He not only acted without fear, but he had that fortitude of soul that bears the consequences of the course pursued without complaint. He was charged with being proud. The charge was true—he was proud. His knees were as inflexible as the "unwedgeable and gnarled oak," but he was not vain. Vanity rests on the opinion of others—pride, on our own. The source of vanity is from without—of pride, from within. Vanity is a vane that turns, a willow that bends, with every breeze—pride is the oak that defies the storm. One is cloud—the other rock. One is weakness—the other strength.
This imperious man entered public life in the dawn of the reformation—at a time when the country needed men of pride, of principle and courage. The institution of slavery had poisoned all the springs of power. Before this crime ambition fell upon its knees,—politicians, judges, clergymen, and merchant-princes bowed low and humbly, with their hats in their hands. The real friend of man was denounced as the enemy of his country—the real enemy of the human race was called a statesman and a patriot. Slavery was the bond and pledge of peace, of union, and national greatness. The temple of American liberty was finished—the auction-block was the corner-stone.
It is hard to conceive of the utter demoralization, of the political blindness and immorality, of the patriotic dishonesty, of the cruelty and degradation of a people who supplemented the incomparable Declaration of Independence with the Fugitive Slave Law.
Think of the honored statesmen of that ignoble time who wallowed in this mire and who, decorated with dripping filth, received the plaudits of their fellow-men. The noble, the really patriotic, were the victims of mobs, and the shameless were clad in the robes of office.
But let us speak no word of blame—let us feel that each one acted according to his light—according to his darkness.
At last the conflict came. The hosts of light and darkness prepared to meet upon the fields of war. The question was presented: Shall the Republic be slave or free? The Republican party had triumphed at the polls. The greatest man in our history was President elect. The victors were appalled—they shrank from the great responsibility of success. In the presence of rebellion they hesitated—they offered to return the fruits of victory. Hoping to avert war they were willing that slavery should become immortal. An amendment to the Constitution was proposed, to the effect that no subsequent amendment should ever be made that in anyway should interfere with the right of man to steal his fellow-men.
This, the most marvelous proposition ever submitted to a Congress of civilized men, received in the House an overwhelming majority, and the necessary two-thirds in the Senate. The Republican party, in the moment of its triumph, deserted every principle for which it had so gallantly contended, and with the trembling hands of fear laid its convictions on the altar of compromise.
The Old Guard, numbering but sixty-five in the House, stood as firm as the three hundred at Thermopylae. Thad-deus Stevens—as maliciously right as any other man was ever wrong—refused to kneel. Owen Lovejoy, remembering his brother's noble blood, refused to surrender, and on the edge of disunion, in the shadow of civil war, with the air filled with sounds of dreadful preparation, while the Republican party was retracing its steps, Roscoe Conkling voted No. This puts a wreath of glory on his tomb. From that vote to the last moment of his life he was a champion of equal rights, staunch and stalwart.
From that moment he stood in the front rank. He never wavered and he never swerved. By his devotion to principle—his courage, the splendor of his diction,—by his varied and profound knowledge, his conscientious devotion to the great cause, and by his intellectual scope and grasp, he won and held the admiration of his fellow-men.
Disasters in the field, reverses at the polls, did not and could not shake his courage or his faith. He knew the ghastly meaning of defeat. He knew that the great ship that slavery sought to strand and wreck was freighted with the world's sublimest hope.