into the mire of compromise and unnatural combinations, and held it up proudly aloft in one of the fiercest struggles the country ever witnessed. [Great applause.] I met him then, in the thick of the fight, when he bearded the lion of demagogism in his den, when the brilliant sallies of his wit and sarcasm drew shouts of delight from the multitude, when the thunderbolts of his invective rattled triumphantly against the brazen front of Stephen A. Douglas [applause], when the lucid, unanswerable logic of his arguments inspired every patriotic heart with new confidence in the justice of our cause, and when, under his powerful blows, the large Democratic majority of Illinois dwindled down to nothing. Then I saw him do what perhaps no other man in the nation would have done. Then I learned to confide in the patriot and the defender of profound convictions, to esteem the statesman, and to love the man. [Great applause.]
And, now, I saw him again, surrounded by the Committee of the National Convention, who had come to lay into his hands the highest honor and the greatest trust which a political party has to bestow—an honor which he had not thought of in his hard-fought battles, which he had not craved, and had hardly been sanguine enough to expect. There he stood silently listening to the address of our chairman; his eyes downcast; in his soul, perhaps, a feeling of just pride struggling with the overawing consciousness of responsibility. Then he answered, thanking them for the honors bestowed upon him, and accepting the leadership in the great struggle, not with the exultant tone of one who has achieved a personal triumph, not with the pompous airs and artificial dignity of one who is conscious of standing upon the great stage of the world, but with that unaffected, modest simplicity of a man who is strong in the consciousness of his ability and his honest intention to do right. [Great cheers.]
