ceived but 1,850,000, and whom the South had had no part in electing.

"If Mr. Lincoln intends to carry on the government according to the principles laid down in the Chicago platform and the documents issued under the authority of the Republican national' committee, the inevitable tendency of his administration will be to encourage servile insurrections and to make the Southern States still more uncomfortable within the Union than they could by any possibility be without it. . . . If the new President recognizes the fact that he is not bound by the Chicago platform-the people having repudiated it; . . . if he comes out and tells the people that he will govern the country according to the views of the majority, and not to serve the purposes of the minority, all may yet be well. . . . Mr. Lincoln must throw his pledges to the winds, let his party go to the perdition in its own way, and devote himself to the service of the whole country. It is Mr. Lincoln's bounden duty to come out now and declare his views."

It was not only the opposition press which urged Lincoln to compromise; many frightened Republican newspapers joined their influence. The appeals of thousands of letters and of scores of visitors were added to the arguments of the press. Lincoln, however, refused to express his views anew. "I know the justness of my intentions," he told an interviewer in November, "and the utter groundlessness of the pretended fears of the men who are filling the country with their clamor. If I go into the presidency, they will find me as I am on record, nothing less, nothing more. My declarations have been made to the world without reservation. They have been often repeated, and now self-respect demands of me and

From an ambrotype taken in Springfield, Illinois, on August 13, 1860, and bought by Mr. William H. Lambert from Mr. W. P. Brown of Philadelphia. Mr. Brown writes of the portrait: "This picture, along with another one of the same kind, was presented by President Lincoln to my father, J. Henry Brown, deceased (miniature artist). after he had finished painting Lincoln's picture on ivory, at Springfield, Illinois. The commission was given my father by Judge Read (John M. Read of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania), immediately after Lincoln's nomination for the presidency. One of the ambrotypes I sold to the Historical Society of Boston, Massachusetts, and it is now in their possession." The miniature referred to is now owned by Mr. Robert T. Lincoln. It was engraved by Samuel Sartain, and circulated widely before the inauguration. After Mr. Lincoln grew a beard, Sartain put a beard on his plate, and the engraving continued to sell extensively.

of the party which has elected me that, when threatened, I should be silent."

Business was brought almost to a standstill throughout the North by the prospect of disunion. "It is an awful time for merchants," wrote a correspondent to Charles Sumner, "worse than in 1857. And if there is not some speedy relief, more than half of the best concerns in the country will be ruined." Numbers of prominent men urged the President-elect to say something conciliatory for the sake of trade. His replies published in Nicolay and Hay's "Abraham Lincoln❞ are marked by spirit and decision. To one man of wealth he wrote on November 10:

"I am not insensible to any commercial or financial depression that may exist, but nothing is to be gained by fawning around the 'respectable scoundrels' who got it up. Let them go to work and repair the mischief of their own making, and then perhaps they will be less greedy to do the like again."

And to Henry J. Raymond, the editor of the New York "Times," he gave, on November 28, in answer to a request for his views, what he called a "demonstration" of the correctness of his judgment that he should say nothing for the public:

"On the 20th instant, Senator Trumbull made a short speech, which I suppose you have both seen and approved. Has a single newspaper, heretofore against us, urged that speech upon its readers with a purpose to quiet public anxiety? Not one, so far as I know. On the contrary, the Boston 'Courier' and its class hold me responsible for that speech, and endeavor to inflame the North with the belief that it foreshadows an abandonment of Republican ground

by the incoming administration while the Washington 'Constitution' and its class hold the same speech up to the South as an open declaration of war against them. This is just as I expected, and just what would happen with any declaration I could make. These political fiends are not half sick enough yet. Party malice, and not public good, possesses them entirely. "They seek a sign, and no sign shall be given them.' At least such is my present feeling and purpose."

While refusing positively to express himself for the general public at this time, Lincoln wrote and talked freely to the Republican leaders, almost all of whom were busy with one or another scheme for quieting the distracted nation. On the opening of Congress, a committee of thirty-three had been appointed by the House to consider "the present perilous condition of the country," and the Republican members wished to know what Mr. Lincoln would yield. The Hon. William Kellogg, the Illinois member of the committee, wrote to him. His reply, dated December 11, is unmistakable:

"Entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery. The instant you do, they have us under again: all our labor is lost, and sooner or later must be done over. Douglas is sure to be again trying to bring in his 'popular sovereignty.' Have none of it. The tug has to come, and better now than later. You know I think the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution ought to be enforced to put it in its mildest form, ought not to be resisted."

While the committee of thirty-three was seeking grounds for a settlement in the House, a committee of thirteen was busy in the Senate in the same search.