Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: hardly over-estimate the efficiency and the value of this feature in our political system. Abraham Lincoln took the full course in this college of the people. In early manhood he was conspicuous in his neighborhood as an adherent of the political principles of Henry Clay. He served as a representative both in the legislature of his State arid in the National Congress; he was a candidate for elector in six successive Presidential elections, and before one of them he traversed the whole State of Illinois and part of Indiana, addressing large gatherings of the people in favor of the measures of the Whig party and its candidate, the gallant statesman of Kentucky. After the rise of the Ee- publican party, he canvassed his State on several occasions in favor of its principles with great ability and success. Everybody remembers the friendly but spirited contest between him and Senator Douglas in 1858, in which his abilities stood triumphantly the test of comparison with one of the most adroit of debaters and practised of politicians; at the same time that the largeness and soundness of the views of public policy he enunciated attracted the attention of the country, and did much to secure for him his subsequent nomination and election as President. His speech in New York, early in the year 1860, shows how thoroughly he had studied the constitutional history of the country, and the sagacity with which he could detect the sophisms of demagogues and of the slaves of slavery. Truly, a man who, in a nation like ours, and in a period like that through which we have been passing for the last thirty years, with no motive but pure patriotism and the love of truth, brings, as did Abraham Lincoln, a clear head and an honest heart to the diligent consideration of great political questions, bearing hi...