ll technicalities and sophistries, and not only planted himself on
eternal right, but showed marvellous political wisdom. The keynote of
all his utterances was that "a house divided against itself could not
stand." Yet he did not pass beyond the constitutional limit in his
argument: he admitted the right of the South to a fugitive-slave law,
and the right of a Territory to enact slavery for itself on becoming a
State; he favored abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia only
on the request of its inhabitants, and would forward the colonization of
the negroes in Liberia if they wished it and their masters consented. He
was a pronounced antislavery man, but not an Abolitionist, and took with
the great mass of the Northerners a firm stand against the _extension_
of slavery. It was this intuitive perception of the common-sense of the
situation that made him and kept him the remarkable representative of
the Northern people that he was to the very end.

Lincoln gained so much fame from his contest with Douglas that he was,
during the spring of the following year, invited to speak in the Eastern
States; and in the great hall of the Cooper Institute in New York, in
February, 1860, he addressed a magnificent audience presided over by
Bryant the poet. He had made elaborate preparation for this speech,
which was a careful review of the slavery question from the foundation
of the republic to that time, and a masterly analysis of the relative
positions of political parties to it. The address made a deep
impression. The speaker was simply introduced as a distinguished
politician from the West. The speech was a surprise to those who were
familiar with Western oratory. There was no attempt at rhetoric, but the
address was pure logic from beginning to end, like an argument before
the Supreme Court, and exceedingly forcible. The chief point made was
the political necessity of excluding slavery from the Territories. The
orator did not dwell on slavery as a crime, but as a wrong which had
gradually been forced upon the nation, the remedy for which was not in
violent denunciations. He did not abuse the South; he simply pleaded for
harmony in the Republican ranks, and avoided giving offence to extreme
partisans on any side, contending that if slavery could be excluded
from the Territories it would gradually become extinct, as both
unprofitable and unjust. He would tolerate slavery within its present
limits, and even return fugitive sla