the Republican Convention had met at Chicago, and had nominated
Lincoln and Hamlin on a platform which rang true on great principles
and with high resolve.

In many particulars this platform was a contrast to, rather than
a growth from, that of 1856. It asserted that the normal condition
of all the territory of the United States was that of freedom; it
denounced the outrages in Kansas, and demanded her immediate
admission into the Union, with her Constitution, as a Free State;
it branded the re-opening of the African slave-trade as a crime;
and in expressing the abhorrence of the Republican party to all
schemes of disunion, the Democratic party was arraigned for its
silence in the presence of threats of secession made by its own
members. The doctrine of encouragement to domestic industry was
announced; the sale of the public lands was condemned; the coming
measure of securing homesteads for the landless was approved; and
a pledge of protection was given to all citizens, whether native
or naturalized, and whether at home or abroad. The party was again
pledged to the construction of a railway to the Pacific Ocean, and
to the improvement of the rivers and harbors of the country.

During the four years preceding, the home State of Lincoln and
Douglas had decreased its public debt $3,104,374. She had become
the fourth State of the Union in population and wealth, having
during the decade then closing outstripped Virginia, Massachusetts,
North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Indiana. In production of
wheat and corn she now surpassed all other States and occupied the
foremost position. She had in successful operation two thousand,
nine hundred miles of railways, being surpassed in this respect by
Ohio only. Chicago, her marvellous lake mart, had grown from a
population of 29,963 to 109,206, an increase of nearly three
hundred per cent. From nine Congressmen in 1850, she was entitled
in 1860 to thirteen; and so, on every hand, might the recital of
her growth be continued indefinitely.

For the first time in twenty years, during the progress of a
political campaign in Illinois, the voice of Lincoln was not heard.
But the record of his former speeches, printed by an enterprising
Ohio publishing firm, in a volume which sold in enormous numbers,
afforded the text from which the Republican stump-orators in every
Free State gathered at once their logic and their inspiration.
Though the orator himself remained silent, t