Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/251

 degree the case with Senator Douglas. He posed as the “champion of free labor,” while he had caused the Missouri Compromise to be repealed and slavery to be admitted into Territories until then dedicated to freedom, and while he openly sought to win the support of the Southern people by telling them that his policy of “popular sovereignty” and “non-intervention” would give them the best chance to get more Slave States. He posed as the great representative of true democracy and popular rights, while he advocated police measures to restrain all discussion adverse to slavery which might have done honor to the most despotic government of the old world. He was extolled by his partisans as “the greatest of living statesmen,” while he advanced, in support of the institution of slavery, theories of government so glaringly absurd and childish that the merest schoolboy should have been ashamed of them. And he did all these things with an aggressive assurance which produced upon many people the impression that he was really a superior being who might be taken at his own valuation. He was, in my eyes, the most formidable and most dangerous demagogue in America. I thought it would be a meritorious work to prick this imposing bubble, especially as his prestige was the only thing that threatened to take from Mr. Lincoln the votes of some of the Northern States and thus to defeat his election. I went at my task with zest, summoning all I could command of power of statement, of sarcasm, fancy, and humor, and the result was an analysis of Douglas's theories and career which I could not have made more scorching, merciless, and amusing.

The speech was to be delivered in the large hall of the Cooper Institute in New York. On the evening of the meeting I dined with Governor Morgan, who was chairman of the Republican National Committee, and some prominent Republicans of New York, at the Astor House. On the way from the