Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/456

448 others, was when the slave-holding rebellion raised its defiant head, not when, as now, that head was in the dust and ashes of defeat and destruction. But the beloved Winthrop, the proud representative of what Daniel Webster once called the "solid men of Boston," had great need to speak now. It had been no fault of the loyal cause that he had not spoken sooner. Its "gates, like those of Heaven, stood open night and day." If he did not come in, it was his own fault. Regiment after regiment, brigade after brigade, had passed over Boston Common to endure the perils and hardships of war; Governor Andrew had poured out his soul, had exhausted his wonderful powers of speech in patriotic words to the brave departing sons of old Massachusetts, and a word from Winthrop would have gone far to nerve up those young soldiers going forth to lay down their lives for the life of the republic; but no word came. Yet now, in the last quarter of the eleventh hour, when the day's work was nearly done, Robert C. Winthrop was seen standing upon the same platform with the veteran Henry Wilson. He was there in all his native grace and dignity, elegantly and aristocratically clothed, his whole bearing marking his social sphere as widely different from many present. Happily for his good name, and for those who shall bear it when he is no longer among the living, that he was found, even at the last hour, in the right place—in old Faneuil Hall—side by side with plain Henry Wilson—the shoemaker senator. But this was not the only contrast on that platform on that day. It was my strange fortune to follow Mr. Winthrop on this interesting occasion. I remember him as the guest of John H. Clifford of New Bedford, afterwards Governor of Massachusetts, when twenty-five years before, I had been only a few months from slavery—I was behind his chair as waiter, and was