Excerpt from Address of Hon. J. M. Ashley at the Fourth Annual Banquet of the Ohio Republican League: Held at Memorial Hall, Toledo, Ohio, February 12, 1891 At Alton, Illinois, in October, 1858, I first met Abraham Lincoln. It was on the day he closed the historic joint debate of that year, with Stephen A. Douglas. My anxiety to see and hear the man whose great speech at Springfield in June had electrified the entire country was so intense that immediately after our election in Ohio I ran down over the Wabash, and saw and heard Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas in their closing debate at Alton. I returned home at once, so as to be present and celebrate my first election to Congress. I had accepted an invitation from the Republican Committee of Illinois to accompany Governor Chase and speak at several points in that State and remain; until the close of the campaign in November. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.