He read much, but his days of book study were nearly ended. His learning was now got mostly in the school of experience. Herndon says, and I think it is true, that he never read to the end of a law book those days. The study of authorities was left to the junior partner. His reading was mostly outside the law. His knowledge of science was derived from Chambers's Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation.
He was still afraid of the Abolition Movement in 1852 and left town to avoid a convention of its adherents. He thought the effort to resist by force the laws of Kansas was criminal and would hurt the cause of freedom. "Let us have peace and revolutionize through the ballot-box," he urged.
In 1854 a little quarrel in New York began to weave the thread of destiny. Seward, Weed and Greeley had wielded decisive power in the party councils of that state. Seward was a high headed, popular idol. His plans and his triumphant progress absorbed his thought. Weed was dazzled by the splendor of this great star. Neither gave a thought to their able colleague—a poor man struggling to build up a great newspaper. An office, with fair pay, would have been a help to him those days. But he got no recognition of his needs and talents and services. Suddenly he wrote a letter to Weed in which he said:
"The firm of Seward, Weed and Greeley is hereby dissolved by the resignation of its junior member."
When Greeley had grown in power and wisdom until his name was known and honored from ocean to ocean, they tried to make peace with him, but in vain.
Then suddenly a new party and a new Lincoln were born on the same day in 1856 at a great meeting in Bloomington, Illinois. There his soul was to come into its stateliest mansion out of its lower vaulted past. For him the fulness of time had arrived. He was prepared for it. His intellect had also reached the fulness of its power. Now his great right hand was ready for the thunderbolts which his spirit had been slowly forging. God called him in the voices of the crowd. He was quick to answer. He went up the steps to the platform. I saw, as he came forward, that he had taken the cross upon him. Oh, it was a memorable thing to see the smothered flame of his spirit leaping into his face. His hands were on his hips. He seemed to grow taller as he advanced. The look of him reminds me now of what the famous bronze founder in Paris said of the death-mask, that it was the most beautiful head and face he had ever seen. What shall I say of his words save that it seemed to me that the voice of God was in them? I never saw an audience so taken up and swept away. The reporters forgot to report. It is a lost speech. There is no record of it. I suppose it was scribbled with a pencil on scraps of paper and on the backs of envelopes at sundry times, agreeably with his habit, and committed to memory. So this great speech, called by some the noblest effort of his life, was never printed. I remember one sentence relating to the Nebraska bill:
"Let us use ballots, not bullets, against the weapons of violence, which are those of kingcraft. Their fruits are the dying bed of the fearless Sumner, the ruins of the Free State Hotel, the smoking timbers of the Herald of Freedom, the Governor of Kansas chained to a stake like a horse-thief."
In June, 1858, he took the longest step of all. The Republican State Convention had endorsed him for the United States Senate. It was then that he wrote on envelopes and scraps of paper at odd moments, when his mind was off duty, the speech beginning:
"A house divided against itself must fall. Our Government can not long endure part slave and part free."
I was among the dozen friends to whom he read that speech in the State House library. One said of those first sentences: "It is a fool utterance." Another: "It is ahead of its time." Another declared that it would drive away the Democrats who had lately joined the party. Herndon and I were the only ones who approved it.