President, but the continued existence of the republic.

Under the wise counsels represented by the words of Lincoln, the
election was fought out substantially on two contentions:

First, that the compact entered into by the Fathers and by their
immediate successors should be loyally carried out, and that slavery
should not be interfered with in the original slave States, or in the
additional territory that had been conceded to it under the Missouri
Compromise; and, secondly, that not a single further square mile of
soil, that was still free, should be left available, or should be made
available, for the incursion of slavery.

It was the conviction of Lincoln and of his associates, as it had been
the conviction of the Fathers, that under such a restriction slavery
must certainly in the near future come to an end. It was because these
convictions, both in the debates with Douglas and in the Cooper
Institute speech, were presented by Lincoln more forcibly and more
conclusively than had been done by any other political leader, that
Lincoln secured the nomination and the presidency. The February address
was assuredly a deciding factor in the great issue of the time, and it
certainly belongs, therefore, with the historic documents of the
republic.

G.H.P.

NEW YORK, September 1, 1909.

CORRESPONDENCE WITH LINCOLN, NOTT, AND BRAINERD

(_From Robert Lincoln_)

MANCHESTER, VERMONT,

July 27, 1909.

DEAR MAJOR PUTNAM:

Your letter of July 23rd reaches me here, and I beg to express my
thanks for your kind remembrances of me in London.... I am much
interested in learning that you were present at the time my father
made his speech at Cooper Institute. I, of course, remember the
occasion very well, although I was not present. I was at that time
in the middle of my year at Phillips Exeter Academy, preparing for
the Harvard entrance examination of the summer of 1860.... After the
Cooper Institute address, my father came to Exeter to see how I was
getting along, and this visit resulted in his making a number of
speeches in New England on his way and on his return, and at Exeter
he wrote to my mother a letter which was mainly concerned with me,
but which did make reference to these speeches.... He said that he
had had some embarrassment with these New England speeches, because
in coming East he had anticipated making no speech excepting the
one