The singular originality of this position, sweeping aside as vain both
participants in the new political duel, was quite lost on the little
world in which Lincoln lived. For after-time it has the interest of a
bombshell that failed to explode. It is the dawn of Lincoln's intellect.
In his lonely inner life, this crude youth, this lover of books in a
village where books were curiosities, had begun to think. The stages of
his transition from mere story-telling yokel--intellectual only as the
artist is intellectual, in his methods of handling--to the man of ideas,
are wholly lost. And in this fact we have a prophecy of all the years
to come. Always we shall seek in vain for the early stages of Lincoln's
ideas. His mind will never reveal itself until the moment at which
it engages the world. No wonder, in later times, his close associates
pronounced him the most secretive of men; that one of the keenest of his
observers said that the more you knew of Lincoln, the less you knew of
him.(5)

Except for the handicap of his surroundings, his intellectual start
would seem belated; even allowing for his handicap, it was certainly
slow. He was now twenty-eight. Pretty well on to reveal for the first
time intellectual power! Another characteristic here. His mind worked
slowly. But it is worth observing that the ideas of the protest were
never abandoned. Still a third characteristic, mental tenacity. To
the end of his days, he looked askance at the temper of abolitionism,
regarded it ever as one of the chief evils of political science. And
quite as significant was another idea of the protest which also had
developed from within, which also he never abandoned.

On the question of the power of the national government with regard to
slavery, he took a position not in accord with either of the political
creeds of his day. The Democrats had already formulated their doctrine