“Of course it is,” replied another. And turning to Mr. Lincoln, who made his appearance just then, he remarked,—

“I congratulate you upon so handsome a vote for Vice-President.”

“Me!” exclaimed Lincoln, who had already read the paper. “Have you any idea that means me?”

“Certainly, I have no idea that it means anybody else.”

“Well, you were never more mistaken in your life,” protested Mr. Lincoln. “It can’t mean me. It must be the great Lincoln from Massachusetts.”

He utterly refused to believe the newspaper report until he read a full account of the proceedings of the convention. The humble estimate he put upon his own abilities and influence, and the fact that he had indulged no aspirations for the office, is sufficient explanation of the affair.

He took part in the campaign that followed for Fremont and Dayton, striking some telling blows for liberty. The opposition found a powerful antagonist in him, and sometimes resorted to mean expedients to show their hostility. At a meeting at Charleston, Coles County, a Democrat interrupted him by saying, “Mr. Lincoln, is it true that you entered this State barefooted, driving a yoke of oxen?”

Mr. Lincoln paused a few moments, and then answered. “I think I can prove the fact by at least a dozen men in the crowd, any one of whom is more respectable than my questioner.”

Then he branched off upon the helps of a free government to a poor boy, and “the curse of Slavery to the white man, wherever it existed,” speaking in a strain of thrilling eloquence, and closing his response with the following inspiring sentence, that thoroughly aroused the assembly:—

“Yes, we will speak for freedom and against slavery, as long as the Constitution of our country guarantees free speech, until everywhere on this wide land the sun shall shine, and the rain shall fall, and the wind shall blow upon no man who goes forth to unrequited toil.”

Mr. Lincoln had prophesied not only bloodshed in Kansas but also a bloody contest between the North and South, in consequence of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the Kansas-Nebraska outrage. Already the first prophecy was fulfilled, and “Border Ruffians” were burning houses, shooting Free-State men, and sacking villages, to frighten freedom out of Kansas. Douglas saw that political death awaited him in Illinois if he pursued his Kansas-Nebraska measure; and all at once he changed front, and voted with the Republicans in Congress against the very measure his own political recklessness inaugurated. His senatorial term was drawing to a close, and now he sought a re-election by appealing to Republicans for support. Those of Illinois were too familiar with his duplicity to believe he was honest, and refused to support him. In other States, where his political character was not so well understood, there were prominent Republicans who asked their brethren of Illinois to return him to the United States Senate.

Mr. Lincoln was never bolder, more earnest, and stronger than he was in this campaign. The Republican State convention met at Springfield on the sixteenth day of June; and it was scarcely organized when a banner was borne into the hall, on which was inscribed, “Cook county for Abraham Lincoln.” The sight of it seemed to craze the whole assembly. They sprang to their feet, jumped upon the benches, swung their hats, shouted, cheered, and gave themselves up to demonstrations of delight for several minutes. Mr. Lincoln was unanimously nominated; and in the evening delivered before the convention his famous speech, known in history as “The House-divided-against-itself Speech.” This title was derived from a single paragraph at the opening of the speech, as follows:—

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved,—I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.” Late in the afternoon of