The singular originality of this position, sweeping aside as vain both participants in the new political duel, was quite lost on the little world in which Lincoln lived.  For after-time it has the interest of a bombshell that failed to explode.  It is the dawn of Lincoln’s intellect.  In his lonely inner life, this crude youth, this lover of books in a village where books were curiosities, had begun to think.  The stages of his transition from mere story-telling yokel—­intellectual only as the artist is intellectual, in his methods of handling—­to the man of ideas, are wholly lost.  And in this fact we have a prophecy of all the years to come.  Always we shall seek in vain for the early stages of Lincoln’s ideas.  His mind will never reveal itself until the moment at which it engages the world.  No wonder, in later times, his close associates pronounced him the most secretive of men; that one of the keenest of his observers said that the more you knew of Lincoln, the less you knew of him.(5)

Except for the handicap of his surroundings, his intellectual start would seem belated; even allowing for his handicap, it was certainly slow.  He was now twenty-eight.  Pretty well on to reveal for the first time intellectual power!  Another characteristic here.  His mind worked slowly.  But it is worth observing that the ideas of the protest were never abandoned.  Still a third characteristic, mental tenacity.  To the end of his days, he looked askance at the temper of abolitionism, regarded it ever as one of the chief evils of political science.  And quite as significant was another idea of the protest which also had developed from within, which also he never abandoned.

On the question of the power of the national government with regard to slavery, he took a position not in accord with either of the political creeds of his day.  The Democrats had already formulated their doctrine that the national government was a thing of extremely limited powers, the “glorified policeman” of a certain school of publicists reduced almost to a minus quantity.  The Whigs, though amiably vague on most things except money-making by state aid, were supposed to stand for a “strong central government”.  Abolitionism had forced on both parties a troublesome question, “What about slavery in the District of Columbia, where the national government was supreme?” The Democrats were prompt in their reply:  Let the glorified policeman keep the peace and leave private interests, such as slave-holding, alone.  The Whigs evaded, tried not to apply their theory of “strong” government; they were fearful lest they offend one part of their membership if they asserted that the nation had no right to abolish slavery in the District, fearful of offending others if they did not.  Lincoln’s protest asserted that “the Congress of the United States has the power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia but the power ought not to be exercised, unless at the