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in the South as well as in the North, received the sanction in national convention of both of the great parties that two years later presented candidates for the Presidency. It is no doubt true that a majority of the people, in both sections of the country, then believed that the question that had been so fraught with peril to national unity from the beginning was at length settled for all time. The rude awakening came two years later, when the country was aroused, as it had rarely been before, by impassioned debate in and out of Congress, over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. It was a period of excitement such as we shall probably not see again. Slavery in all its phases was the one topic of earnest discussion, both upon the hustings and at the fireside. There was little talk now of compromise. The old-time statesmen of the Clay and Webster, Winthrop and Crittenden, school soon disappeared from the arena. Men hitherto comparatively unknown to the country at large were soon to the front. Conspicuous among them was a country lawyer whose home was at Springfield, Illinois. With the mighty events soon to follow, his name is imperishably linked. But it is not of Lincoln the President, the emancipator, the martyr, we are now to speak. It is of Lincoln the country lawyer, as he stepped upon the arena of high debate, the unswerving antagonist of slavery extension half a century and more ago. His home, during his entire professional life, was at the capital of the State. He was, at the time mentioned, in general practice as a lawyer and a regular attendant upon the neighboring courts. His early opportunities for education were meagre indeed. He had been a student of men, rather than of books. He was, in the most expressive sense, "of the people,"--the people as they then were. For, "Know thou this, that men are as the time is." His training was, in large measure, under the severe conditions to be briefly mentioned. The old-time custom of "riding the circuit" is to the present generation of lawyers only a tradition. The few who remember central Illinois as it was sixty years ago will readily recall the full meaning of the expression. The district in which Mr. Lincoln practised extended from the counties of Livingston and Woodford upon the north, almost to the Indiana line--embracing the present cities of Danville, Springfield, and Bloomington. The last named was the home of the Hon. David Da
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