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against which they were prejudiced, they would never voluntarily settle where it obtained. This, the prevalent view, brought about the[Pg 85] compromise of 1820, by which all the territory north of 36deg 30' was guaranteed to free labor, that is, to the north, not because its inhabitants were burning with zeal to repress the spread of what they thought to be an unspeakable moral wrong, but because they purposed thereby to insure a fair inheritance to their own children.

So much for what we have called the first quarrel between the sections over slavery. Let us now glance at the stages following until the root-and-branch abolitionist shows himself.

For some twenty years after the Missouri compromise was made there was hardly any public agitation at all as to slavery. In 1840 an abolition ticket for the presidency was nominated, but it received a support much smaller than had been currently predicted. It is not until January, 1836, when, upon Calhoun's motion in the senate of the United States to reject two petitions for the abolition of

slavery in the District of Columbia, there ensued a prolonged and passionate discussion, that we can say that the old free-soil practically begins to pass into an abolition movement. Here moral attack upon slavery seriously begins. If we think but a moment we will understand it too well to explain it as an arousal of conscience, which ought to have been aroused many years before if slavery was indeed the terrible sin the abolitionists now commenced to say it was. The agitation of 1830, the year that Webster replied to Hayne, and that of 1833, when he and Calhoun crossed swords over nullification, mark a great advance of intersectional antagonism beyond that of the time of the Missouri compromise. We can see now as we look back what contemporaries could not see, that is, that the two were avant couriers of the southern confederacy. But some of the contemporaries did discern the [Pg 86]fact--not consciously, but instinctively. With these there was, in subliminal ratiocination, a process somewhat as follows: The southern confederacy, if it does come, will disrupt the union, which assures, while it lasts, immunity of our country from frequent wars upon its own soil, and from the heavy load of great armies kept up even in the intervals of peace. This disruption will establish in America all the evil conditions of Europe from which our fathers fled hither. Slavery is the vis matrix, the sole developing force, the life of this menaced confederacy. Let us abolish slavery, and preserve the union.

How accurately the common instincts--especially those protecting our private interests--discern both the favorable and unfavorable, becomes more of a marvel to me every year. To them the favorable is morally right, the unfavorable morally wrong. If the latter threatens great injury, they excite against it deep-seated indignation as if it were a crime. How else can you explain it that all the churches, accepting the same Christ and worshipping the same God, were at last divided, the northern churches impugning and the southern churches defending slavery. Dwell upon this fact until you interpret it aright. On one side the most conscientious and the best of the north unanimous that slavery is morally wrong; on the other the most conscientious and best of the south unani-

mous that it is morally right. Then think of the northern and southern statesmen, jurists, and the great public leaders; and at the last consider that the entire people of one section prayed for, fought and died for, slavery, while that of the other did the same things against it. When you do this, you must admit that our community, our country, the society of which we are members, fashions our consciences and makes our opinions.

The economic interest of the north was against slavery.[Pg 87] It was her interest to get all the territory possible for opportunity to her free workers. It was also a transcendent economic interest of hers that there be no great foreign power near her to require of her that she put thousands of bread-winners and wealth-makers to idle in a standing army. On the other side the economic interest of the south in slavery was so great it commanded her to sacrifice all the advantages of union to preserve slavery, if that should be

necessary. Each side feels deeply and more and more angrily that the other is seeking to rob it of the means of production and subsistence--the property to which of all it believes its title most indefeasible. It required some years to bring affairs to this point; but it was accomplished at last; and the north was ready for the root-and-branch abolitionist and the south for the fire-eater. Of course all this effect of oppugnant economical interests is under the guidance of the directors of evolution, who generally have their human servants to masquerade as characters widely different from the true. When these servants put on high airs as if they were doing their own will and not that of their masters, how the directors must smile. They have guaranteed animal reproduction from one generation to another by the impulsion of a supreme momentary pleasure, as Lucretius most philosophically recognizes in his dux vitae

