of the
faithful have been afraid. But let us be of good cheer. It is shining
brighter as I write and, under God, I believe it shall, by and by, be
seen and loved of all men.

One self-contained, Homeric figure, of the remote countryside in which I
was born, had the true Spirit of Democracy and shed its light abroad in
the Senate of the United States and the Capitol at Albany. He carried
the candle of the Lord. It led him to a height of self-forgetfulness
achieved by only two others--Washington and Lincoln. Yet I have been
surprised by the profound and general ignorance of this generation
regarding the career of Silas Wright, of whom Whittier wrote these
lines:

"Man of the millions thou art lost too soon!
Portents at which the bravest stand aghast
The birth throes of a future strange and vast
Alarm the land. Yet thou so wise and strong
Suddenly summoned to the burial bed,
Lapped in its slumbers deep and ever long,
Hear'st not the tumult surging over head.
Who now shall rally Freedom's scattering host?
Who wear the mantle of the leader lost?"

The distinguished Senator who served at his side for many years, Thomas
H. Benton of Missouri, has this to say of Silas Wright in his _Thirty
Years' View_:

"He refused cabinet appointments under his fast friend Van Buren and
under Polk, whom he may be said to have elected. He refused a seat on
the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States; he rejected
instantly the nomination of 1844 for Vice-President; he refused to be
put in nomination for the Presidency. He spent that time in declining
office which others did in winning it. The offices he did accept, it
might well be said, were thrust upon him. He was born great and above
office and unwillingly descended to it."

So much by way of preparing the reader to meet the great commoner in
these pages. One thing more is necessary to a proper understanding of
the final scenes in the book--a part of his letter written to Judge Fine
just before the Baltimore convention of 1844, to wit:

"I do not feel at liberty to omit any act which may protect me from
being made the instrument, however honestly and innocently, of further
distractions.

"Within a few days several too partial friends have suggested to me the
idea that by possibility, in case the opposition to the nomination of
Mr. Van Buren should be found irreconcilable, a compromise might be made
by dropping him and using my