Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/279

 speeches were short, peremptory and commanding. He bluntly avowed his purposes, however extreme they seemed to be. He disdained to make them more palatable by any art of persuasion or to soften the asperity of his attacks by charitable circumlocution. There was no hypocrisy, no cant in his utterances. With inexorable intellectual honesty he drew all the logical conclusions from his premises. He was a terror in debate. Whenever provoked, he brought his batteries of merciless sarcasm into play with deadly effect. Not seldom a single sentence sufficed to lay a daring antagonist sprawling on the ground amid the roaring laughter of the House, the luckless victim feeling as if he had heedlessly touched a heavily charged electric wire. No wonder that even the readiest and boldest debaters were cautious in approaching old Thaddeus Stevens too closely, lest something sudden and stunning happen to them. Thus the fear he inspired became a distinct element of power in his leadership,—not a wholesome element indeed, at the time of a great problem which required the most circumspect and dispassionate treatment. A statesman of a very different stamp was Senator Fessenden of Maine, who, being at the head of the Senatorial part of the joint committee on Reconstruction, presided over that important body. William Pitt Fessenden was a man who might easily have been overlooked in a crowd. There was nothing in his slight figure, his thin face framed in spare gray hair and side whiskers, and his quiet demeanor, to attract particular notice. Neither did his appearance in the Senate Chamber impress one at first sight as that of a great power in that important assembly. I saw him more than once, there, walk with slow steps up and down in the open space behind the seats with his hands in his trousers pockets, with seeming listlessness, while another Senator was speaking, and then ask to be heard, and,