dia voluptas. The passion of anger is the converse of that of love. When consent cannot settle some great controversy that must be settled, the passion of anger is so greatly excited by the instigation of the directors that the disputants leave arguments and come to blows. In the ripeness of time the Ransy Sniffleses[38] come forth. They say and do[Pg 88] everything possible to bring on the impending mortal combat. They never grasp the essence of the contention, for it is their mission to arouse feeling, passion, anger. They are resistlessly--most conscientiously and honestly--impelled to make the other side appear detestable and insultingly offensive in heinous wrong-doing. The most zealous and the most influential of the root-and-branch abolitionists were young when they vaulted into the arena. Garrison was twenty-six when he started the "Liberator" in 1831, Wendell Phillips was some six years younger than Garrison, and he was about twenty-six when he made his debut with a powerful impromptu in Boston, in 1837. Whittier was two years younger than Garrison, and he was early a co-worker in the "Liberator." It is demonstrated by everything they said that they were entirely ignorant of the south and its people, of the average condition of the slave in the south, and especially of the negro's grade of humanity. They never studied and investigated facts diligently and impartially, desiring only to ascertain the truth. They assumed the facts to be as it suited their purposes, given them by the directors, of exciting hatred of their opponents,--and it added

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greatly to their efficiency that they fully believed their assumptions. Knowing really nothing of the negro except that he was a man, it was natural for them to believe, as they did, that the typical, average negro slave of the south was in all the essentials of good citizenship just such a human being as the typical, average white. If they did not go quite so far, they surely claimed for him something so near to it that it is practically the same. We shall, as suggested above, treat this pernicious error more fully in later chapters.

The root-and-branch abolitionists have claimed ever[Pg 89] since the emancipation proclamation became effective that the overthrow of slavery was brought about by them; and thousands upon thousands believing it sing them hosannas. But it is an undeniable fact that the superior power of free labor in its irreconcilable conflict with slavery was bound to do in America what it had done everywhere else. And without the abolitionist at all the days of slavery were numbered, and they were few even if there had been

no secession, and very few if secession had triumphed. For free labor--its fell and implacable foe--was on the outside steadily and surely encircling it with a wall that hemmed it from the extension that was a condition of its life; and within its ring fence necessarily it was rapidly exhausting all of its resources. It was the mighty counteraction of free labor that crushed slavery. The root-and-branch abolitionist thrown up by this movement which had set forward irresistibly, long before he was ever heard of, and who believed that he started it and was guiding it, strikingly examples the proverb

"Er denkt zu schieben und ist geschoben."

I believe that future history will give him credit only for having a little hastened forward the inevitable.

Another abolition misstatement ought to be corrected. Sumner fulminated against what he called the oligarchs of slavery. And it was common at the north to speak of southern aristocracy and southern aristocratic institutions. Of course the slaves had no political privileges, no more than they had in Athens, which has always been deemed the most genuine republic ever known. There was in the old south no oligarch, or anything like him, unless you choose to call such a man as Calhoun an oligarch, whose influence over his State was entirely from the good opinion and unexampled[Pg 90] confidence of the free citizens of all classes, which he had won. There was no aristocracy, except such a natural one as can be found in every one of our States, as is illustrated by the Adamses in Massachusetts, the Lees in Virginia, and the Cobbs in Georgia. In those days property was much more equally distributed than now; and it was easy for the energetic and saving poor young man, of the humblest origin, to make his way up. In all my day there was universal suffrage, and it was political death to propose any modification. I explained nearly thirty years ago how southern conditions prevented the development of anything like the beneficent New England town-meeting system.[39] But for all of that the entire

spirit of southern society was democratic in the extreme, far more so than it is now with the nominating machinery everywhere in

the south except South Carolina, controlled by corporation oligarchs. When the root-and-branch abolitionist inveighed against oligarchy and aristocracy, and aristocratic institutions in the south, he was just as mistaken as he was in denouncing what he asserted to be the guilt in morals of slaveholding.

The more I study the abolitionists whom I distinguish as root-and-branch, the more completely self-deceived as to facts, the wilder and more emotional I find them to be. I have just mentioned some of their misrepresentations; and in later chapters I shall dwell upon their cardinal mistake as to the place of the negro in the human scale. I have not sufficient space for more of these things. I will give just one example of their wildness. They put in circulation that Toombs had said he expected some day to call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill monument,--a slander which they persisted in renewing after he had solemnly and publicly[Pg

91] denied it.[40] In their excited imaginations they were sure that the south was cherishing a scheme by which, under the help of the court that made the Dred Scott decision, slavery was to be established and protected by law everywhere in the north. The only parallel I can think of to this utterly groundless panic is that of some poor souls in the Confederate ranks in front of Richmond in

1862, who, when they learned that Jackson had got in the enemy's rear, expressed lively fears that he was going to drive McClellan's

army over them.

