Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/218

 the political anti-slavery movement. From him we received the battle-cry in the turmoil of the contest, for he was one of those spirits who sometimes will go ahead of public opinion instead of tamely following its footprints. He would compress into a single sentence, a single word, the whole issue of a controversy; and those words became the inscriptions on our banners, the pass-words of our combatants. His comprehensive intellect seemed to possess the peculiar power of penetrating into the interior connection and of grasping the general tendency of events and ideas, things and abstractions; he charmed our minds with panoramic views of our political and social condition and the problems to be solved; his telescopic eye seemed to pierce even the veil which covers future developments; and while all his acts and words were marked by a thoroughgoing and uncompromising consistency, they were, at the same time, adorned with the peculiar graces of superior mental culture.” This was the idealistic view of Seward; the impression he had made upon our susceptible minds; the picture created from it by our fervid imagination—the imagination of enthusiastic young men. Similar sentiments, a little less high-wrought, perhaps, held the best part of Seward's support together, and gave him the preference over all other anti-slavery statesmen, although Chase was very highly esteemed and would have well satisfied our demands, had not Seward stood ahead of him as the first of his class. The opposition to Seward found its main strength in the belief of many Republicans that, on account of his supposed radicalism, his nomination would frighten timid souls and imperil our success in the so-called “doubtful States,” such as Indiana, Illinois, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania—which of course would rule out Chase too, as I had candidly told him at our interview at Columbus. To the young Republicans, of whom I was one, the threatened danger of defeat in the