cern to the people who may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these Territories. We want them for homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable -extent, if slavery shall be planted within them. Slave States are places for poor white people to remove from, not to remove to. New free States are the places for poor people to go to, and better their condition. For this use the nation needs these Territories.

THE EFFECT OF SLAVERY ON THE UNION

BUT Nebraska is urged as a great Union-saving measure. Well, I too go for saving the Union. Much as I hate slavery, I would consent to the extension of it rather than see the Union dissolved, just as I would consent to any great evil to avoid a greater one. But when I go to Union-saving, I must believe, at least, that the means I employ have some adaptation to the end. To my mind, Nebraska has no such adaptation.

"It hath no relish of salvation in it."

It is an aggravation, rather, of the only one thing which ever endangers the Union. When it came upon us, all was peace and quiet. The nation was looking to the forming of new bonds of union, and a long course of peace and prosperity seemed to lie before us. In the whole range of possibility, there scarcely appears to me to have been anything out of which the slavery agitation could have been revived, except the very project of repealing the Missouri Compromise. Every

inch of territory we owned already had a settlement of the slavery question, by which all parties were pledged to abide. Indeed, there was no uninhabited country on the continent which we could acquire, if we except some extreme northern regions which are wholly out of the question.

In this state of affairs the Genius of Discord himself could scarcely have invented a way of again setting us by the ears but by turning back and destroying the peace measures of the past. The counsels of that Genius seem to have prevailed. The Missouri Compromise was repealed; and here we are in the midst of a new slavery agitation, such, I think, as we have never seen before. Who is responsible for this? Is it those who resist the measure, or those who causelessly brought it forward and pressed it through, having reason to know, and in fact knowing, it must and would be so resisted? It could not but be expected by its author that it would be looked upon as a measure for the extension of slavery, aggravated by a gross breach of faith.

Argue as you will and long as you will, this is the naked front and aspect of the measure: And in this aspect it could not but produce agitation. Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature opposition to it in his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism, and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise, repeal all compromises, re

peal the Declaration of Independence, repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart that slavery extension is wrong, and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth will continue to speak.

BLOOMINGTON SPEECH
May 29, 1856

Between 1854 and 1856 old party lines were breaking down, and Lincoln, with other liberals, was turning to new allegiances. In November, 1854, a month after the Peoria speech, he was elected to the General Assembly of Illinois from Sangamon County as a Whig, resigning this position shortly to become a candidate for the United States Senate on the Whig ticket. Although he led on the first ballot, the legislature elected Trumbull, a dark horse; but Lincoln was consoled by the fact that he had forced the election of an Anti-Nebraska senator. As late as August, 1855, he writes, "I think I am a Whig, but others say there are no Whigs, and that I am an Abolitionist."

(This

On February 22, 1856, a convention of editors was held at Decatur to organize the Anti-Nebraska sentiment of the state. At a banquet held that night Lincoln discouraged the intention of making him the Anti-Nebraska candidate for governor, and suggested the nomination of Colonel W. H. Bissell. suggestion was followed, and Bissell was elected.) Before disbanding, the delegates appointed a State Central Committee and decided to call a State Convention at Bloomington on the 29th of May. On the same day on which the Illinois delegates met at Decatur, delegates from several states met at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and appointed a National Committee which summoned the first National Republican Convention to its meeting at Philadelphia on the 17th of June.

The Bloomington convention met at the time appointed, adopted a platform, appointed delegates to the National Republican Convention, nominated a state ticket, and completed the work of organizing the Republican Party in Illinois. At the

conclusion of business there was some speaking, but the crowd remained unresponsive. Finally Lincoln was demanded and came forward to speak. Miss Tarbell describes the scene:

"He began his speech, then, deeply moved, and with a profound sense of the importance of the moment. At first he spoke slowly and haltingly, but gradually he grew in force and intensity until his hearers arose from their chairs and with pale faces and quivering lips pressed unconsciously towards him. Starting from the back of the broad platform on which he stood, his hands on his hips, he slowly advanced towards the front, his eyes blazing, his face white with passion, his voice resonant with the force of his conviction. As he advanced he seemed to his audience fairly to grow, and when at the end of a period he stood at the front line of the stage, hands still on the hips, head back, raised on his tiptoes, he seemed like a giant inspired. 'At that moment he was the handsomest man I ever saw,' Judge Scott declared."

It must be remembered that the Kansas-Nebraska Bill had aroused the whole nation. Lincoln had reëntered politics because he resented the tendency of this bill to spread slavery. Only a week before the present speech the conflict in Kansas had reached its worst. Farticipants and spectators of the rioting of May 21 at Lawrence were in Lincoln's audience. All this afforded a dramatic opportunity for stirring the feelings of his hearers which Lincoln did not miss.

This address is commonly known as the "Lost Speech." In 1896 Mr. H. C. Whitney, a lawyer present at the convention, published the following version based upon notes taken at the time of delivery. Newspaper reporters seem to have been too intent upon listening to record the speech.

1. Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, I was over at [cries of "Platform!" "Take the platform!"] - I say, that while I was at Danville Court, some of our friends of Anti-Nebraska got together in Springfield and elected me as one delegate to represent old San

1 Those who opposed the bill of Senator Douglas repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

gamon with them in this convention, and I am here. certainly as a sympathizer in this movement and by virtue of that meeting and selection. But we can hardly be called delegates strictly, inasmuch as, properly speaking, we represent nobody but ourselves. I think it altogether fair to say that we have no AntiNebraska party in Sangamon, although there is a good deal of Anti-Nebraska feeling there; but I say for myself, and I think I may speak also for my colleagues, that we who are here fully approve of the platform and of all that has been done [A voice: "Yes!"]; and even if we are not regularly delegates, it will be right for me to answer your call to speak. I suppose we truly stand for the public sentiment of Sangamon on the great question of the repeal,1 although we do not yet represent many numbers who have taken a distinct position on the question.

2. We are in a trying time it ranges above mere party and this movement to call a halt and turn our steps backward needs all the help and good counsels it can get; for unless popular opinion makes itself very strongly felt, and a change is made in our present course, blood will flow on account of Nebraska, and brother's hand will be raised against brother! [The last sentence was uttered in such an earnest, impressive, if not, indeed, tragic, manner, as to make a cold chill creep over me. Others gave a similar experience.]

3. I have listened with great interest to the earnest 1 The repeal of the Missouri Compromise.