And the fire-eaters,--how they got important facts wrong! They habitually said that the northern masses were too untruthful and dishonest for us of the south to stay in the partnership without disgrace and loss of self-respect. I heard of one who was wont gravely to assert that prostitutes and ice were all that the south was dependent upon the north for; and these were only luxuries which it was better to do without. Perhaps the height of falsification by the hotspurs was the assertion, made everywhere again and

again, that northerners were such cowards that, even if they were spurred into a war in defence of the union, any one average southerner would prove an overmatch for any five of them.

It is now high time that each section turn resolutely away from these fanatics, and the literature which they have made or informed,

to seek right instruction as to slavery, the struggle over it, the characters of the masses on each side and of their leaders, and all other belonging details, in the real facts. Especially must we understand the internecine duel between free labor and slavery, and what was the purpose of the directors of evolution placing the fanatical abolitionist and the fire-eater upon the stage. When we grasp that purpose[Pg 92] clearly, how pretentious do we understand their claims and self-laudation to be, and how clearly we see that they are like the fly on the cart-wheel that became so vain of the great dust it was raising, and also like the little fice egging on the big dogs

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to do their fighting. I have still vivid recollections of hearing in amicable interviews of hostile pickets these characters denounced for keeping out of the war which, as was then said, they had caused,--the fanatical abolitionists denounced by the federals, the fire-eaters, original secessionists, the blue cockade wearers, by the confederates.

[Pg 93] CHAPTER VII CALHOUN

AFTER John Caldwell Calhoun, who was born March 18, 1782, the birth-year of Webster, had become large enough to go to the

field, the most of his time until he was eighteen was spent in work on the plantation. His father had never had but six months' schooling. There were no schools in that region except a few "old field" ones, where the three R's only were taught. To one of these John went for a few months. The boy learned to read, and manifestly he had acquired some habit of reading. In his thirteenth year he was sent to school to his brother-in-law, Moses Waddell, who was an unusually good teacher. He found a circulating library in

the house. This was his first access to books. He read old Rollin, and he probably moused about in Robertson's History of America and Life of Charles V, and Voltaire's Charles XII. Having laid Rollin aside, he assailed Locke's famous Essay; but when he got to

the chapter on Infinity his health had become bad, doubtless due to his change from active to sedentary habits and from physical to mental activity. So he was taken back to his work at home. His father had died in the meanwhile, and his mother, who had great business talent, taught him, as we are told, "how to administer the affairs of a plantation."[41] It will appear in the sequel[Pg 94] that he was superbly trained.[42] When he attained the age of eighteen the family had become convinced that he ought to be got ready

for a profession. John, knowing himself to be the mainstay of his mother, and having resolved to be a planter, at first would not hear to this. But the family persisted. This doubtless influenced him to turn the subject carefully over in his mind; and the decision which he made showed an understanding of his own peculiar talents and needs, and also a prescience of his future which, when his youth, small opportunity of observation, and want of schooling are remembered, are very wonderful. He gave this family, who were not

well-to-do, to understand he would not accept a limited and makeshift education. Naturally they asked what sort did he mean, and he answered, "The best school, college, and legal education to be had in the United States."[43] Then they asked, How long did he think all this would take, and he promptly answered seven years. To the average reader it seems that the time necessary to carry this un-schooled lad through the course he proposed had been egregiously underestimated by him; but to the family, as they thought of the appertaining annual expenses, it must have looked very long. They had to give in. That irrefragable influence over his people which showed itself as soon as he came upon the public stage begins here. Some one long afterwards said of him, that if he could but talk with every man he would always have the whole United States on his side. It is more than probable that in the five years after he

had left Waddell's school he had, in[Pg 95] plantation management and other interests of the family, convinced them that he always

acted or advised wisely. Another comment is in place here. Study of the record of his early life convinces you that very soon after, if not before, the commencement of his legal studies, he decided to make law only a stepping-stone by which to enter public life and also acquire the means to plant. I cannot help inferring that this was--somewhat vaguely it may be--his intention already formed when he dictated terms to the family as just told. It is not at all impossible that to him who afterwards astonished the world by the sureness of his prophecy there had even then been revealed the career awaiting; and so he resolved to get ready for college in two years, and pass the rest of the seven where, besides competent instructors, he would have cultivated society, libraries, and the best of opportunities to qualify himself for public life. Be our conjecture true or not, in two years after he had opened his Latin grammar

