the execution of the fugitive laws; the brutality of Brooks in knocking down, on the floor of the Senate, Charles Sumner, for words spoken in debate:  these and many other outrages had fired the hearts of the people of the free States against this barbarous institution.  Beecher, Phillips, Channing, Sumner, and Seward, with their eloquence; Chase with his logic; Lincoln, with his appeals to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and to the opinions of the founders of the republic, his clear statements, his apt illustrations, and, above all, his wise moderation,—­all had swelled the voice of the people, which found expression through the ballot-box, and which declared that slavery should go no further.”

Among the various reminiscences of the memorable Presidential campaign of 1860, some of peculiar interest are furnished by Dr. Newton Bateman, President of Knox College, Illinois.  Dr. Bateman had known Lincoln since 1842; and from the year 1858, when Dr. Bateman was elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction in Illinois, to the close of Lincoln’s residence in Springfield in 1861, they saw each other daily.  The testimony of so intimate an acquaintance, and one so well qualified to judge the character and abilities of men, is of unusual value; and it is worth noting that Dr. Bateman remarks that, while he was always an admirer of Lincoln, yet the greatness of the man grew upon him as the years pass by.  In his professional and public work, says Dr. Bateman, Lincoln not only proved himself equal to every emergency and to every successive task, but made, from the outset, the impression upon the mind of those who knew him of being in possession of great reserve force.  Perhaps the secret of this lies in part in the fact that he was accustomed to ponder deeply upon the ultimate principles of government and society, and strove to base his discussions upon the firm ground of ethical truth.  Says Dr. Bateman, “He was the saddest man I ever knew.”  It was a necessity of his nature to be much alone; and he said that all his serious work—­by which he meant the process of getting down to the bed-rock of first principles—­must be done in solitude.  Upon one occasion he called Dr. Bateman to him, and spent more than two hours in earnest conversation upon the most serious themes.  At the close, Dr. Bateman said:  “I did not know, Mr. Lincoln, that it was your habit to think so deeply upon this class of subjects.”  “Didn’t you?” said Mr. Lincoln.  “I can almost say that I think of nothing else.”

One day there entered Lincoln’s room a tall Southerner, a Colonel Somebody from Mississippi, whose eye’s hard glitter spoke supercilious distrust and whose stiff bearing betokened suppressed hostility.  It was beautiful, says Dr. Bateman, to see the cold flash of the Southerner’s dark eye yield to a warmer glow, and the haughty constraint melt into frank good-nature, under the influence of Lincoln’s words of simple earnestness and unaffected cordiality.