REPLY TO THE MAYOR OF NEWARK, NEW JERSEY,
February 21, 1861.
Mr. Mayor:—I thank you for this reception at the city of Newark. With regard to the great work of which you speak, I will say that I bring to it a heart filled with love for my country, and an honest desire to do what is right. I am sure, however, that I have not the ability to do anything unaided of God, and that without His support and that of this free, happy, prosperous, and intelligent people, no man can succeed in doing that the importance of which we all comprehend. Again thanking you for the reception you have given me, I will now bid you farewell, and proceed upon my journey.
ADDRESS IN TRENTON AT THE TRENTON HOUSE,
FEBRUARY 21, 1861
I have been invited by your representatives to the Legislature to visit this the capital of your honored State, and in acknowledging their kind invitation, compelled to respond to the welcome of the presiding officers of each body, and I suppose they intended I should speak to you through them, as they are the representatives of all of you; and if I were to speak again here, I should only have to repeat in a great measure much that I have said, which would be disgusting to my friends around me who have met here. I have no speech to make, but merely appear to see you and let you look at me; and as to the latter I think I have greatly the best of the bargain. My friends, allow me to bid you farewell.
ADDRESS TO THE SENATE OF NEW JERSEY
FEBRUARY 21, 1861
Mr. President and gentlemen of the Senate of the state of new Jersey:—I am very grateful to you for the honorable reception of which I have been the object. I cannot but remember the place that New Jersey holds in our early history. In the Revolutionary struggle few of the States among the Old Thirteen had more of the battle-fields of the country within their limits than New Jersey. May I be pardoned if, upon this occasion, I mention that away back in my childhood, the earliest days of my being able to read, I got hold of a small book,