year's end he had agreed to become a candidate before the convention. In
his own words, "I am not in a position where it would hurt much for me
to not be nominated on the national ticket; but I am where it would hurt
some for me to not get the Illinois delegates."(4)

It was shortly after this momentous decision that he went to New York by
invitation and made his most celebrated, though not in any respect his
greatest, oration.(5) A large audience filled Cooper Union, February
27, 1860. William Cullen Bryant presided. David Dudley Field escorted
Lincoln to the platform. Horace Greeley was in the audience. Again,
the performance was purely literary. No formulation of new policies,
no appeal for any new departure. It was a masterly restatement of his
position; of the essence of the debates with Douglas. It cleansed the
Republican platform of all accidental accretions, as if a ship's hull
were being scraped of barnacles preparatory to a voyage; it gave the
underlying issues such inflexible definition that they could not be
juggled with. Again he showed a power of lucid statement not possessed
by any of his rivals. An incident of the speech was his unsparing
condemnation of John Brown whose raid and death were on every tongue.
"You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves," said he,
apostrophizing the slave-holders. "We deny it, and what is your proof?
'Harper's Ferry; John Brown!' John Brown was no Republican; and you
have failed to implicate a single Republican in this Harper's Ferry
enterprise. . .

"John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It
was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which
the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the
slaves with all their ignorance saw plainly enough that it could
not succeed. That affair in its philosophy corresponds with the many