Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/121

 conspicuous field of political action. I was to appear first at a mass meeting in Chicago, and to speak in English. I took the matter very seriously, and resolved to do my best. I did not appeal to the sentimental sympathies of the audience by dilating upon the injustice and cruelties of the system and the suffering of the bondmen, but, in calm language, I sought to set forth the inherent incompatibility of slavery with free institutions of government, the inevitable and far-reaching conflicts which the existence of slavery in a democratic republic was bound to produce, and the necessity of destroying the political power of slavery in our republic if the democratic character of its institutions was to endure. The speech was not original as to its fundamental ideas; but its manner of treating the subject was largely received as something new, and it was published in full not only by the Chicago press but also by several Eastern papers—a distinction of which I was very proud. I then addressed several meetings, mostly German, in the interior of the State, in a similar strain. One of the appointments called me to Quincy on the day when one of the great debates between Lincoln and Douglas was to take place there, and on that occasion I was to meet Abraham Lincoln myself. On the evening before the day of the debate, I was on a railroad train bound for Quincy. The car in which I traveled was full of men who discussed the absorbing question with great animation. A member of the Republican State Committee accompanied me and sat by my side.

All at once, after the train had left a way station, I observed a great commotion among my fellow-passengers, many of whom jumped from their seats and pressed eagerly around a tall man who had just entered the car. They addressed him in the most familiar style: “Hello, Abe! How are you?” and so on. And he responded in the same manner: