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.

The Cooper Institute speech made a profound impression upon the public.
All who saw and heard Lincoln on that occasion felt the influence of his
strange but powerful personality; and acute minds recognized in the
unsophisticated Western lawyer a new force in American politics. This
speech made Lincoln known throughout the country, and undoubtedly did
more than anything else to secure him the nomination for the Presidency.
Aside from its extensive publication in the newspapers, various editions
of it appeared in pamphlet form, one of the best of which was issued by
Messrs. C.C. Nott and Cephas Brainard, who appended to their edition an
estimate of the speech that is well worth reprinting here: "No one who
has not actually attempted to verify its details can understand the
patient research and historical labor which it embodies. The history of
our earlier politics is scattered through numerous journals, statutes,
pamphlets, and letters; and these are defective in completeness and
accuracy of statement, and in indexes and tables of contents. Neither
can any one who has not travelled over this precise ground appreciate
the accuracy of every trivial detail, or the self-denying impartiality
with which Mr. Lincoln has turned from the testimony of 'the fathers' on
the general question of slavery to present the single question which he
discusses. From the first line to the last, from his premises to his
conclusion, he travels with a swift, unerring directness which no
logician ever excelled,--an argument complete and full, without the
affectation of learning, and without the stiffness which usually
accompanies dates and details. A single easy, simple sentence of plain
Anglo-Saxon words contains a chapter of history that, in some instances,
has taken days of labor to verify, and must have cost the author months
of investigation to acquire; and though the public should justly
estimate the labor bestowed on the facts which are stated, they cannot
estimate the greater labor involved on those which are omitted--how many
pages have been read--how many works examined--what numerous statutes,
resolutions, speeches, letters, and biographies have been looked
through. Commencing with this address as a political pamphlet, the
read