break,
piercing enough to make itself heard, but not agreeable. This hardly
seems the picture of an orator; nor was it to any charm of elocution
that he owed his influence, but rather to the fact that men soon
learned that what he said was always well worth hearing. When he
entered Congress he had been for much more than a third of a century
zealously gathering knowledge in public affairs, and during his career
in that body every year swelled the already vast accumulation.
Moreover, listeners were always sure to get a bold and an honest
utterance and often pretty keen words from him, and he never spoke to
an inattentive audience or to a thin house. Whether pleased or
incensed by what he said, the Representatives at least always listened
to it. He was by nature a hard fighter, and by the circumstances of
his course in Congress this quality was stimulated to such a degree
that parliamentary history does not show his equal as a gladiator. (p. 229)
His power of invective was extraordinary, and he was untiring and
merciless in his use of it. Theoretically he disapproved of sarcasm,
but practically he could not refrain from it. Men winced and cowered
before his milder attacks, became sometimes dumb, sometimes furious
with mad rage before his fiercer assaults. Such struggles evidently
gave him pleasure, and there was scarce a back in Congress that did
not at one time or another feel the score of his cutting lash; though
it was the Southerners and the Northern allies of Southerners whom
chiefly he singled out for torture. He was irritable and quick to
wrath; he himself constantly speaks of the infirmity of his temper,
and in his many conflicts his principal concern was to keep it in
control. His enemies often referred to it and twitted him with it. Of
alliances he was careless, and friendships he had almost none. But in
the creation of enmities he was terribly successful. Not so much at
first, but increasingly as years went on, a state of ceaseless,
vigilant hostility became his normal condition. From the time when he
fairly entered upon the long struggle against slavery, he enjoyed few
peaceful days in the House. But he seemed to thrive upon the warfare,
and to be never so well pleased as when he was bandying hot words with
slave-holders and the Northern supporters of slave-holders. When (p. 230)
the air of the House was thick with crimination and abuse he seemed to
suck in fresh vigor and spirit from the hate-laden atmospher