because that so much is due to the necessity arising from its actual
presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it,
allow it to spread into the national territories, and to overrun us
here in the free states? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us
stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by
none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so
industriously plied and belabored--contrivances such as groping for
some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search
for a man who would be neither a living man nor a dead man; such as a
policy of 'don't care' on a question about which all true men do care;
such as Union appeals to beseech all true Union men to yield to
Disunionists; reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners,
but the righteous, to repentance; such as invocations to Washington,
imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington
did.

"Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against
us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government,
nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might,
and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we
understand it."

This speech placed Lincoln in the line of the presidency. Not only was
it received with unbounded enthusiasm by the mass of the people, but it
was a revelation to the more intellectual and cultivated. Lincoln
afterwards told of a professor of rhetoric at Yale College who was
present. He made an abstract of the speech and the next day presented
it to the class as a model of cogency and finish. This professor
followed Lincoln to Meriden to hear him again. The _Tribune_ gave
to the speech unstinted praise, declaring that "no man ever before made