Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/92

66 ahead of his followers, never disturbed by their anxieties and fears, showing them that what was necessary was possible, and forcing them to follow him,—a great moving power, such as the struggle required.

Nor can it be said that this impatient, irrepressible propulsion was against all prudence and sound judgment, for it must not be forgotten that, when Mr. Sumner stepped into the front, the policy of compromise was exhausted; the time of composition and expedient was past. Things had gone so far, that the idea of reaching the end, which ultimately must be reached, by mutual concession and a gradual and peaceable process, was utterly hopeless. The conflicting forces could not be reconciled; the final struggle was indeed irrepressible and inevitable, and all that could then be done was to gather up all the existing forces for one supreme effort, and to take care that the final struggle should bring forth the necessary results.

Thus the instinct and the obstinate, concentrated, irresistible moving power which Mr. Sumner possessed was an essential part of the true statesmanship of the revolutionary period. Had he lived before or after this great period, in quiet, ordinary times, he would perhaps never have gone into public life, or never risen in it to conspicuous significance. But all he was by nature, by acquirement, by ability, by moral impulse, made him one of the heroes of that great struggle against slavery, and in some respects the first. And then when the victory was won, the same moral nature, the same sense of justice, the same enlightened mind, impelled him to plead the cause of peace, reconciliation and brotherhood, through equal rights and even justice, thus completing the fullness of his ideal. On the pedestal of his time he stands one of the greatest of Americans.

What a peculiar power of fascination there was in him