he entered the junior class at Yale, and two years later he graduated with credit. After reading law in an office he took a year's course at the Litchfield law school in Connecticut, and then he went into an office again for a while. Some time in June, 1807, he hung out his shingle at Abbeville Court-house, as it was called up to the time of reconstruction. A few days afterwards in that month occurred the attack on the Chesapeake, and when the news came it caused a public meeting in the town. Some good report of him must have been bruited about in the community in advance of his coming. It is almost certain that his education had greatly developed those powers of conversation mentioned above, and that many listeners had greatly approved his views of the outrage, and the patriotic indignation he uttered over it. It is not stretching probability too far to assert that, young as he was, he[Pg 96] was by far the ablest man that could be found in the locality to advise upon the burning question which had arisen so suddenly. He was selected to draft appropriate resolutions and present them. There is no record of these or of his speech. But as we know that the resolutions carried, and that tradition still reports admiringly of the speech, we may be sure that his performance in both was extraordinarily good. Although there had been a strong popular prejudice in the county--or district, as it was then called--against lawyer representatives, October 13, 1807, less than four months after the meeting just described, he was elected to the legislature at the head of the ticket.

In that day presidential electors were appointed by the State legislatures. Shortly after the session of this legislature to which Calhoun

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had been elected opened, there was an informal meeting of the republican members to make nominations for president and vice-president. The first was unanimously given to Madison. When the other was up, Calhoun declared his conviction that there was

soon to be war with England. At such a time there should be no dissension in the party. He gave strong reasons why George Clinton should not be nominated, as had been proposed; and he suggested John Langdon of New Hampshire as the proper man. The thorough acquaintance with the grave situation which he manifested, the due respect he showed Clinton while opposing his nomination, and the ability with which he discussed the question, advanced him at once to a place among the most distinguished members of the legislature.

"Several important measures were originated by Mr. Calhoun while in the legislature which have become a permanent portion of the legislation of the State, and he soon acquired an extensive practice at the[Pg 97] bar."[44] He kept in the very midst of the political swim. His reputation as an honest, true, and able adviser had become so great and influential that the people, in their warm approval of the strong measures he advocated as preparation for the threatened war, pushed him out as their candidate for congress and elected him most triumphantly in October, 1810. The first session of this, the twelfth congress, commenced November 4, 1811. Clay, then speaker of the house, evidently expecting much of him, gave him the second place in the committee on foreign relations. There came before the house a measure contemplating an increase of the army in view of the war which appeared to many to be nearer than ever. John Randolph was against it. In March, 1799, a year before Calhoun started to school, Randolph, then not twenty-six

years old, had fearlessly met the great Patrick Henry in stump discussion, and had, in the opinion of his auditors, got the better of

it. He was elected to congress in this year. Steadily since then he had developed, until he was now one of the most prominent figures upon the national stage. While his powers of discussion of a subject were great, the power that especially characterized him was that of nonplussing his antagonist with a snub or a sarcasm. Randolph made an earnest speech. Calhoun replied. It is not enough to say of this speech that it evinces full mastery of the subject. It presents every important view most effectively, satisfactorily answering everything which had been said on the other side. And it is especially happy in the wise use made at each proper place of the commands of morality and patriotism.

Mr. Pinkney has instructively and entertainingly [Pg 98]illustrated this speech by his excerpts.[45] To them I here add another, which I would have you consider,--Randolph had strenuously insisted that the cause of this war, said by the other side to be impending, should first be defined; and until this plain duty was done there should be no preparation. To this Calhoun said:

"The single instance alluded to, the endeavor of Mr. Fox to compel Mr. Pitt to define the object of the war against France, will not support the gentleman from Virginia in his position. That was an extraordinary war for an extraordinary purpose. It was not for conquest, or for redress of injury, but to impose a government on France which she refused to receive--an object so detestable that an avowal dared not be made."

This is a thrust which Randolph especially could appreciate.

The more I examine this first speech of a very young member of congress upon a question of such transcendent importance to the people of the United States, the more sound, able, complete,--to sum up in one word,--the more statesmanly it appears. I am confident that whoever will weigh it carefully will agree with me. He will not be surprised to learn that it carried the house decisively. Even in Randolph's own State it drew great praise. But its fame went abroad everywhere, and it was revealed to America that she had found among her public men another giant.

