Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/262

 leading up to the Speaker's chair and could, looking over the heads of those in front of me, see Mr. Corwin while he spoke; but from that distance, in spite of the breathless stillness reigning in the hall, I lost many of his sentences, because he spoke only in a low murmur. There he stood, not the Tom Corwin of the stump, who made his hearers roar with laughter or shout with enthusiasm, but an anxious old patriot, the faithful disciple of the old Whig school of compromisers, his swarthy face unillumined by a single spark of his accustomed humor, its expression grave and solicitous, his gushing eloquence with nervous intensity, almost with the accents of despair, imploring his hearers to accept what he thought necessary for the salvation of his country—and, around him, all listened to the old man as if spellbound, with a sort of tender veneration. Most of them had the fixed conviction in their minds that the time of compromise was over, and that all these efforts were in vain, while many of the Southerners were ready to go home and to join the insurrection, and most of the Northern Republicans were determined that the result of the election must stand as a thing finally decided, and not a thing to be bargained for. It was a memorable scene: the last pathetic gasp of the policy of compromise.

When Mr. Corwin sat down many of the members pressed around him to shake his hand after what was, probably, the last speech of his life. I too approached him and he seemed glad to see me. He kindly remembered that we had met on the platform of a mass-meeting at Alleghany City, and he expressed a wish that I would visit him at his quarters that evening, which I was happy to do. I found him alone, and we had a quiet talk. In the course of it, I frankly expressed my opinion that it would be fatal to stable and orderly government in a republic to permit the legal result of an election to become a matter of