Whoever would prevent slavery
becoming national and perpetual yields all when he yields to a policy
which treats it either as being right, or as being a matter of
indifference." "To effect our main object we have to employ auxiliary
means. We must hold conventions, adopt platforms, select candidates, and
carry elections. At every step we must be true to the main purpose. If
we adopt a platform falling short of our principle, or elect a man
rejecting our principle, we not only take nothing affirmative by our
success, but we draw upon us the positive embarrassment of seeming
ourselves to have abandoned our principle."
A still more important service, however, in giving the Republican
presidential campaign of 1860 precise form and issue was rendered by him
during the first three months of the new year. The public mind had
become so preoccupied with the dominant subject of national politics,
that a committee of enthusiastic young Republicans of New York and
Brooklyn arranged a course of public lectures by prominent statesmen and
Mr. Lincoln was invited to deliver the third one of the series. The
meeting took place in the hall of the Cooper Institute in New York, on
the evening of February 27, 1860; and the audience was made up of ladies
and gentlemen comprising the leading representatives of the wealth,
culture, and influence of the great metropolis.
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