e rights of classes on the other, he will
pronounce for the rights of men. Accordingly, his verdict was stiffly
against the Missouri Compromise in 1820 and 1821. He said it was unwise
and unjust. When, in 1836, it came time, under that Compromise, to admit
the State of Arkansas,--the next Slave State after Missouri,--he said
that we were not bound to admit her with slavery, that the Compromise
was not binding, and never could be made binding; it was unwise and
unjust. Because he had said so, he considered himself estopped from
saying that it was binding, and sacred, and inviolable, and all that, in
1854, when the rest of us made it into a new-found palladium of liberty.
He would not argue the Nebraska question on the Compromise, but on the
original principles of the popular rights involved. It is the same
confidence in the people which shines through the letter to Baron
Huelsemann, which he wrote at the request of Mr. Webster, and through his
answer to the proposal of the Three Powers that we should guaranty Cuba
to Spain. It may be necessary for popular freedom that Spain shall not
have Cuba. The same thing is in all his reviews of the Basil Halls and
other travellers. I do not suppose he liked a dirty table-cloth better
than Mrs. Trollope did. I do not suppose he liked a Virginia fence
better than Cobbett did. But he knew that table-cloths could be washed,
and Virginia fences changed in time for hedges and walls. And he was
willing to wait for such changes,--even with all the elegance people
talk of,--if he were sure that the education of the people was going
forward, and the lines of promotion were kept open.

When, therefore, the issue of 1861 came, there was no question, to
anybody who knew him well, where he would stand. He would stand with the
democratic side against the aristocratic side. And the issue of this war
is the issue between democracy and oligarchy. Persons who did not
believe in the people did not stand on the democratic side. Persons who
thought a republican government had been forced on us by misfortune, and
that we must simply make the best of it, did not stand there. They did
not believe that this time the people could get through. So they thought
it best to stop before beginning. He knew the people could go through
anything. So he thought it best to hold firm to the end.

Some of the most amusing of the details of his early life, which, with
his wonderful memory, he was rather fond of relating, b