sm unusual to him blazed up; his eyes were aglow with
inspiration; he felt a new and more vital justice; his heart was alive
to the right; his sympathies burst forth; and he stood before the throne
of the eternal Right, in presence of his God, and then and there
unburdened his penitential and fired soul. This speech was fresh, new,
genuine, odd, original; filled with fervor not unmixed with a divine
enthusiasm; his head breathing out through his tender heart its truths,
its sense of right, and its feeling of the good and for the good. This
speech was full of fire and energy and force; it was logic; it was
pathos; it was enthusiasm; it was justice, equity, truth, right, and
good, set ablaze by the divine fires of a soul maddened by wrong; it was
hard, heavy, knotty, gnarly, edged, and heated. I attempted for about
fifteen minutes, as was usual with me then, to take notes; but at the
end of that time I threw pen and paper to the dogs, and lived only in
the inspiration of the hour. If Mr. Lincoln was six feet four inches
high usually, _at Bloomington he was seven feet_, and inspired at that.
From that day to the day of his death, he stood firm on the right. He
felt his great cross, had his great idea, nursed it, kept it, taught it
to others, and in his fidelity bore witness of it to his death, and
finally sealed it with his precious blood."

The committee on resolutions at the convention found themselves, after
hours of discussion, unable to agree; and at last they sent for Lincoln.
He suggested that all could unite on the principles of the Declaration
of Independence and hostility to the extension of slavery. "Let us,"
said he, "in building our new party make our cornerstone the
Declaration of Independence; let us build on this rock, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against us." The problem was mastered, and the
convention adopted the following:

_Resolved_, That we hold, in accordance with the opinions and
practices of all the great statesmen of all parties for the first
sixty years of the administration of the government, that under the
Constitution Congress possesses full power to prohibit slavery in
the territories; and that while we will maintain all constitutional
rights of the South, we also hold that justice, humanity, the
principles of freedom, as expressed in our Declaration of
Independence and our National Constitution, and the purity and
perpetuity of our go