I did say, at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread of slavery arrested and to see it placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction.

In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man.

I told myself, "Lincoln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate means." So I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my father's house, and stayed there till I could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what "demonstrate" means, and went back to my law studies.

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.

At the beginning of the war, and for some time, the use of colored troops was not contemplated; and how the change of purpose was wrought, I will not now take time to explain. Upon a clear conviction of duty I resolved to turn that element of strength to account; and I am responsible for it to the American people, to the christian world, to history, and on my final account to God.

If the union of these States, and the liberties of this people, shall be lost, it is but little to any one man of fifty-two yearsof age, but a great deal to the thirty millions of people who inhabit these United States, and to their posterity in all coming time.