is
law and his politics in Illinois. He had, at last, made his position.
All that was now needed was an opportunity, and that came to him in the
great anti-slavery struggle.

Lincoln was not an early Abolitionist. His training had been that of a
regular party man, and as a member of a great political organization,
but he was a lover of freedom and justice. Slavery, in its essence, was
hateful to him, and when the conflict between slavery and freedom was
fairly joined, his path was clear before him. He took up the antislavery
cause in his own State and made himself its champion against Douglas,
the great leader of the Northern Democrats. He stumped Illinois in
opposition to Douglas, as a candidate for the Senate, debating the
question which divided the country in every part of the State. He
was beaten at the election, but, by the power and brilliancy of his
speeches, his own reputation was made. Fighting the anti-slavery battle
within constitutional lines, concentrating his whole force against the
single point of the extension of slavery to the Territories, he had
made it clear that a new leader had arisen in the cause of freedom. From
Illinois his reputation spread to the East, and soon after his great
debate he delivered a speech in New York which attracted wide attention.
At the Republican convention of 1856, his name was one of those proposed
for vice-president.

When 1860 came, he was a candidate for the first place on the national
ticket. The leading candidate was William H. Seward, of New York, the
most conspicuous man of the country on the Republican side, but the
convention, after a sharp struggle, selected Lincoln, and then the great
political battle came at the polls. The Republicans were victorious,
and, as soon as the result of the voting was known, the South set
to work to dissolve the Union. In February Lincoln made his way to
Washington, at the end coming secretly from Harrisburg to escape a
threatened attempt at assassination, and on March 4, 1861 assumed the
presidency.

No public man, no great popular leader, ever faced a more terrible
situation. The Union was breaking, the Southern States were seceding,
treason was rampant in Washington, and the Government was bankrupt. The
country knew that Lincoln was a man of great capacity in debate, devoted
to the cause of antislavery and to the maintenance of the Union. But
what his ability was to deal with the awful conditions by which he was
surrounded, no