protest and her mighty purpose.

The tide of history and the tide of mortality were running meanwhile their
inexorable courses. Two powerful parties, the Whig and the American, had
foundered on the tumultuous sea of public opinion. A new political
organization, the Republican, had arisen instead to resist the extension
of slavery to national territory. Death too was busy. Preston S. Brooks
and his uncle had vanished in the grave. Harper's Ferry had become
freedom's Balaklava, and John Brown had mounted from a Virginia gallows to
the throne and the glory of martyrdom. Sumner was not able to take up the
task which his hands had dropped until the troublous winter of 1859-60.
Those four fateful years of suffering had not abated his hatred of
slavery. That hatred and the Puritanical sternness and intolerance of his
nature had on the contrary intensified his temper and purpose as an
anti-slavery leader. He was then in personal appearance the incarnation of
iron will and iron convictions. His body nobly planned and proportioned
was a fit servant of his lofty and indomitable mind. All the strength and
resources of both he needed in the national emergency which then
confronted the Republic. For the supreme crisis of a seventy years'
conflict of ideas and institutions was at hand. At every door and on every
brow sat gloom and apprehension.

There was light on but one difficult way, the way of national
righteousness. In this storm-path of the Nation Sumner planted his feet.
Thick fogs were before and above him, a wild chaotic sea of doubt and
dread raged around him, but he hesitated not, neither swerved to the right
hand nor to the left. Straight on and up he moved, calling through the
rising tumult and the fast falling darkness to his groping and terrified
countrymen to follow him.

Nothing is settled which is not settled right, I hear him saying, high
above the breaking storm of civil strife. Peace, ever enduring peace,
comes only to that nation which puts down sin, and lifts up righteousness.
Kansas he found still denied admission to the Union, he presented her case
and arraigned her oppressors, in one of the great speeches of his life.
Where-ever liberty needed him, there he was, the knight without fear or
reproach. From platform and press and Senate he flung himself, during
those final decisive months of 1860, into the thickest of the battle. No
uncertainty vexed his mind and conscience. Whatever other questions
admitted o