But he had friends who thought differently, and in the winter of 1859, Jackson Grimshaw, Mr. Hatch, the Secretary of State, and Messrs. Bushnell, Judd, and Peck, held a meeting, and, after a little persuasion, induced Lincoln to allow them to put him forward as a candidate for the great office. In October, 1859, Lincoln received an invitation from a committee of citizens to give a lecture in New York.[27] He was much pleased with this intimation that he was well known in “the East,” and wrote out with great care a political address, which, when delivered, was warmly praised by the newspapers, one of which, the “Tribune,” edited by Horace Greeley, declared that no man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience. The subject of the discourse was most logical, vigorous, and masterly comment upon an assertion which Judge Douglas had made, to the effect that the framers of the Constitution had understood and approved of slavery. No better vindication of the rights of the Republican party to be considered as expressing and carrying out in all respects the opinions of Washington and of the framers of the Constitution, was ever set forth. From New York he went to New England, lecturing in many cities, and everywhere verifying what was said of him in the “Manchester Mirror,” that he spoke with great fairness, candour, and with wonderful interest. “He did not abuse the South, the Administration, or the Democrats. He is far from prepossessing in personal appearance, and his voice is disagreeable, yet he wins your attention and good-will from the start. His sense of the ludicrous is very keen, and an exhibition of that is the clincher of all his arguments--not the ludicrous acts of persons, but ludicrous ideas. Hence he is never offensive, and steals away willingly into his train of belief persons who were opposed to him. For the first half-hour his opponents would agree with every word he uttered, and from that point he began to lead them off, little by little, until it seemed as if he had got them all into his fold.”