an appointment to speak in that
city, and on the day appointed reported for duty. I found my
friends uneasy and apprehensive. They evidently regretted my
coming, and some of them advised me quietly to return home. The
town was full of rumors that I was not to be allowed to speak, and
was to be "wabashed," as the rowdies phrased it. But I had no
thought of returning without being heard; and accordingly, at the
appointed hour, I repaired to the court house, where I found a
small crowd assembled, with restless countenances, and a gang of
ruffians outside, armed with stones and brickbats. The audience
gradually increased, and as I began to speak I noticed that the
roughs themselves began to listen, which they continued to do during
the hour and a half I devoted to the most unmistakable utterances
on the slavery question. The ringleader of the mob, for some
reason, failed to give the signal of attack, and free speech was
vindicated. Timid men grew brave, and boasted of the love of order
that had prompted the people of the town to stand by my rights;
yet the mob would probably have triumphed but for the presence of
Joseph O. Jones, the post-master of the city, himself a Kentuckian,
but a believer in the right of free speech and the duty of defending
it at all hazards.

The result of this Presidential canvass was a surprise to all
parties. The triumph of the Democrats was anticipated, but it was
far more signal than they expected. Pierce received two hundred
and fifty-four electoral votes, and Scott only forty-two, representing
only four States of the Union. So far as the Whig party was
concerned, the result was overwhelming and final. The party was
buried forever in the grave it had dug for itself. Hale received
a little more than one hundred and fifty-six thousand votes, being
about one-twentieth of the entire popular vote cast at this election;
so that nineteen-twentieths of the people of the United States in
1852, and only a little more than a dozen years before slavery was
swept from the land, voted themselves bound and dumb before this
Moloch of American politics, while only one-twentieth had the
courage to claim their souls as their own. These were very startling
facts after more than a quarter of a century of anti-slavery agitation,
and they were naturally interpreted by the victorious party everywhere
as clearly foreshadowing the complete triumph of the "final
settlement" made by Congress in 1850. Cert