In spite of the overwhelming majority of anti-slavery settlers in the
state, Kansas was not admitted to the Union until after the
inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.

So unscrupulous, imperious, grasping was the slave power. Whom the gods
wish to destroy, they first make mad. The slave power had reached the
reckless point of madness and was rushing to its own destruction. These
three manifestations,--the fugitive-slave law, the Dred Scott decision,
and the anarchy in Kansas,--though they were revolting in the extreme
and indescribably painful, hastened the end.




CHAPTER XVII.

THE BACKWOODSMAN AT THE CENTER OF EASTERN CULTURE.


Lincoln's modesty made it impossible for him to be ambitious. He
appreciated honors, and he desired them up to a certain point. But they
did not, in his way of looking at them, seem to belong to him. He was
slow to realize that he was of more than ordinary importance to the
community.

At the first republican convention in 1856, when Fremont was nominated
for President, 111 votes were cast for Lincoln as the nominee for vice-
president. The fact was published in the papers. When he saw the item
it did not enter his head that he was the man. He said "there was a
celebrated man of that name in Massachusetts; doubtless it was he."