Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/62

 air of the representative of a higher class, and, in fluent and high-sounding phrases to make the Northern man feel the superiority of the Cavalier over the Roundhead. This was what subsequently brought on his altercation with Sumner which had such deplorable consequences.

Of the more aggressive—I might say belligerent—type was Senator Toombs of Georgia, a large, strong-featured head upon a massive figure, his face constantly alive with high spirits, as capable of a hearty, genial laugh as of a mien of anger or menace; his speech rather boisterous, always fluent and resonant with vigorous utterances. Nobody could be more certain of the sanctity of slave property and of the higher civilization of the South. He would bring the North to its knees; he would drive the anti-slavery men out of public life; the righteous victory of the South was to him above doubt, and it would be so overwhelming that he would live to call the roll of his slaves in the shadow of the Bunker Hill Monument. He was, it seemed to me, the very picture, not of the Southern aristocrat, but of the overbearing and defiant Southern middle class allied with the rich slave-holding aristocracy. With all this there was, to me, something sympathetic in the man, as if I would have liked to know him personally.

Still another type was represented to me by Senator Mason of Virginia, a thick-set, heavily built man with a decided expression of dullness in his face. What he had to say appeared to me to come from a sluggish intellect spurred into activity by an overweening self-conceit. He, too, would constantly assert in manner, even more than in language, the superiority of the Southern slave-holder over the Northern people. But it was not the prancing pride of Senator Butler nor the cheery buoyancy of the fighting spirit of Toombs that