n suddenly a new party and a new Lincoln were born on the same day in
1856 at a great meeting in Bloomington, Illinois. There his soul was to
come into its stateliest mansion out of its lower vaulted past. For him
the fulness of time had arrived. He was prepared for it. His intellect
had also reached the fulness of its power. Now his great right hand was
ready for the thunderbolts which his spirit had been slowly forging. God
called him in the voices of the crowd. He was quick to answer. He went up
the steps to the platform. I saw, as he came forward, that he had taken
the cross upon him. Oh, it was a memorable thing to see the smothered
flame of his spirit leaping into his face. His hands were on his hips. He
seemed to grow taller as he advanced. The look of him reminds me now of
what the famous bronze founder in Paris said of the death-mask, that it
was the most beautiful head and face he had ever seen. What shall I say
of his words save that it seemed to me that the voice of God was in them?
I never saw an audience so taken up and swept away. The reporters forgot
to report. It is a lost speech. There is no record of it. I suppose it
was scribbled with a pencil on scraps of paper and on the backs of
envelopes at sundry times, agreeably with his habit, and committed to
memory. So this great speech, called by some the noblest effort of his
life, was never printed. I remember one sentence relating to the Nebraska
bill:

"Let us use ballots, not bullets, against the weapons of violence, which
are those of kingcraft. Their fruits are the dying bed of the fearless
Sumner, the ruins of the Free State Hotel, the smoking timbers of the
Herald of Freedom, the Governor of Kansas chained to a stake like a
horse-thief."

In June, 1858, he took the longest step of all. The Republican State
Convention had endorsed him for the United States Senate. It was then
that he wrote on envelopes and scraps of paper at odd moments, when
his mind was off duty, the speech beginning:

"A house divided against itself must fall. Our Government can not long
endure part slave and part free."

I was among the dozen friends to whom he read that speech in the
State House library. One said of those first sentences: "It is a fool
utterance." Another: "It is ahead of its time." Another declared that it
would drive away the Democrats who had lately joined the party. Herndon
and I were the only ones who approved it.

Lincoln had come to another fork