Springfield, April 6, 1860.
C. F. McNeill, Esq.
Dear Sir,—Reaching home yesterday, I found yours of the 23d March, enclosing a slip from "The Middleport Press." It is not true that I ever charged any thing for a political speech in my life; but this much is true. Last October I was requested by letter to deliver some sort of speech in Mr. Beecher's church in Brooklyn,—$200 being offered in the first letter. I wrote that I could do it in February, provided they would take a political speech if I could find time to get up no other. They agreed; and subsequently I informed them the speech would have to be a political one. When I reached New York, I, for the first, learned that the place was changed to "Cooper Institute." I made the speech, and left for New Hampshire, where I have a son at school, neither asking for pay nor having any offered me. Three days after, a check for $200 was sent to me at N.H.; and I took it, and did not know it was wrong. My understanding now is, though I knew nothing of it at the time, that they did charge for admittance at the Cooper Institute, and that they took in more than twice $200.
I have made this explanation to you as a friend; but I wish no explanation made to our enemies. What they want is a squabble and a fuss: and that they can have if we explain; and they cannot have it if we don't.
When I returned through New York from New England, I was told by the gentlemen who sent me the check, that a drunken vagabond in the club, having learned something about the $200, made the exhibition out of which "The Herald" manufactured the article quoted by "The Press" of your town.
My judgment is, and therefore my request is, that you give no denial, and no explanations.
Thanking you for your kind interest in the matter, I remain
Yours truly,
A. Lincoln.
From New York Mr. Lincoln travelled into New England, to visit his son Robert, who was a student at Harvard; but he was overwhelmed with invitations to address Republican meetings. In Connecticut he spoke at Hartford, Norwich, New Haven, Meriden, and Bridgeport; in Rhode Island, at Woonsocket; in New Hampshire, at Concord and Manchester. Everywhere the people poured out in multitudes, and the press lavished encomiums. Upon his speech at Manchester, "The Mirror," a neutral paper, passed the following criticisms of his style of oratory,—criticisms familiar enough to the people of his own State: "He spoke an hour and a half with great fairness, great apparent candor, and with wonderful interest. He did not abuse the South, the administration, or the Democrats, or indulge in any personalities, with the exception of a few hits at Douglas's notions. He is far from prepossessing in personal appearance, and his voice is disagreeable; and yet he wins your attention and good-will from the start.... He indulges in no flowers of rhetoric, no eloquent passages. He is not a wit, a humorist, or a clown; yet so great a vein of pleasantry and good-nature pervades what he says, gilding over a deep current of practical argument, he keeps his hearers in a smiling mood, with their mouths open ready to swallow all he says. His sense of the ludicrous is very keen; and an exhibition of that is the clincher of all his arguments,—not the ludicrous acts of persons, but ludicrous ideas. Hence he is never offensive, and steals away willingly into his train of belief persons who were opposed to him. For the first half-hour his opponents would agree with every word he uttered; and from that point he began to lead them off little by little, until it seemed as if he had got them all into his fold. He displays more shrewdness, more knowledge of the masses of mankind, than any public speaker we have heard since Long Jim Wilson left for California."