Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/372

 344 T. W. Davenport. Sam Lewis, after graduating as a Presbyterian minister, took a course of mobs. He began by allaying the mob spirit in Cincinnati, Ohio, and won freedom of speech for every one. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that he was not, in many respects, a great man. True, he was not a great, strong, energetic animal. On the contrary, he was physically w^eak and did not impress people by an exuberance of spirit. He was tall, dark, lathy, and his reserve force was no menace or challenge to the mob. Though a faultless rhetorician, there was no display, no playing with the voice, no stress or empha- sis to attract attention. There was freedom of movement but no gestures that one would remember. His eyes were dark but not large, and did not, like Webster's glow and rivet the attention with awesome power. His voice had no dramatic quavers of pathos, and ordinary people would be incompetent to explain how with his calm flow of speech they were held enthralled and in tears, unconscious of time, divested of the paltry incidents of life, prejudice, greed, self love, pride of station, and possessed by a spirit of chaste and elevating fra- ternity. To infer that such effects were wrought only on super-sensitive souls would not be an approximation to the truth. Hiis audiences were not thus selected; they were, as American audiences generally are, of all kinds and classes. Of the thousands that he addressed at every meeting only a few were free from the conviction that the discussion of the slavery question, was futile as to the slave, and at the same time a menace to the peace and prosperity of the Northern people. A great majority of his hearers were intensely hostile to the free-soil movement, for there was no denying that the denunciation of slavery as an unholy and immoral institu- tion, tended to inflame the people of the South and provoke them to disunion. The Whigs of Ohio at this time professed to be opposed to the extension of slavery, but they were equally opposed to any sort of discourse calculated to offend our Southern brethren. It is well to remember, too, that Aboli- tionists were still subject to assault and liable to be treated to rotten eggs, free transportation on fence rails, or a coat of