This text is part of:
[103]
diverse local sentiment.
The northern counties had at once become strongly Anti-Nebraska; the conservative Whig counties of the center inclined to the Know-Nothings; while the Kentuckians and Carolinians, who had settled the southern end, had strong antipathies to what they called abolitionism, and applauded Douglas and repeal.
The agitation, however, swept on, and further hesitation became impossible.
Early in 1856 Mr. Lincoln began to take an active part in organizing the Republican party.
He attended a small gathering of Anti-Nebraska editors in February, at Decatur, who issued a call for a mass convention which met at Bloomington in May, at which the Republican party of Illinois was formally constituted by an enthusiastic gathering of local leaders who had formerly been bitter antagonists, but who now joined their efforts to resist slavery extension.
They formulated an emphatic but not radical platform, and through a committee selected a composite ticket of candidates for State offices, which the convention approved by acclamation.
The occasion remains memorable because of the closing address made by Mr. Lincoln in one of his most impressive oratorical moods.
So completely were his auditors carried away by the force of his denunciation of existing political evils, and by the eloquence of his appeal for harmony and union to redress them, that neither a verbatim report nor even an authentic abstract was made during its delivery: but the lifting inspiration of its periods will never fade from the memory of those who heard it.
About three weeks later, the first national convention of the Republican party met at Philadelphia, and nominated John C. Fremont of California for President.
There was a certain fitness in this selection, from the
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.