in no flowers of rhetoric, no eloquent passages; he is
not a wit, a humorist or a clown; yet, so great a vein of pleasantry
and good nature pervades what he says, gliding over a deep current of
practical argument, he keeps his hearers in a smiling good mood with
their mouths open ready to swallow all he says. His sense of the
ludicrous is very keen, and an exhibition of that is the clincher of
all his arguments; not the ludicrous acts of persons, but ludicrous
ideas. Hence he is never offensive, and steals away willingly into
his train of belief, persons who are opposed to him. For the first
half hour his opponents would agree with every word he uttered, and
from that point he began to lead them off, little by little,
cunningly, till it seemed as if he had got them all into his fold. He
displays more shrewdness, more knowledge of the masses of mankind than
any public speaker we have heard since long Jim Wilson left for
California."

From New Hampshire Lincoln went to Connecticut, where on March 5 he
spoke at Hartford, on March 6 at New Haven, on March 8 at Woonsocket,
on March 9 at Norwich. There are no reports of the New Hampshire
speeches, but two of the Connecticut speeches were published in part
and one in full. Their effect was very similar, according to the
newspapers of the day, to that in New Hampshire, described by the
"Atlas and Bee."

By his debates with Douglas and the speeches in Ohio, Kansas, New York
and New England, Lincoln had become a national figure in the minds of
all the political leaders of the country, and of the thinking men of
the North. Never in the history of the United States had a man become
prominent in a more logical and intelligent way. At the beginning of
the struggle against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854,
Abraham Lincoln was scarcely known outside of his own State. Even most
of the men whom he had met in his brief term in Congress had forgotten
him. Yet in four years he had become one of the central figures of
his party; and now, by worsting the greatest orator and politician of
his time, he had drawn the eyes of the nation to him.

It had been a long road he had travelled to make himself a national
figure. Twenty-eight years before he had deliberately entered
politics. He had been beaten, but had persisted; he had succeeded and
failed; he had abandoned the struggle and returned to his profession.
His outraged sense of justice had driven him back, and for six years