nator seemed to be in his seat. Hunter, Davis, Toombs,
Mason, Slidell, Hammond, Clingman, Brown, and Benjamin paid closest
attention to the speaker. Crittenden listened to every word. Douglas
affected to be self-possessed; but his nervousness of mien gave token
that the truths now uttered awakened memories of the Lecompton
contest, when he, Seward, and Crittenden, the famous triumvirate, led
the allies in their attack upon the Administration. The members of the
House streamed over to the north wing of the Capitol almost in a
body, leaving Reagan of Texas to discourse to empty benches, while
Seward held his levee in the Senate."[513]

[Footnote 513: New York _Tribune_, March 1, 1860.]

Seward lacked the tones, the kindly eye, and the mirth-provoking look
of Lincoln. His voice was husky, his manner didactic, and his physique
unimposing, but he had the gift of expression, and the ability to
formulate his opinions and marshal his facts in lucid sentences that
harmonised with Northern sentiments and became at once the creed and
rallying cry of his party; and, on this occasion, he held the Senate
spellbound for two hours, the applause at one time becoming so long
continued that the presiding officer threatened to clear the
galleries. He was always calm and temperate. But it seemed now to be
his desire, in language more subdued, perhaps, than he had ever used
before, to allay the fears of what would happen should the Republican
party succeed in electing a President; and, without the sacrifice of
any principle, he endeavoured to outline the views of Republicans and
the spirit that animated himself. There was nothing new in his speech.
He avoided the higher law and irrepressible conflict doctrines, and
omitted his former declarations that slavery "can and must be
abolished, and you and I can and must do it." In like manner he failed
to demand, as formerly, that the Supreme Court "recede from its
spurious judgment" in the Dred Scott case. But he reviewed with the
same logic that had characterised his utterances for twenty years, the
relation of the Constitution to slavery; the influence of slavery upon
both parties; the history of the Kansas controversy; and the manifest
advantages of the Union, dwelling at length and with much originality
upon the firm hold it had upon the people, and the certainty that it
would survive the rudest shocks of faction. Of the Harper's Ferry
affair, Seward spoke with more sympathy than Lincoln. "Wh