The platform which, with such precision and painstaking, Lincoln had constructed for himself was made by him even more ample and more strong by a few speeches delivered in the interval between the close of this great campaign and his nomination by the Republicans for the presidency. In Ohio an important canvass for the governorship took place, and Douglas went there, and made speeches filled with allusions to Lincoln and the recent Illinois campaign. Even without this provocation Lincoln knew, by keen instinct, that where Douglas was, there he should be also. In no other way had he yet appeared to such advantage as in encountering "the Little Giant." To Ohio, accordingly, he hastened, and spoke at Columbus and at Cincinnati.[93] To the citizens of the latter place he said: "This is the first time in my life that I have appeared before an audience in so great a city as this. I therefore make this appearance under some degree of embarrassment." There was little novelty in substance, but much in treatment. Thus, at Cincinnati, he imagined himself addressing Kentuckians, and showed them that their next nominee for the presidency ought to be his "distinguished friend, Judge Douglas;" for "in all that there is a difference between you and him, I understand he is sincerely for you, and more wisely for you than you are for yourselves." Through him alone pro-slavery men retained any hold upon the free States of the North; and in those States, "in every possible way he can, he constantly moulds the public opinion to your ends." Ingeniously but fairly he sketched Douglas as the most efficient among the pro-slavery leaders. Perhaps the clever and truthful picture may have led Mr. Greeley and some other gentlemen at the East to suspect that they had been inconsiderate in their choice between the Western rivals; and perhaps, also, Lincoln, while addressing imaginary Kentuckians, had before his inner eye some Eastern auditors. For at the time he did not know that his voice would ever be heard at any point nearer to their ears than the hall in which he then stood. Within a few weeks, however, this unlooked-for good fortune befell. In October, 1859, he was invited to speak in the following winter in New York. That the anti-slavery men of that city wished to test him by personal observation signified that his reputation was national, and that the highest aspirations were, therefore, not altogether presumptuous. He accepted gladly, and immediately began to prepare an address which probably cost him more labor than any other speech which he ever made. He found time, however, in December to make a journey through Kansas, where he delivered several speeches, which have not been preserved but are described as "repetitions of those previously made in Illinois." Lamon tells us that the journey was an "ovation," and that "wherever Lincoln went, he was met by vast assemblages of people." The population of this