Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/58

32 legislative body of the Republic nobody else would say; and he proved that they could be said, and yet the world would move on. With his wealth of learning and his legal ability, he furnished an arsenal of arguments, convincing more timid souls that what he said could be sustained in repeating. And presently the politicians felt encouraged to follow in the direction where the idealist had driven a stake ahead. Nay, he forced them to follow, for they knew that the idealist, whom they could not venture to disown, would not fall back at their bidding. Such was his leadership in the struggle with slavery.

Nor was that leadership interrupted when on the 22d of May, 1856, Preston Brooks of South Carolina, maddened by an arraignment of his State and its Senator, came upon Charles Sumner in the Senate, struck him down with heavy blows and left him on the floor bleeding and insensible. For three years Sumner's voice was not heard, but his blood marked the vantage ground from which his party could not recede; and his senatorial chair, kept empty for him by the noble people of Massachusetts, stood there in most eloquent silence, confirming, sealing, inflaming all he had said with terrible illustration,—a guide-post to the onward march of freedom.

When, in 1861, the Republican party had taken the reins of government in hand, his peculiar leadership entered upon a new field of action. No sooner was the victory of the anti-slavery cause in the election ascertained, than the Rebellion raised its head. South Carolina opened the secession movement. The portentous shadow of an approaching civil war spread over the land. A tremor fluttered through the hearts even of strong men in the North,—a vague fear such as is produced by the first rumbling of an earthquake. Could not a bloody conflict be averted? A fresh clamor for compromise arose. Even Republicans in Congress began to waver. The proposed