er result... . I am glad I made the late race. It gave me
a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which I could
have had in no other way; and though I now sink out of view and shall
be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the
cause of civil liberty long after I am gone."

But he was not to "sink out of view and be forgotten." Douglas himself
contributed not a little toward keeping his name before the public; for
shortly after their contest was ended the reelected senator started on
a trip through the South to set himself right again with the Southern
voters, and in every speech that he made he referred to Lincoln as the
champion of "abolitionism." In this way the people were not allowed to
forget the stand Lincoln had taken, and during the year 1859 they came
to look upon him as the one man who could be relied on at all times to
answer Douglas and Douglas's arguments.

In the autumn of that year Lincoln was asked to speak in Ohio, where
Douglas was again referring to him by name. In December he was invited
to address meetings in various towns in Kansas, and early in 1860 he
made a speech in New York that raised him suddenly and unquestionably to
the position of a national leader.

It was delivered in the hall of Cooper Institute, on the evening of
February 27, 1860, before an audience of men and women remarkable for
their culture, wealth and influence.

Mr. Lincoln's name and words had filled so large a space in the Eastern
newspapers of late, that his listeners were very eager to see and hear
this rising Western politician. The West, even at that late day, was
very imperfectly understood by the East. It was looked upon as a land
of bowie-knives and pistols, of steamboat explosions, of mobs, of wild
speculation and wilder adventure. What, then, would be the type, the
character, the language of this speaker? How would he impress the great
editor Horace Greeley, who sat among the invited guests; David Dudley
Field, the great lawyer, who escorted him to the platform; William
Cullen Bryant, the great poet, who presided over the meeting?

The audience quickly forgot these questioning doubts. They had but
time to note Mr. Lincoln's unusual height, his rugged, strongly marked
features, the clear ring of his high-pitched voice, the commanding
earnestness of his manner. Then they became completely absorbed in what
he was saying. He began quietly, soberly, almost as if he were arguin