"Who is he, Father?" he asked in a whisper.
"His name is Douglas—Stephen A. Douglas. He is a United States Senator from Illinois," replied Mr. Peniman.
"He's a great speaker," whispered Joe thoughtfully; then half-hesitatingly, as if trying to put into words a thing that was not clear in his own mind, "but somehow—I suppose it's pretty presumptuous of me to say so—but somehow I don't agree with what he says."
Joshua Peniman turned a quick, pleased look upon his son's face.
"Nor do I, Joe. His reasoning is false, spurious. Such a policy as he is advocating could only plunge our country into endless trouble. He is a Democrat, and though he claims that he does not care whether 'the cause of slavery be voted up or voted down' he is doing more, perhaps, than any other one man in the Senate to uphold it and increase its power and territory."
"But, Father——" began Joe, but his whispering voice was lost in a terrific storm of cheers and hoots and yells as a tall, gaunt man in a long-tailed coat of shabby black, mounted the platform.
As he began to speak, in a deep, earnest voice, that had in it now and then a whimsical quality of humor, now and then a deep note of pathos, there was a general craning forward in the crowd, a stillness, a breathless attention, that had not been accorded the previous speaker.
From his first words Joe sat entranced. In every statement that he made the boy found an echo in his own heart. His blood tingled, his color rose, he clenched and unclenched his hands, a great surge of exultation, excitement, a stir that he had never before known passed through all his being.
The crowd about him seemed equally roused and swayed by the words of the speaker. At times as the impassioned sentences rose and swelled through the air they were stopped by the wild cheers that burst from the throats of the thousands of listeners. And when he leaned forward, pointing his long, gaunt finger at them, his deep, sad eyes fixed as if in prophetic vision, a stillness so great passed over the audience that the breathing of the man next him was perfectly audible.
"And I contend," thundered the orator, "that no man is good enough to own and govern another man without that other's consent. Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man's nature; opposition to it is founded on the love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism, and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. These two principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and Mammon; and whoever holds to one must despise the other. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe that this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect that it will cease to be divided."