78 POLITICAL LIFE-II 



zens throughout the Union to second him in this effort, 

 and promised that under no circumstances would he be 

 a candidate for reelection. My anti-slavery feelings re- 

 mained as deep as ever, but, hearing this speech, there 

 came into my mind an inkling of the truth: "Hinter dem 

 Berge sind auch Leute." 



During my stay in Washington I several times visited 

 the Senate and the House, in the old quarters which they 

 shortly afterward vacated in order to enter the more 

 commodious rooms of the Capitol, then nearly finished. 

 The Senate was in the room at present occupied by the 

 Supreme Court, and from the gallery I looked down 

 upon it with mingled feelings of awe, distrust, and aver- 

 sion. There, as its president, sat Mason of Virginia, 

 author of the fugitive slave law; there, at the desk in 

 front of him, sat Cass of Michigan, who, for years, had 

 been especially subservient to the slave power; Douglas 

 of Illinois, who had brought about the destruction of the 

 Missouri Compromise; Butler of South Carolina, who 

 represented in perfection the slave-owning aristocracy; 

 Slidell and Benjamin of Louisiana, destined soon to play 

 leading parts in the disruption of the Union. 



But there were others. There was Seward, of my own 

 State, whom I had been brought up to revere, and who 

 seemed to me, in the struggle then going on, the incar- 

 nation of righteousness; there was Charles Sumner of 

 Massachusetts, just recovering from the murderous 

 blows given him by Preston Brooks of South Carolina, 

 a martyr, as I held, to his devotion to freedom; there 

 was John Parker Hale of New Hampshire, who had 

 been virtually threatened with murder, as a penalty for 

 his opposition to slavery; and there was bluff Ben Wade 

 of Ohio, whose courage strengthened the whole North. 



The House of Representatives interested me less. In 

 it there sat various men now mainly passed out of 

 human memory; and, unfortunately, the hall, though 

 one of the finest, architecturally, in the world, was one 

 of the least suited to its purpose. To hear anything 



