[Relocated Footnote (3): It is a tradition that a planter once wrote to him: "I have worked hard and been frugal all my life, and the results of my industry have mainly taken the form of slaves, of whom I own about a hundred. Before I vote for President I want to be sure that the candidate I support will not so act as to divest me of my property." To which the general, with a dexterity that would have done credit to a diplomatist, and would have proved exceedingly useful to Mr. Clay, responded, "Sir: I have the honor to inform you that I too have been all my life industrious and frugal, and that the fruits thereof are mainly invested in slaves, of whom I own _three_ hundred. Yours, etc."--Horace Greeley, "American Conflict," Volume I., p. 193.] [Relocated Footnote (4): Thurlow Weed says in his Autobiography, Vol. I., p. 603: "I had supposed, until we now met, that I had never seen Mr. Lincoln, having forgotten that in the fall of 1848, when he took the stump in New England, he called upon me at Albany, and that we went to see Mr. Fillmore, who was then the Whig candidate for Vice-President." The New York "Tribune," September 14, 1848, mentions Mr. Lincoln as addressing a great Whig meeting in Boston, September 12. The Boston "Atlas" refers to speeches made by him at Dorchester, September 16; at Chelsea September 17; by Lincoln and Seward at Boston, September 22, on which occasion the report says: "Mr. Lincoln, of Illinois, next came forward, and was received with great applause. He spoke about an hour and made a powerful and convincing speech which was cheered to the echo." Mr. Robert C. Winthrop, Jr., in his recent memoir of the Hon. David Sears, says, the most brilliant of Mr. Lincoln's speeches in this campaign "was delivered at Worcester, September 13, 1848, when, after taking for his text Mr. Webster's remark that the nomination of Martin Van Buren for the Presidency by a professed antislavery party could fitly be regarded only as a trick or a joke, Mr. Lincoln proceeded to declare that of the three parties then asking the confidence of the country, the new one had less of principle than any other, adding, amid shouts of laughter, that the recently constructed elastic Free-Soil platform reminded him of nothing so much as the pair of trousers offered for sale by a Yankee peddler which were 'large enough for any man and small enough for any boy.'" It is evident that he considered Van Buren, in Massachusetts at least, a candidate more to be feared than Cass, the regular Democratic nominee.] CHAPTER XVI A FORTUNATE ESCAPE