with beauty.' 'Honest Old Abe' was the
utterance of every man in the streets. The Illinois delegation before it
separated 'resolved' that the millennium had come."

Governor Andrew, who was destined to have highly important and intimate
relations with Lincoln during the Civil War, records his first
impressions of him in a few vivid sentences. "Beyond the experiences of
the journey from Boston to Chicago," says Andrew's biographer, "beyond
even the strain and excitement of those hours in caucus and convention,
was the impression made on him by Lincoln as he saw him for the first
time." Andrew was one of the committee of delegates who went to
Springfield to notify Lincoln of his nomination at Chicago. He and the
other delegates, he says, "saw in a flash that here was a man who was
master of himself. For the first time they understood that he whom they
had supposed to be little more than a loquacious and clever State
politician, had force, insight, conscience; that their misgivings were
vain.... My eyes were never visited with the vision of a human face in
which more transparent honesty and more benignant kindness were combined
with more of the intellect and firmness which belong to masculine
humanity. I would trust my case with the honesty and intellect and heart
and brain of Abraham Lincoln as a lawyer; and I would trust my country's
cause in the care of Abraham Lincoln as its chief magistrate, while the
wind blows and the water runs."

Dr. J.G. Holland gives a vivid picture of Lincoln's reception of the
exciting news. "In the little city of Springfield," says Dr. Holland,
"in the heart of Illinois, two hundred miles from where these exciting
events were in progress, sat Abraham Lincoln, in constant telegraphic
communication with his friends in Chicago. He was apprised of the
results of every ballot, and with some of his friends sat in the
'Journal' office receiving and commenting upon the dispatches. It was
one of the decisive moments of his life--a moment on which hung his fate
as a public man, his place in history. He fully appreciated the
momentous results of the convention to himself and the nation, and
foresaw the nature of the great struggle which his nomination and
election would inaugurate. At last, in the midst of intense excitement,
a messenger from the telegraph office entered with the decisive dispatch
in his hand. Without handing it to anyone, he took his way solemnly to
the side of Mr. Lincoln, and said: