Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/100

Rh does not take fire in any of her old corners. Webster is a mediator; a man of the Union. He is a pacificator but not a regenerator.

July 20th.—I am never able to write to you when I wish. My time is so much occupied. The great question yet remains undecided in Congress, and Statesmen fight for it to the death. Since I have seen the personal contests here, nothing appears to me more natural than the enthusiasm of the Americans for their statesmen, because heroic virtue and heroic courage is required in this intellectual combat, and that of a much higher quality than is called forth in bloody war. Yet neither is this war bloodless, although blood may not be seen to flow; the best blood of the human heart wells up and is consumed here amid the keen conflict of words.

I was yesterday witness of a single combat between the lion of Kentucky and the hawk of Missouri which made my blood boil with indignation. Colonel Benton had, the day before, made a violent attack on Clay's Compromise Bill, during which he said “The bill is caught in the fact—flagranti delicto—I have caught it by the neck, and here hold it up to shame and opprobrium before the public gaze,” (and with this Mr. Benton held the Bill rolled up aloft in his hand) “caught it just as it was about to perpetrate its crime, just as it was about to”—&c., &c. Of a truth for three whole hours did Benton labour with a real lust of murder to crush and annihilate this “monster,” as he called Clay's Bill,—to attack even Clay himself with all kinds of weapons, endeavouring to hold him up also to public disapprobation and public derision in a manner which betrayed hatred and low malice. This attack occupied nearly the whole of the day.

Yesterday Clay rose to reply, and called upon the Senate to disapprove of expressions such as those that I have given; but by this he only irritated the wild beast of Missouri to a still more personal attack, and I felt