,
while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national
Territories, and to overrun us here in these free States? If our sense
of duty forbids this ... let us be diverted by no sophistical
contrivances, such as groping for some middle ground between the right
and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a
living man nor a dead man; such as a policy of 'don't care' on a
question about which all true men do care; such as Union appeals
beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine
rule and calling not the sinners but the righteous to repentance."

The next morning the best newspapers gave full reports of the speech,
with compliments. The columns of the "Evening Post" were generously
declared to be "indefinitely elastic" for such utterances; and the
"Tribune" expressed commendation wholly out of accord with the recent
notions of its editor. The rough fellow from the crude West had made a
powerful impression upon the cultivated gentlemen of the East.

From New York Lincoln went to Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New
Hampshire, and Connecticut. In this last-named State he delivered
speeches which are said to have contributed largely to the Republican
success in the closely contested election then at hand. In Manchester it
was noticed that "he did not abuse the South, the administration, or
the Democrats, or indulge in any personalities, with the exception of a
few hits at Douglas's notions."[94]

These speeches of 1858, 1859, and 1860 have a very great value as
contributions to history. During that period every dweller in the United
States was hotly concerned about this absorbing question of slavery,
advancing his own views, weighing or encountering the arguments of
others, quarreling, perhaps, with his oldest friends and his nearest
kindred,--for about this matter men easily quarreled and rarely
compromised. Every man who fancied that he could speak in public got
upon some platform in city, town, or village, and secured an audience by
his topic if not by his ability; every one who thought that he could
write found some way to print what he had to say upon a subject of which
readers never tired; and for whatever purpose two or three men were
gathered together, they were not likely to separate without a few words
about North and South, pro-slavery and anti-slavery. Never was any
matter more harried and ransacked by disputation. Now to all the
speaking and writing