"Do you read the Bible, and do you find hope there?"
"Come, let us go home," I said.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Now came a political contest to shame the shortsightedness of the wise men who framed our constitution. I do not say this in disparagement of a broad and liberty-loving principle, the Jeffersonian principle that made demagogic men too strong and government too weak, but I do say, as all men now must know, that advantage was taken of the theory of states rights, beast-headed fallacy; and I do aver that Hamilton was the wisest man that saw the birth of our nation. But this is simply seeking to make noon-day clear.
Never was there a campaign of such heat and bitterness. Households were divided and brothers frowned upon one another, and in the distance hovered the vulture-shaped cloud of war. My Young Master supported Kentucky's favorite son, as did Old Master, and for months our house bore the appearance of a committee room. The time came for Bob to display his power as an orator, and never was there a nobler effort. It was in the court-house yard. Great men had spoken before the boy arose to address the crowd. I was standing near, and I thought that I saw his blood leap; I know that his eye shot fire at me. His first sentence caught the assembly, the lawyers, the doctors and the sturdy yeomen. I cannot recall it; I will not try, but I know that it tingled through me. Since then I have listened to many a speech; I have heard Wendell Phillips and the great men in Congress, but never have I been bound by the spell of such impassioned eloquence. To me his words lost their literal meaning—it was an outpour of passion and emotion. The crowd went wild, and when the orator stepped from the platform, he was borne away on the shoulders of men. Old George D. Prentice, author of an immortal poem, was present with genius shining in his eyes, and the next day his newspaper declared that another great orator had arisen in Kentucky, one to take the place of Henry Clay. It was a glad night at our house. The trees were hung with lanterns, so great was the pressure of people come to congratulate the blue-grass Demosthenes.
Upon all these proceedings, Mr. Clem looked with a quiet smile.
"You made a great speech," he said to Bob, when we had gone to the room, late at night. "Yes, you caught me, but what does it all amount to? I told you that Lincoln would be nominated, and now I tell you he will be elected."
"Nonsense," Old Master cried. He was walking up and down the room, his head high with pride. "This country is not yet ready for a revolution."