On the 7th of November, 1860, it was known throughout the country that Lincoln had been elected.  From that very hour dates the conspiracy which, by easy stages and successive usurpations of authority, culminated in rebellion.  It is painful now to revert to the events which marked its progress.  There is not a man living to-day, I trust, that does not wish they could be blotted out from our history.  While watching the course of these events Mr. Lincoln chanced one day to be talking with his friend, Newton Bateman, a highly respectable and Christian gentleman, and Superintendent of Public Instruction in Illinois.  I can only quote a part of the interview, as furnished by Mr. Bateman himself:  “I know there is a God,” said Lincoln; “and he hates injustice and slavery.  I see the storm coming.  I know that his hand is in it.  If he has a place and work for me,—­and I think he has,—­I believe I am ready.  I am nothing; but truth is everything, I know I am right, because I know that liberty is right; for Christ teaches it; and Christ is God.  I have told them that ‘a house divided against itself cannot stand,’ and Christ and reason say the same; and they will find it so.

“Douglas doesn’t care whether slavery is voted up or down; but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care; and with God’s help I shall not fail.  I may not see the end, but it will come, and I shall be vindicated; and these men will find that they have not read their Bible aright.”

We are told that, after a pause, he resumed:  “Does it not appear strange that men can ignore the moral aspects of this contest?  A revelation could not make it plainer to me that slavery or the Government, must be destroyed.  The future would be something awful, as I look at it, but for this rock on which I stand.”  He alluded to the Testament which he held in his hand, and which his mother—­“to whom he owed all that he was, or hoped to be”—­had first taught him to read.

There is nothing in history more pathetic than the scene when, on the 11th of February, 1861, Abraham Lincoln bade a last farewell to his home of a quarter of a century.

To his friends and neighbors he said, while grasping them by the hand, “I go to assume a task more difficult than that which has devolved upon any other man since the days of Washington.  He never would have succeeded except for the aid of Divine Providence, upon which he at all times relied.  I feel that I cannot succeed without the same divine blessing which sustained him, and on the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for support.”  The profound religious feeling which pervades this farewell speech characterized him to the close of his life.