Summary of Speech at Quincy, Illinois, 1 November 18541
Hon. A. Lincoln, of Springfield addressed a large audience at Kendall’s Hall on Wednesday evening. We regret that we cannot give a full sketch of his address.
The large company present listened with unwearied attention and an approbation emphasised
by repeated outbursts of enthusiastic applause. The address was one of the clearest,
most logical, argumentative and convincing discourse on the Nebraska question to which we have listened.3 Commencing with the history of its earliest events which led to the Compromise of 1820, he traced that Compromise up to the present time, showing that it had ever remained
in the hearts of the people a sacred thing which no ruthless hand should have dared
to destroy.
Mr Lincoln left a most favorable impression upon those who heard him. He is one of
the “truly great men” of Illinois.
1This summary appeared in the November 3, 1854, issue of The Daily Whig, published in Quincy, Illinois.
The Daily Whig (Quincy, IL), 3 November 1854, 3:1
2On October 30, 1854, Lincoln wrote to Richard Yates, “I am here now going to Quincy, to try to give Mr Williams a little lift.” The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and repeal of the Missouri Compromise had reawakened Lincoln’s interest in politics and spurred him to campaign for anti-Nebraska candidates in the congressional election of 1854. Archibald Williams, an opponent of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and a Whig, ran to represent the Illinois Fifth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives but was defeated by the incumbent, William A. Richardson.
David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 167-73; Autobiography of Abraham Lincoln Written for John L. Scripps; Abraham Lincoln to Orville H. Browning; Howard W. Allen and Vincent A. Lacey, eds., Illinois Elections, 1818-1990 (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 10.
Copy of Printed Document, 1 page(s), The Daily Whig (Quincy, IL), 3 November 1854, 3:1.