This
trait was happily exemplified in a speech he made at a Republican
banquet in Chicago about a month after the presidential election.
Recalling the pregnant fact that though Buchanan gained a majority of
the electoral vote, he was in a minority of about four hundred thousand
of the popular vote for President, Mr. Lincoln thus summed up the
chances of Republican success in the future:
"Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public
opinion, can change the government, practically, just so much. Public
opinion on any subject always has a 'central idea,' from which all its
minor thoughts radiate. That 'central idea' in our political public
opinion at the beginning was, and until recently has continued to be,
'the equality of men.' And although it has always submitted patiently to
whatever of inequality there seemed to be as matter of actual necessity,
its constant working has been a steady progress towards the practical
equality of all men. The late presidential election was a struggle by
one party to discard that central idea and to substitute for it the
opposite idea that slavery is right in the abstract; the workings of
which as a central idea may be the perpetuity of human slavery and its
extension to all countries and colors.... All of us who did not vote for
Mr.
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