Mr. Merwin, then a young man, was a temperance lecturer in Connecticut, in 1851, during which year he and Neal Dow both addressed the legislature in behalf of State prohibition. A resident of Springfield, Illinois, then visiting in Hartford, being interested in the question, gained admittance to this legislative session, and was much pleased with Mr. Merwin's presentation of the subject. He afterward took it upon himself to invite Mr. Merwin to visit Springfield and deliver the same address before the Illinois Legislature. The invitation was accepted, and the following winter Mr. Merwin began a temperance campaign in Illinois. His first address was made at the capital. At this time the legislature was considering the submission of the prohibition question to the people, and as the question met with great opposition from the leaders of the two political parties, who feared to jeopardize the liquor interests, the speaker from the East was not permitted to address the legislature as a body, and spoke instead in the representative hall. It was at this meeting that he first met Lincoln, who was immediately touched by the young speaker's words and enthusiastically accepted his message. Mr. Lincoln invited Mr. Merwin home with him that night, but, knowing nothing of the character of the man, Mr. Merwin asked the advice of a friend, who said, "Most certainly, if Mr. Lincoln invites you, go." Mr. Merwin says: "We were barely inside his door, and even before he asked me to be seated, he wanted to know if I had a copy of the Maine law with me. I had, and we spent until four o'clock in the morning discussing its features." The matter of a prohibition canvass was outlined, and Mr. Lincoln volunteered to put the whole matter before Richard Yates, afterwards Illinois' war governor, but who was then Grand Worthy Patriarch of the Sons of Temperance. Mr. Yates was quick to see the strength of the new idea, and himself arranged the first series of rallies where Lincoln and Merwin spoke. The meeting at Jacksonville was presided over by Richard Yates. Among the places at which they spoke were Bellville, Bloomington, Peoria, Edwardsville, and Decatur. Mr. Lincoln's political friends were alarmed for him because of his radicalism on the temperance question, and made a combined effort to silence him, but he continued in the fight. Prohibition did not carry in its submission to the people, but it is said that the votes of forty counties were changed in favor of State prohibition.