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the disapproval of his friends, and he himself was filled with disgust.
If his address in 1852, over the death of Clay, proved that he was no eulogist, then this last effort demonstrated that he was no lecturer.
Invitations to deliver the lecture — prompted no doubt by the advertisement given him in the contest with Douglas — came in very freely; but beyond the three attempts named, he declined them all. “Press of business in the courts” afforded him a convenient excuse, and he retired from the field.1
During the fall of 1859 invitations to take part in the canvass came from over half-a-dozen States where elections were to be held, Douglas, fresh from the Senate, had gone to Ohio, and thither in September Lincoln, in response to the demands of party friends everywhere, followed.
He delivered
“He returned to the city two years after with a fame as wide as the continent, with the laurels of the Douglas contest on his brow, and the Presidency in his grasp. He returned, greeted with the thunder of cannon, the strains of martial music, and the joyous plaudits of thousands of citizens thronging the streets. He addressed a vast concourse on Fifth Street Market; was entertained in princely style at the Burnet House, and there received with courtesy the foremost citizens come to greet this rising star. With high hope and happy heart he left Cincinnati after a three days sojourn. But a perverse fortune attended him and Cincinnati in their intercourse. Nine months after Mr. Lincoln left us, after he had been nominated for the Presidency, when he was tranquilly waiting in his cottage home at Springfield the verdict of the people, his last visit to Cincinnati and the good things he had had at the Burnet House were rudely brought to his memory by a bill presented to him from its proprietors. Before leaving the hotel he had applied to the clerk for his bill: was told that it was paid, or words to that effect. This the committee had directed, but afterwards neglected its payment. The proprietors shrewdly surmised that a letter to the nominee for the Presidency would bring the money. The only significance in this incident is in the letter it brought from Mr. Lincoln, revealing his indignation at the seeming imputation against his honor, and his greater indignation at one item of the bill. ‘As to wines, liquors, and cigars, we had none, absolutely none. These last may have been in Room 15 by order of committee, but I do not recollect them at all.’ ” --W. M. Dickson, Harper's Magazine, June, 1884.
The Herndon's Lincoln Pubishing Company, Springfield, Ill., 1888.
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