THE Southern "poor white" is the type of lazy thriftlessness, yet from that class arose ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Born in Kentucky, migrating with his father, he grew up in Indiana and Illinois. He had practically no schooling, was physically tall, tough, and strong, had a tender heart, a clear head, a boundless fund of humor, and an indomitable persistence in reading and mastering the few books he could get. In 1832 LINCOLN went to the Black Hawk War. After doing what he could in various country callings — meantime learning men, trade, and politics, and gaining a name for honesty and good judgment he was in 1834 elected to the Illinois legislature. Remaining there till 1842, he read law, in 1837 beginning practice in Springfield, Illinois. As a lawyer LINCOLN succeeded, because he was sensible, careful, honorable, refusing cases that he did not trust, knowing what to say and how to say it. His assiduous study of a few great authors and his own lucid thinking gave him a rare mastery of expression. In 1847 he was elected to Congress for two years. In 1858, already known in the West, he encountered in public debate the able Senator STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS — both seeking the United States senatorship from Illinois. He lost that prize, but achieved a reputation that, with other notable addresses, made him President-elect in 1860, and heir to the awful burdens of the Civil War. LINCOLN'S wise, kind, steady administration, his Emancipation Proclamation of 1862, his reëlection in 1864, the Union triumph in 1865, and his assassination shortly after, are known of all. The examples of his simple, cogent oratory given are his brave speech on "The Divided House," at the Republican Convention, nominating him for the Senate against DOUGLAS (June 16, 1858), —premonitory of SEWARD on "The Irrepressible Conflict," in the following October, and his immortal address at the Gettysburg Cemetery Dedication (November 19, 1863). THE DIVIDED HOUSE MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION: If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation not only has not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South. Have we no tendency to the latter condi tion? Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combinationpiece of machinery, so to speak - compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted, but also let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design and concert of action among its chief architects from the beginning. The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by State constitutions, and from most of the national territory by Congressional prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained. But, so far, Congress only had acted, and an indorsement, by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the point already gained and give chance for more. This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter sovereignty," otherwise called "sacred right of self-government"; which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: that, if any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. That argu ment was incorporated with the Nebraska bill itself, in the language which follows: "It being the true intent and meaning of this act, not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "squatter sovereignty," and "sacred right of self-government." "But," said opposition members, "let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the Territory may exclude slavery." "Not we," said the friends of the measure; and down they voted the amendment. While the Nebraska bill was passing through Congress, a law case, involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free State, and then into a Territory covered by the Congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing through the United States Circuit Court for the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska bill and lawsuit were brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was Dred Scott, which name now designates the decision finally made in the case. Before the then next presidential election, the law case came to, and was argued in, the Supreme Court of the United States; |