Yet such was the apt choice of words, the easy precision of sentences, the simple strength of propositions, the fairness of every point he assumed, and the force of every conclusion he drew, that his listeners followed him with the interest and delight a child feels in its easy mastery of a plain sum in arithmetic.
With the sympathy and confidence of his audience thus enlisted, Lincoln next took up the more prominent topics in popular thought, and by words of kindly admonition and protest addressed to the people of the South, showed how impatiently, unreasonably, and unjustly they were charging the Republican party with sectionalism, with radicalism, with revolutionary purpose, with the John Brown raid, and kindred political offenses, not only in the absence of any acts to justify such charges, but even in the face of its emphatic and constant denials and disavowals.

The illustration with which he concluded this branch of his theme could not well be surpassed in argumentative force.
But you will not abide the election of a Republican President! In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool.

A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!" To be sure what the robber demanded of me--my money--was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the Union to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle.
But the most impressive, as well as the most valuable, feature of Lincoln's address was its concluding portion, where, in advice directed especially to Republicans, he pointed out in dispassionate but earnest language that the real, underlying conflict was in the difference of moral conviction between the sections as to the inherent right or wrong of slavery, and in view of which he defined the proper duty of the free-States.
A few words now [said he] to Republicans.

It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace and in harmony one with another.

Let us Republicans do our part to have it so.