dignity and importance of his responsibility. The speech in fact gave
the keynote to the coming campaign.

It is hardly necessary to add that it also decided the selection of the
national leader not only for the political campaign, but through the
coming struggle. If it had not been for the impression made upon New
York and the East generally by Lincoln's speech and by the man himself,
the vote of New York could not have been secured in the May convention
for the nomination of the man from Illinois.

Robert Lincoln (writing to me in July, 1908) says:

"After my father's address in New York in February, 1860, he made a
trip to New England in order to visit me at Exeter, N.H., where I
was then a student in the Phillips Academy. It had not been his plan
to do any speaking in New England, but, as a result of the address
in New York, he received several requests from New England friends
for speeches, and I find that before returning to the West, he spoke
at the following places: Providence, R.I., Manchester, N.H., Exeter,
N.H., Dover, N.H., Concord, N.H., Hartford, Conn., Meriden, Conn.,
New Haven, Conn., Woonsocket, R.I., Norwalk, Conn., and Bridgeport,
Conn. I am quite sure that coming and going he passed through
Boston merely as an unknown traveller."

Mr. Lincoln writes to his wife from Exeter, N.H., March 4, 1860, as
follows:

"I have been unable to escape this toil. If I had foreseen it, I
think I would not have come East at all. The speech at New York,
being within my calculation before I started, went off passably well