The full effect of this unprecedented arousing was manifest in his speech at Springfield on June 16, 1858, the "House-Divided-Against-Itself" speech.
Lincoln himself is our authority for the statement that the moral aspects of the slavery issue called him back into politics and roused him as he never before had been aroused. Politically, at least, Abraham Lincoln had been born again. Nor had it been a period of spiritual inaction or retrogression, as we have seen and shall see yet further.
In addition to all this he had known the discipline of sorrow, and had had occasion to test religion on the practical side of its availability for comfort in time of bereavement. He had now been chosen to a position of responsibility such as no man in all the history of his nation had ever been called upon to occupy.
On the day before he was fifty-two years old he stood upon the platform of a railroad train ready to leave Springfield for the last time. He did not know that it was the last time, but he had a haunting presentiment that it might be so. With tears filling his eyes and in a voice choked with emotion he spoke his last words to his neighbors and friends. Just what he said we shall never know. A shorthand reporter endeavored to write it down, but with indifferent success. Hon. Newton Bateman, State Superintendent of Schools, of whom we shall hear later, hurried to his office after the train pulled out and wrote down what, judged by any reasonable test, must be considered a very satisfactory report of it. Lincoln sat down in the train after it had left Springfield and endeavored to recall the exact language which he had used, and in this was assisted by his private secretary, John Hay. Of these three, and a considerable number of other versions, the Illinois Historical Society has chosen the third as the authentic version. It represents what Lincoln wished to be remembered as having said, and very nearly what he actually did say. This version of his farewell address, representing the deep feeling of his heart at the hour of parting, and recorded on the same day as embodying his deliberate revision of the extempore utterance, is taken from Nicolay and Hay's edition of his Life and of his Works. It is that which was cast in bronze and placed in the year of his Centennial, in front of the State House at Springfield. If one would measure the growth of Abraham Lincoln intellectually and spiritually he might ask, What kind of an address in comparison with this Lincoln might have delivered on his departure from Kentucky in 1816, from Indiana in 1830, or from New Salem in 1837? The answer is so emphatic as almost to make the question absurd; but it is worth while to ask the question before we read again the familiar words of his farewell address. No one reading these few sentences can question the sincerity of Lincoln's utterance or the depth of his religious feeling:
"My friends: No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a youth to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, with the task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain with you and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell."—Nicolay and Hay, III, 291.
CHAPTER VI
THE ENVIRONMENT OF LINCOLN'S LIFE IN
WASHINGTON