han any
other man in Missouri to break down the power of Thomas H. Benton
as a leader of the Democracy. His arraignment of Benton before
the people of Missouri in 1849, when he was but thirty-two years
of age, was one of the most aggressive and successful warfares in
our political annals. His premature death was a loss to the country.
He was endowed with rare powers which, rightly directed, would have
led him to eminence in the public service.

NORTHERN DEMORALIZATION.

It would be unjust to the senators and representatives in Congress
to leave the impression that their unavailing efforts at conciliating
the South were any thing more or less than a compliance with a
popular demand which overspread the free States. As soon as the
election was decided in favor of Mr. Lincoln, and the secession
movement began to develop in the South, tens of thousands of those
who had voted for the Republican candidates became affrighted at
the result of their work. This was especially true in the Middle
States, and to a very considerable extent in New England. Municipal
elections throughout the North during the ensuing winter showed a
great falling-off in Republican strength. There was, indeed, in
every free State what might, in the political nomenclature of the
day, be termed an utter demoralization of the Republican party.
The Southern States were going farther than the people had believed
was possible. The wolf which had been so long used to scare, seemed
at last to have come. Disunion, which had been so much threatened
and so little executed, seemed now to the vision of the multitude
an accomplished fact,--a fact which inspired a large majority of
the Northern people with a sentiment of terror, and imparted to
their political faith an appearance of weakness and irresolution.

Meetings to save the Union upon the basis of surrender of principle
were held throughout the free States, while a word of manly resistance
to the aggressive disposition of the South, or in re-affirmation
of principles so long contended for, met no popular response. Even
in Boston, Wendell Phillips needed the protection of the police in
returning to his home after one of his eloquent and defiant harangues,
and George William Curtis was advised by the Republican mayor of
Philadelphia that his appearance as a lecturer in that city would
be extremely unwise. He had been engaged to speak on "The Policy
o