  I asked him how he would proceed in his efforts to check the spread of slavery.  He confessed he did not see his way clearly; but I think he made up his mind that from that time he would oppose slavery actively.  I know that Lincoln always contended that no man had any right, other than what mere brute force gave him, to hold a slave.  He used to say it was singular that the courts would hold that a man never lost his right to property that had been stolen from him, but that he instantly lost his right to himself if he was stolen.  Lincoln always contended that the cheapest way of getting rid of slavery was for the nation to buy the slaves and set them free.”

While in Congress, Lincoln had declared himself plainly as opposed to slavery; and in public speeches not less than private conversations he had not hesitated to express his convictions on the subject.  In 1850 he said to Major Stuart:  “The time will soon come when we must all be Democrats or Abolitionists.  When that time comes, my mind is made up.  The slavery question cannot be compromised.”  The hour had now struck in which Lincoln was to espouse with his whole heart and soul that cause for which finally he was to lay down his life.  In the language of Mr. Arnold, “He had bided his time.  He had waited until the harvest was ripe.  With unerring sagacity he realized that the triumph of freedom was at hand.  He entered upon the conflict with the deepest conviction that the perpetuity of the Republic required the extinction of slavery.  So, adopting as his motto, ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand,’ he girded himself for the contest.  The years from 1854 to 1860 were on his part years of constant, active, and unwearied effort.  His position in the State of Illinois was central and commanding.  He was now to become the recognized leader of the anti-slavery party in the Northwest, and in all the Valley of the Mississippi.  Lincoln was a practical statesman, never attempting