in the South as well
as in the North, received the sanction in national convention of
both of the great parties that two years later presented candidates
for the Presidency. It is no doubt true that a majority of the
people, in both sections of the country, then believed that the
question that had been so fraught with peril to national unity from
the beginning was at length settled for all time. The rude
awakening came two years later, when the country was aroused, as it
had rarely been before, by impassioned debate in and out of Congress,
over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. It was a period of
excitement such as we shall probably not see again. Slavery in
all its phases was the one topic of earnest discussion, both upon the
hustings and at the fireside. There was little talk now of
compromise. The old-time statesmen of the Clay and Webster, Winthrop
and Crittenden, school soon disappeared from the arena. Men hitherto
comparatively unknown to the country at large were soon to the
front.

Conspicuous among them was a country lawyer whose home was at
Springfield, Illinois. With the mighty events soon to follow, his
name is imperishably linked. But it is not of Lincoln the President,
the emancipator, the martyr, we are now to speak. It is of Lincoln
the country lawyer, as he stepped upon the arena of high debate,
the unswerving antagonist of slavery extension half a century
and more ago.

His home, during his entire professional life, was at the capital of
the State. He was, at the time mentioned, in general practice as a
lawyer and a regular attendant upon the neighboring courts. His
early opportunities for education were meagre indeed. He had been
a student of men, rather than of books. He was, in the most
expressive sense, "of the people,"--the people as they then were.
For,

"Know thou this, that men are as the time is."

His training was, in large measure, under the severe conditions to
be briefly mentioned. The old-time custom of "riding the circuit"
is to the present generation of lawyers only a tradition. The few
who remember central Illinois as it was sixty years ago will readily
recall the full meaning of the expression. The district in which Mr.
Lincoln practised extended from the counties of Livingston and
Woodford upon the north, almost to the Indiana line--embracing the
present cities of Danville, Springfield, and Bloomington. The last
named was the home of the Hon. David Da