Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/387

 Slavery Question in Oregon. 359 was nothing heroic about it, no glorious and invigorating ap- peal to moral and intellectual manhood, no uplift from the habitual subservience of Northern Democrats, and in these re- spects was chilling and darkening to those who were hopeful of amelioration of the perpetual assault upon the original prin- ciples and purposes of the fathers. I had never heard Dryer, and as his reputation for public speech was barely second to Delazon's, and there was such a fine opportunity offered him for triumphant repl>', my ex- pectations rose with the occasion. Besides, nature had given him a good, solid, earnest face, with a flash of brilliance in it, and from his appearance as he sat upon the platform listening intently to his opponent's arguments, the audience were an- ticipating a real duel. The introduction to his address was unlike anything his auditors ever witnessed. He began gestic- ulating furiously, accompanying it with as furious an out- pouring of voice but without articulate utterance, and this performance was continued until people were beginning to doubt his sanity, when he very coolly informed them that that was his summary of Delazon's speech. Notwithstanding his explanation, the audience saw nothing rational in such an antic, and nothing he said afterwards, which in fact was very trite and tame, could efface the rude shock he had given them. If it had been a clever imitation of the tone and gesture of his predecessor, it might have served as allowable political spice, but it was wholly foreign to everything that had oc- curred. Smith, who had tarried after the close of his own speech, evidently to hear what course his opponent would take, turned and walked away without giving it even the merit of disgust. In the larger and original view of the framers of the Con- stitution, the after-claim of slavery to perpetuity, was a revolutionary divergence pure and simple, and the continual harping by Democratic orators, of the rights of slavery and the threat of disunion, was enough to disgust any one who failed to recollect that the bulk of the American people had been educated in this school for almost two generations and