In the year 1800 Calhoun was a lad of eighteen, without even a complete common school education. Represent to yourself clearly what he had accomplished in the interval from the year last mentioned to December 12, 1811, when, not yet thirty, he made the speech we have just considered. If any public man of America, burdened with such disadvantages, has surpassed, or[Pg 99] even equalled, this meteoric stride, I do not now recall him. I am not emphasizing especially that he got to congress in such a short while. What I do especially emphasize is that he so early won place as an eminent statesman. In these eleven years he lost no time at all in idleness, or probation, or waiting.

January 8, 1811, some three months after his election to congress, he married his cousin, Floride Calhoun--not a first cousin, but a daughter of a first cousin. His letters of courtship, not to her, but, in the old style, to her mother; his only letter to her, written shortly before the marriage; and other letters from and to him afterwards, all of which you can read in the Correspondence,--show him to be such a lover, father, brother, son-in-law, brother-in-law, grandfather, etc., as everybody wants. Some South Carolinian, adequately gifted, ought to tell befittingly the tale of Calhoun's beautiful domestic life.

I must now mention some other facts which will further enlighten you as to the man.

I was fourteen when Calhoun died. For four or five years before, and afterwards until I went to the brothers' war, I heard much of

Calhoun from relatives in Abbeville county and the Court House. I still recall most vividly what a paternal uncle habitually said of

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the brightness and unexampled impressiveness of Calhoun's eyes, and the charm and instructiveness of his conversation. In Georgia there was not a public man whose course in politics commended itself to all of my acquaintances. I had become accustomed to hearing much disparagement of Toombs and of Stephens, with whom I was most familiar. But my South Carolina relatives, and every man or woman of that State whose talk I listened to; every boy or girl with whom I talked myself, yea, all of the negroes,--always warmly maintained the[Pg 100] rightfulness of Calhoun's politics, national or State. I thought it a good hit when a Georgia aunt

of mine dubbed the Palmetto State "The Kingdom of Calhoun," and Abbeville Court House "its capital." This universal political

worship was a great surprise to me. But there was a still greater one to come. That was, that according to all accounts, and without

any contradiction, in spite of his living away from home the most of his time, he yet gave his planting interests and all else appertaining the very best management, and with such unvarying financial success it would be unkind to compare Webster's money-wasting and amateur farming at Marshfield. In this community, where he seemed to be known as well as he was before he removed to Fort Hill, some sixty miles distant, in 1825, he had become a far greater authority in business than he had even attained in politics. His acquaintances all sought his advice, which they followed when they got it; thus making this busiest of public servants their agricultural oracle.

The reader will find in Starke's memoir and the Correspondence ample proofs of that diligent attention of Calhoun to his home affairs which made him the exceptionally successful planter that he was. Starke happily calls him "the great farmer-statesman of our country."[46]

Now let us see where he made his mark as an able business man in another place. He was Monroe's secretary of war from 1817

to 1825. When he entered the office he found something like $50,000,000 of unsettled accounts outstanding, and jumble in every branch of the service. He soon brought down the accounts to a few millions. And he reduced the annual expenditure of four to two and a half millions, "without [Pg 101]subtracting a single comfort from either officer or soldier," as he says with becoming pride. He established it, that the head of every subordinate department be responsible for its disbursements. His economy was not parsimoni-ous. He was especially popular at West Point, for which he did great things, and with the officers and men of the army.

And if one chose to look through the belonging parts of the Correspondence and the other accessible pertinent records, he will find ample proofs that he was ever alert to all the duties of his office, performing each one, whether important or trivial, with the height of skill and diligence.

Consider, as to his career in the war department, this language of one of the most inveterate of his disparagers:

"Many of his friends and admirers had with regret seen him abandon his seat in the legislative hall for a place in the president's council. They apprehended that he would, to a great extent, lose the renown which he had gained as a member of congress, for they thought that the didactic turn of his mind rendered him unfit to become a successful administrator. He undeceived them in a man-ner which astonished even those who had not shared these apprehensions. The department of war was in a state of really astounding confusion when he assumed charge of it. Into this chaos he soon brought order, and the whole service of the department received

an organization so simple and at the same time so efficient that it has, in the main, been adhered to by all his successors, and proved itself capable of standing even the test of the civil war."[47]

Now let us glance at his magnificent success in winning for the United States the vast territory of Texas and Oregon. The latter had long been in dispute between us and England. Ever since 1818 it had been jointly occupied under agreement. We wanted all of[Pg

