during his journey home from Kentucky, described in
a letter written at the time to the sister of his friend Speed, in which
he says: "A fine example was presented on board the boat for
contemplating the effect of conditions upon human happiness. A man had
purchased twelve negroes in different parts of Kentucky, and was taking
them to a farm in the South. They were chained six and six together; a
small iron clevis was around the left wrist of each, and this was
fastened to the main chain by a shorter one, at a convenient distance
from the others, so that the negroes were strung together like so many
fish upon a trot-line. In this condition they were being separated
forever from the scenes of their childhood, their friends, their fathers
and mothers, brothers and sisters, and many of them from their wives and
children, and going into perpetual slavery."

Judge Gillespie records a conversation which he had with Lincoln in 1850
on the slavery question, remarking by way of introduction that the
subject of slavery was the only one on which he (Lincoln) was apt to
become excited. "I recollect meeting him once at Shelbyville," says
Judge Gillespie, "when he remarked that something must be done or
slavery would overrun the whole country. He said there were about six
hundred thousand non-slaveholding whites in Kentucky to about
thirty-three thousand slaveholders; that in the convention then recently
held it was expected that the delegates would represent these classes
about in proportion to their respective numbers; but when the convention
assembled, there was not a single representative of the non-slaveholding
class; everyone was in the interest of the slaveholders; 'and,' said he,
'the thing is spreading like wildfire over the country. In a few years
we will be ready to accept the institution in Illinois, and the whole
country will adopt it.' I asked him to what he attributed the change
that was going on in public opinion. He said he had recently put that
question to a Kentuckian, who answered by saying, 'You might have any
amount of land, money in your pocket, or bank-stock, and while
travelling around nobody would be any wiser; but if you had a darkey
trudging at your heels, everybody would see him and know that you owned
a slave. It is the most ostentatious way of displaying property in the
world; if a young man goes courting, the only inquiry is as to how many
negroes he owns.' The love for slave property was swallowing up