He felt uneasy in
his new clothes and a strange place." Certainly nothing in his previous
experience had prepared him to meet with entire indifference an audience
of metropolitan critics; indeed, had the surroundings been more
familiar, he had enough at stake to tax his equanimity when William
Cullen Bryant introduced him simply as "an eminent citizen of the West,
hitherto known to you only by reputation." Probably the first impression
made upon those auditors by the ungainly Westerner in his outlandish
garb were not the same which they carried home with them a little later.
The speech was so condensed that a sketch of it is not possible.
Fortunately it had the excellent quality of steadily expanding in
interest and improving to the end.
Of the Dred Scott case he cleverly said that the courts had decided it
"_in a sort of way_;" but, after all, the decision was "mainly based
upon a mistaken statement of fact,--the statement in the opinion that
'the right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed
in the Constitution.'"
In closing, he begged the Republicans, in behalf of peace and harmony,
to "do nothing through passion and ill-temper;" but he immediately went
on to show the antagonism between Republican opinion and Democratic
opinion with a distinctness which left no hope of harmony, and very
little hope of peace. To satisfy the Southerners, he said, we must
"cease to call slavery _wrong_, and join them in calling it _right_.
Pages:
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172