t home as though he had been born a marquis.

The first half of the Republic's first half century of existence the
public men of America, distinguished for many things, were chiefly and
almost universally distinguished for repose of bearing and sobriety of
behavior. It was not until the institution of African slavery had got
into politics as a vital force that Congress became a bear-garden, and
that our law-makers, laying aside their manners with their small
clothes, fell into the loose-fitting habiliments of modern fashion and
the slovenly jargon of partisan controversy. The gentlemen who signed
the Declaration and framed the Constitution were succeeded by
gentlemen--much like themselves--but these were succeeded by a race of
party leaders much less decorous and much more self-confident; rugged,
puissant; deeply moved in all that they said and did, and sometimes
turbulent; so that finally, when the volcano burst forth flames that
reached the heavens, great human bowlders appeared amid the glare on
every side; none of them much to speak of according to rules regnant at
St. James and Versailles; but vigorous, able men, full of their mission
and of themselves, and pulling for dear life in opposite directions.

There were Seward and Sumner and Chase, Corwin and Ben Wade, Trumbull
and Fessenden, Hale and Collamer and Grimes, and Wendell Phillips, and
Horace Greeley, our latter-day Franklin. There were Toombs and Hammond,
and Slidell and Wigfall, and the two little giants, Douglas and
Stephens, and Yancey and Mason, and Jefferson Davis. With them soft
words buttered no parsnips, and they cared little how many pitchers
might be broken by rude ones. The issue between them did not require a
diagram to explain it. It was so simple a child might understand. It
read, human slavery against human freedom, slave labor against free
labor, and involved a conflict as inevitable as it was irrepressible.

Greek was meeting Greek at last; and the field of politics became almost
as sulphurous and murky as an actual field of battle. Amid the noise and
confusion, the clashing of intellects like sabers bright, and the
booming of the big oratorical guns of the North and the South, now
definitely arrayed, there came one day into the Northern camp one of the
oddest figures imaginable; the figure of a man who, in spite of an
appearance somewhat at outs with Hogarth's line of beauty, wore a
serious aspect, if not an air of command, and, pausing to