eld and were voted for, to some
extent, in the presidential election, the organization was present only
as a crippled and disturbing factor, and disappeared totally from
politics in the following years.

Both North and South, party lines adjusted themselves defiantly upon the
single issue, for or against men and measures representing the extension
or restriction of slavery. The Democratic party, though radically
changing its constituent elements, retained the party name, and became
the party of slavery extension, having forced the repeal and supported
the resulting measures; while the Whig party entirely disappeared, its
members in the Northern States joining the Anti-Nebraska Democrats in
the formation of the new Republican party. Southern Whigs either went
boldly into the Democratic camp, or followed for a while the delusive
prospects of the Know-Nothings.

This party change went on somewhat slowly in the State of Illinois,
because that State extended in territorial length from the latitude of
Massachusetts to that of Virginia, and its population contained an
equally diverse local sentiment. The northern counties had at once
become strongly Anti-Nebraska; the conservative Whig counties of the
center inclined to the Know-Nothings; while the Kentuckians and
Carolinians, who had settled the southern end, had strong antipathies to
what they called abolitionism, and applauded Douglas and repeal.

The agitation, however, swept on, and further hesitation became
impossible. Early in 1856 Mr. Lincoln began to take an active part in
organizing the Republican party. He attended a small gathering of
Anti-Nebraska editors in February, at Decatur, who issued a call for a
mass convention which met at Bloomington in May, at which the Republican
party of Illinois was formally constituted by an enthusiastic gathering
of local leaders who had formerly been bitter antagonists, but who now
joined their efforts to resist slavery extension. They formulated an
emphatic but not radical platform, and through a committee selected a
composite ticket of candidates for State offices, which the convention
approved by acclamation. The occasion remains memorable because of the
closing address made by Mr. Lincoln in one of his most impressive
oratorical moods. So completely were his auditors carried away by the
force of his denunciation of existing political evils, and by the
eloquence of his appeal for harmony and union to redress them, that
neith