PREFACE
The present volume contains the public addresses of Lincoln from his first recorded speech, the modest announcement of his candidacy for the Illinois State Legislature about March 1, 1832, to the famous "Lost Speech" delivered at the first Republican State convention at Bloomington, May 29, 1856, which made him a figure in national politics, as indicated by his receiving one hundred and ten votes, the second largest number cast for Vice-President in the national Republican convention of that year. Here are to be found his speeches in the State Legislature and Congress, together with such resolutions as the protest against certain slavery resolutions in the Illinois House of Representatives, the first of such protests recorded in the minutes of any State Legislature, and the unanswerable anti-Mexican War resolutions, known as the "Spot Resolutions" from the quaint phraseology used by Lincoln in persistently pressing upon the weak and tender "spot" in President Polk's justification of the unhappy conflict. Besides speeches on slavery and allied subjects, there are included arguments for internal improvements, a protective tariff, and other policies of the Whig party, of which from the beginning of his public career Lincoln was a leading figure in Illinois politics, and its sole representative from his State in the Twenty-ninth Congress.
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