"He had not then announced himself for freedom, only discussed the inexpediency of repealing the Missouri Compromise line. The Abolitionists that day [the day of Lincoln's State Fair speech] determined to make Lincoln take a stand. I determined he should not at that time, because the time had not yet come when Lincoln should show his hand. When Lovejoy announced the abolition gathering in the evening, I rushed to Lincoln, and said: 'Lincoln, go home, take Bob and the buggy, and leave the country, go quickly, go right off, and never mind the order of your going.' Lincoln took the hint, got his horse and buggy, and did leave quickly, not noting the order of his going. He stayed away till all conventions and fairs were over." Herndon, in Lamon, p. 354.
[60] Lincoln's evasion of an issue which he did not wish to meet was put to a severe test in 1864, when the convention that renominated him for the Presidency had to decide whether to renominate also Vice-President Hamlin. Lincoln liked Hamlin; but, while a Vice-President from Maine had strengthened the ticket in 1860, a war Democrat from one of the border States could help it more in 1864. Lincoln managed never to let it be known whether he favored Hamlin, who greatly desired his support, or whether, as was probably the case, he preferred Johnson. He was skillful in evasion when he chose to be so.
[61] Abraham Lincoln; Evolution of His Literary Style. By Daniel Kilham Dodge. Press of the University of Illinois, 1900.
[62] Few writers who knew Lincoln intimately have given us more detailed accounts of Lincoln's career as a story teller than his friend and associate, Major Henry C. Whitney, who habitually shared his bed in the rounds of the Eighth Judicial Circuit. In his chapter on "Lincoln as a Merry Andrew," in which he tells the undignified length to which these bouts of story telling were wont to go, he says: "But it is a singular fact that Lincoln very rarely told stories in his speeches. In both his forensic and political speeches he got down to serious business, and threw away the mask of Momus altogether. I never heard him narrate but one story in a speech." Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, p. 179.
[63] These letters have lately been presented to the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[64] Abraham Lincoln; The Evolution of His Emancipation Policy. An address delivered before the Chicago Historical Society, February 27, 1906.
[65] See The Evolution of Lincoln's Literary Style, by Prof. Daniel Kilham Dodge. University of Illinois Press, 1900.
"By reference to Mr. Lincoln's early political and literary performances it will appear that he was more than usually addicted to a florid style, and to greatly exaggerated figures of speech; that the plain, direct, homely, common-sense methods of his later and statesmanlike years were wholly wanting. Rhodomontade was as common in those youthful productions as plain assertion was in his mature life. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that, in the years of his adolescence, he is credited with very decided opinions, radical views, and florid expressions on the subject of religion; but he was forty-five years of age when I first knew him, and his views either underwent a change or else he had grown reticent on that great subject. Certain it is that I never heard Lincoln express himself on the subject of religion at all." Whitney: Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, p. 268.
[67] The Evolution of Lincoln's Literary Style, by Prof. D. K. Dodge.