A mountain unto mountain calls, ‘Praise God, for we are free!’”
VIII.
SPEAKER OF THE MAINE LEGISLATURE.
NO one read the signs of the times with a clearer understanding of their significance, all through the winter and spring of 1861, than the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the Legislature of Maine. The great duties that devolved upon him filled his mind with every important matter, but the overshadowing interests were all national,—the present and future of the country. They had become accustomed to threats and fears; this had grown to be the normal condition of the public mind. But the short, sharp question “What is the latest from Charleston, Richmond” and other points of prominence and activity in the South, showed how squarely up to the times people of the North were living; how loyal and zealous for the nation the masses were.
It was a higher compliment, in times so great in their demands for the profoundest deliberations of the best minds, to be put at the head, as the leader in positions of greatest power in the House.
Known and acknowledged worth could have been the only argument for an action so personal to the honor of the state and its power in the Union, and helpfulness to the nation in an emergency imminent with danger.
This man of one and thirty is lifted over the heads of old and respected citizens of soundest integrity. Is it an experiment, or do they know their man? The state has called to the helm a man who has been ten years in the congress of the United States; a man of largest experience and profoundest wisdom, nearly twice the age of the young speaker. But no mistake is made. He read in his youth books that Governor Morrill is reading to-day at the age of eighty-one; he has been a college-graduate for nearly fourteen years, and has won his present distinction upon the floor of the house where he now presides.
His duties are manifold. He must preside over the deliberations of the House, be a good parliamentarian, prompt and accurate in his decisions, as well as fair and impartial. He is dealing with freemen and citizens, and representatives of the people of the entire state. He must know every member, not by name, and face, and location in the House, but in characteristics and accomplishments, all the great interests of the state, as a whole, of its different sections, and in its Federal relations, so that he may wisely appoint the twenty-one important committees. He must know the business, education, experience, residence, and political principles of every member, so that he may know just who to appoint on banks and banking, on agriculture, military, pensions, manufactures, library, the judiciary, the militia, education, etc.