102] it; and of course as our settlements in the west approached nearer and nearer, our desire for it mounted. And England wanted all of it too. Soon after Texas achieved her independence she applied for admission into our union, but as the settlers had carried slavery with them free-soil opposition kept her out. Texas got in debt, and the only thing for her to do was to tie to some great power willing to receive her. England, seeing her opportunity, was trying to propitiate Mexico in order, with the favor of the latter, to get Texas for herself. Of course the south wanted Texas to come in, but the free-soilers did not. And the north wanted Oregon; and although its soil and climate did not admit of slavery, the south was against its acquisition unless the concession be made that it be permitted to slavery to occupy all the suitable soil of the Territories. As early as 1843 Calhoun, with his piercing vision, saw the

situation clearly. If the dispute as to Oregon provoked war, England could throw troops thither from China by a much shorter route

than ours, the latter going as it did from the States on the Atlantic coast around Cape Horn. That would be bad enough for us. But suppose England gets Texas. A hostile power, with a vast empire of land, will spring up under the very nose of the States, where our adversary will acquire a base of operations in the highest degree unfavorable to us. Then England will rise in her demands as to Oregon, and perhaps win all of it from us. In an affair of inter-dependent contingencies it is of the first importance to do the right thing instead of the wrong thing first. Texas was ripe, Oregon was not. Calhoun saw the first thing to do was to annex Texas. For when England cannot secure that base of operations in Texas she will shrink from making Oregon a cause of war, and while she

is hesitating, Oregon--which is near to us and far[Pg 103] from her--is steadily filling with population in which settlers from the United States more and more preponderate; and at the same time the populous States are fast approaching. After a while the inhabitants will all practically be on our side, and they will have hosts of allies to the eastward in supporting distance, which would give us

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an invincible advantage in case war for Oregon does come. This is what Calhoun styled "masterly inactivity" on our part, and which, had it been fully carried out as he advised, Oregon would now extend much further north than it does. To sum up in a line, he saw that activity as to Texas and inactivity as to Oregon was each masterly.

But the hotheads of the south and the fanatical wing of the anti-slavery men at the north rose up, obstructing his way like mountains. At the same time there was lack of vision in even the leaders of each section who could rise to patriotism above prejudice. Polk blundered in not continuing Calhoun as secretary of State, in which place he had made so good a beginning that it soon accomplished the annexation of Texas. In his inaugural Polk asserted that our title to Oregon was good, and to be maintained by arms if need be; and he went further away from "masterly inactivity" in his first annual message. He evoked great popular excitement, and "Fifty-four forty or fight!" and "All of Oregon or none!" came forth in passionate ejaculations in every corner of the land. Calhoun had been called from retirement to take Texas and Oregon in hand, and when Polk made a new secretary he went back into the retirement for which he greatly longed. The record shows that the best men of all parties, north and south, felt that as Tyler's secretary he was the man of all to manage the two matters so vitally important to the United States, and they deeply regretted that the place[Pg

104] was not continued to him by Polk. And now instead of the happy settlement they had been sure the master would effect, the country was face to face with a war that portended direful disaster to each section. The eyes of patriots turned to Calhoun again; and as he cannot be secretary, he must be in the senate. And a way being made, he was seated in due time. It needs not to go into much detail. The situation had changed greatly. The especial thing to do now was to avoid war. And as a resolution to terminate the joint occupation had been passed by congress, and as the ire of Great Britain had been greatly aroused, there must at once be a settlement of the Oregon controversy. And so the controversy was compromised and averted, this good result being mainly due to the efforts

of Calhoun. Even Von Holst calls his speech of March 16, 1846, great. It will live forever. It is paying it gross disrespect to treat it as

mere oratory, even if one concede to it the highest eloquence. It voices the ripest wisdom of the ablest practical statesman dealing with a most momentous public affair, in a crisis delicate and perilous in the extreme. The vindication of the true course of action is majestic. But to my mind the great achievement of the speech is his sublime philanthropic deprecation of war between England and America. When the papers told us at the outbreak of our war with Spain that all the British subjects on the warships of the latter

had thrown up their places, it seemed to me that nothing else could so fairly omen co-operation of England and America in the near future to democratize and make happy the world. And I believe that that inexpressibly sweet token of Anglo-American brotherhood would have been postponed at least a half-century, if not much longer, had it not been for that speech.

This speech likewise discomfited pro-slavery and[Pg 105] anti-slavery fanatics alike, and won the hearty approval of the wisest and

best of every part of the country.