Among Reformers 45 



sive; but that does not alter the conviction, which 

 each feels or affects to feel, that his particular group 

 is the real vanguard of the army of reform. Of 

 course, as the particular groups are all marching in 

 different directions, it is not possible for more than 

 one of them to be the vanguard. The others, at 

 best, must be off to one side, and may possibly be 

 marching the wrong way in the rear ; and, as a mat 

 ter of fact, it is only occasionally that any one of 

 them is in the front. There are in each group many 

 entirely sincere and honest men, and because of the 

 presence of these men we are too apt to pay some of 

 their associates the unmerited compliment of speak 

 ing of them also as honest but impracticable. As 

 a matter of fact, the typical extremist of this kind 

 differs from the practical reformer, from the public 

 man who strives in practical fashion for decency, 

 not at all in superior morality, but in inferior sense. 

 He is not more virtuous; he is less virtuous. He 

 is merely more foolish. When Wendell Phillips 

 denounced Abraham Lincoln as "the slave-hound of 

 Illinois," he did not show himself more virtuous 

 than Lincoln, but more foolish. Neither did he ad 

 vance the cause of human freedom. When the con 

 test for the Union and against slavery took on 

 definite shape then he and his kind were swept aside 

 by the statesmen and soldiers, like Lincoln and 

 Seward, Grant and Farragut, who alone were able 



