LINCOLN.
The canvass was conducted after the usual fashion, with stump-speaking,
fighting, and drinking. Western voters especially fancied the joint
debate between rivals, and on such exciting occasions were apt to come
to the arbitrament of fists and knives. But it is pleasant to hear that
Lincoln calmed rather than excited such affrays, and that once, when
Ninian W. Edwards climbed upon a table and screamed at his opponent the
lie direct, Lincoln replied by "so fair a speech" that it quelled the
discord. Henceforward he practiced a calm, carefully-weighed,
dispassionate style in presenting facts and arguments. Even if he
cultivated it from appreciation of its efficiency, at least his skill in
it was due to the fact that it was congenial to his nature, and that his
mind worked instinctively along these lines. His mental constitution,
his way of thinking, were so honest that he always seemed to be a man
sincerely engaged in seeking the truth, and who, when he believed that
he had found it, would tell it precisely as he saw it, and tell it all.
This was the distinguishing trait or habit which differentiates Lincoln
from too many other political speakers and writers in the country. Yet
with it he combined the character of a practical politician and a stanch
party man. No party has a monopoly of truth and is always in the right;
but Lincoln, with the advantage of being naturally fair-minded to a rare
degree, understood that the best ingenuity is fairness, and that the
second best ingenuity is the appearance of fairness.
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