but merely an impulse to extend the area of freedom. He is very anxious to fight for the liberation of enslaved nations and colonies, provided, always, they have land, and have not any liking for his interference. As to those who have no land, and would be glad of help from any quarter, he considers they can afford to wait a few hundred years longer. In knowledge he is particularly rich. He knows all that can possibly be known, and is the unquestioned inventor of "Manifest Destiny." LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE OF RENOMINATION FOR [Addressed to Committee of National Union Convention, June 27, 1864.] GENTLEMEN: Your letter of the 14th instant formally notifying me that I have been nominated by the convention you represent for the Presidency of the United States for four years from the fourth of March next has been received. The nomination is gratefully accepted, as the resolutions of the convention, called the platform, are heartily approved. While the resolution in regard to the supplanting of republican government upon the Western Continent is fully concurred in, there might be misunderstanding were I not to say that the position of the government in relation to the action of France in Mexico, as assumed through the State Department and approved and indorsed by the convention among the measures and acts of the executive, will be faithfully maintained so long as the state of facts shall leave that position pertinent and applicable. I am specially gratified that the soldier and the seaman were not forgotten by the convention, as they forever must and will be remembered by the grateful country for whose salvation they devote their lives. Thanking you for the kind and complimentary terms in which you have communicated the nomination and other proceedings of the convention, I subscribe myself, Your obedient servant, ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Lincoln was cradled in a cabin and swathed in poverty. He grew in the knowledge of righteousness. He sought not his own, but another's good. He was strong and brave, but tender as he was brave. He made simple truth and service to men his religion. He walked modestly before the people. He freed a race and pointed it to its own redemption. He saved the Union of the States and secured the perpetual peace of the nation. He finished his course and kept his faith.-Samuel J. Elder. THE FIRST INVENTION. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. [From lecture delivered before Springfield Library Association, Springfield, Illinois, February 22, 1860.] TAK AKE Father Adam. There he stood, a very perfect physical man, as poets and painters inform us; but he must have been very ignorant, and simple in his habits. He had had no sufficient time to learn much by observation, and he had no near neighbors to teach him anything. No part of his breakfast had been brought from the other side of the world; and it is quite probable he had no conception of the world having any other side. In all these things, it is very plain, he was no equal of Young America; the most that can be said is, that according to his chance he may have been quite as much of a man as his very self-complacent descendant. Little as was what he knew, let the youngster discard all he has learned from others, and then show, if he can, any advantage on his side. In the way of land and live-stock, Adam was quite in the ascendant. He had dominion over all the earth, and all the living things upon and round about it. The land has been sadly divided out since. All nature-the whole world, material, moral and intellectualis a mine; and in Adam's day it was a wholly unexplored mine. Now, it was the destined work of Adam's race to develop, by discoveries, inventions, and improvements, the hidden treasures of this mine. But Adam had nothing to turn his attention to the work. If he should do anything in the way of inventions, he had first to invent the art of invention, the instance, at least, if not the habit, of observation and reflection. As might be expected, he seems not to have been a very observing man at first; for it appears he went about naked a considerable length of time before he ever noticed that obvious fact. But when he did observe it, the observation was not lost upon him; for it immediately led to the first of all inventions of which we have any direct account― the fig-leaf apron. This very first invention was a joint operation, Eve having shared with Adam the getting up of the apron; and, indeed, judging from the fact that sewing has come down to our times as "woman's work," it is very probable she took the leading part,— he, perhaps, doing no more than to stand by and thread the needle. That proceeding may be reckoned as the mother of all "sewing societies." SPEECH TO THE TWELFTH INDIANA REGIMENT. [Delivered at review of regiment in Washington, May, 1862.] OLDIERS of the 12th Indiana Regiment, your colonel has SOL on his own account and in your name, to that you are satisfied with the manner in which I have performed my part in the difficulties which have surrounded the nation. For your kind expressions I am extremely grateful, but, on the other hand, I assure you that the nation is more indebted to you, and such as you, than to me. It is upon the brave hearts and strong arms of the people of the country that our reliance has been placed in support of free government and free institutions. For the part which you and the brave army of which you are a part have, under Providence, performed in this great struggle, I tender more thanks greatest thanks that can be possibly due-and especially to this regiment, which has been the subject of good report. The thanks of the nation will follow you, and may God's blessing rest upon you now and forever. American nature must grow like our President, in his truth, his independence, his religion and his wide humanity. Then peace shall come, that knows no war, and law that knows no treason; and full of his spirit a grateful land gather round his grave, and the daily psalm of prosperous and righteous living, thank God forever for his life and death.-Bishop Phillips Brooks. OBSERVATION BEFORE INVENTION. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. [From lecture delivered before Springfield Library Association, Springfield, Illinois, February 22, 1860.] VER since water has been boiled in covered vessels, men EVER have seen the lids of the vessels rise and fall a little, with a sort of fluttering motion, by force of the steam; but so long as this was not specially observed, and reflected, and experimented upon, it came to nothing. At length, however, after many thousand years, some man observes this long-known effect of hot water lifting a pot-lid, and begins a train of reflection upon it. He says, "Why, to be sure, the force that lifts the pot-lid will lift anything else which is no heavier than the pot-lid. And as man has much hard fighting to do, cannot this hot-water power be made to help him?" He has become a little excited on the subject, and he fancies he hears a voice answering, "Try me." He does try it; and the observation, reflection, and trial give to the world the control of that tremendous and now well-known agent called steampower. This is not the actual history in detail, but the general principle. But was this first inventor of the application of steam wiser or more ingenious than those who had gone before him? Not at all. Had he not learned much of those, he never would have succeeded, probably never would have thought of making the attempt. To be fruitful in invention, it is indispensable to have a habit of observation and reflection. But for the difference in habit of observation, why did Yankees almost instantly discover gold in California, which had been trodden upon and overlooked by Indians and Mexican greasers for centuries? Gold-mines are not the only mines overlooked in the same way. He stands before us and will so stand in history as the Moses of this Israel of ours.-Charles Love. SPOKEN AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. [From lecture delivered before Springfield Library Association, Springfield, Illinois, February 22, 1860.] WHETHER divine gift or invention, it is still plain that if WHE divine a mode of communication had been left to invention, speech must have been the first, from the superior adaptation to the end of the organs of speech over every other means within the whole range of nature. Of the organs of speech the tongue is the principal; and, if we shall test it, we shall find the capacities of the tongue, in the utterance of articulate sounds, absolutely wonderful. You can count from one to one hundred quite distinctly in about forty seconds. In doing this two hundred and eightythree distinct sounds or syllables are uttered, being seven to each sound, and yet there should be enough difference between every two to be easily recognized by the ear of the hearer. What other signs to represent things could possibly be produced so rapidly? or, even if ready made, could be arranged so rapidly to express the sense? Motions with the hands are no adequate substitute. Marks for the recognition of the eye,-writing, although a wonderful auxiliary of speech, is no worthy substitute for it. In addition to the more slow and laborious process of getting up a communication in writing, the materials—pen, ink, and paper—are not always at hand. But one always has his tongue with him, and the breath of his life is the ever-ready material with which it works. Speech, then, by enabling different individuals to interchange thoughts, and thereby to combine their powers of observation and reflection, greatly facilitates useful discoveries and inventions. What one observes, and would himself infer nothing from, he tells to another, and that other at once sees a valuable hint in it. A result is thus reached which neither alone would have arrived at. But speech alone, valuable as it ever has been and is, has not advanced the condition of the world much. This is abundantly |