tion rose and
said that a person asked the privilege of making the meeting a present.
It was voted to receive it. Then John Hanks and one of his neighbors
brought in two old fence-rails and a banner with these words painted
on it:--

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
THE RAIL CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY
IN 1860.
TWO RAILS FROM A LOT OF 3000
MADE IN 1830
BY JOHN HANKS AND ABE LINCOLN.

The rails were received with cheer after cheer, and Lincoln was
chosen candidate. About a week after that a much greater meeting was
held in Chicago, and he was chosen there in the same way. The next
November Abraham Lincoln, "the Illinois rail-splitter," was elected
President of the United States. He had reached the top. There he was
to die.

[Footnote 15: Candidate (can'di-date): a person who seeks some
office, such as that of governor or president, or a person who is
recommended by a party for such an office. The people in favor of
the candidate vote for him; and if he gets a sufficient number of
votes, he is elected.]

259. The great war between the North and the South; why a large part
of the people of the South wished to leave the Union.--In less than
six weeks after Lincoln actually became President, in the spring of
1861, a terrible war broke out between the North and the South. The
people of South Carolina fired the first gun in that war. They,
together with a great part of the people of ten other southern states,
resolved to leave the Union.[16] They set up an independent
government called the Confederate States of America, and made
Jefferson Davis its president.

The main reason why so many of the people of the South wished to
withdraw from the United States was that little by little the North
and the South had become like two different countries.

At the time of the Revolution, when we broke away from the rule of
England, every one of the states held negro slaves; but in the course
of eighty years a great change had taken place. The negroes at the
North had become free, but those of the South still remained slaves.
Now this difference in the way of doing work made it impossible for
the North and the South to agree about many things.

They had come to be like two boys in a boat who want to go in opposite
directions. One pulls one way with his oars, the other pulls another
way, and so the boat does not get ahead.

At the South most of the people thought that slavery was right, and
that it helped the whole country; at the North t