Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume Two).djvu/33

Rh speeches. They were known as the McClellan Club of the North End of Boston and they were sufficient in numbers, when standing, to fill the main floor in front of the rostrum, which at that time was not provided with seats. The meeting was called by Republicans and it was conducted under the auspices of Republicans. Governor Andrew was to preside and Governor Everett, with others, had been invited to speak. Governor Andrew was not blessed with a commanding voice and it was drowned or smothered by the hisses, cheers and cat-call cries of the hostile audience in front of him. The efforts of the sympathetic audience in the galleries were of no avail. Mr. Everett’s letter was then read, but not a sentence of it was understood by any person in the assembly. Next came Mr. Sennott, an Irishman, a lawyer, and a man of large learning in knowledge and attainments not adapted to general use. He had then but recently abandoned the Democratic Party, but there was a stain upon his reputation, traceable to the fact that in the year 1859 he had volunteered to aid in the legal defence of John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. The city of Boston could not have offered a person less acceptable to the crowd in front of the speaker. Mr. Sennott’s voice was weak and of the art of using what power he possessed he had no knowledge. His speech was not heard by anyone in the assembly. By the arrangement I was to follow Mr. Sennott. I had had some experience with hostile audiences, and in the year 1862 I had been interrupted in a country town of Massachusetts by stones thrown through the windows of a hall in which I was speaking upon the war and the administration.

As I sat upon the platform I studied my audience and I resolved upon my course. I had one fixed resolution—I should get a hearing or I should spend the night in the hall. Something of the character of my reception and the results reached may be gained from the report in the Boston Journal,