Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/397

Slavery in Oregon. 369 and he served ignobly the malign power which cast him off contemptously "to lie in cold obstruction and to rot." It is seldom that human beings desist from a wrong course when once fairly started upon it. As Byron said of Napoleon : ' ' A single step in the right had made him the Washington of worlds betrayed; a single step in the wrong has given his name to all the adverse winds of heaven." The reason for continuance is patent; they have changed environment, taken down one standard and set up a different one and before they have committed one overt act, they are the bond servants of another master. It required an overpowering light from heaven to turn St. Paul. There were plenty of moral lights about Douglas, but he heeded them not, or was oblivious to them. The taunts of his political opponents should have stirred him to self-exami- nation. With veiled and courtly sarcasm, Seward remarked, when some one prophesied Douglas ' election to the presidency, "No man can be elected President of the United States who spells negro with two g's." At another time he said, "Doug- las ' coat tails hang too near the ground. ' ' In his debate with Lincoln, how could he help seeing and feeling the dwarfed moral position he occupied? He must have seen it, but his associations, the cheering thousands actuated by no higher spirit and purpose than himself, would have enthralled a far better man than he, and he continued the contest, despite everything, to the bitter end. It is related that Douglas stood beside Lincoln and held the hat and cane of his successful rival during the delivery of his inaugural address, and is it possible that while thus con- trasted, the baffled conspirator against light and civilization, did not feel most oppressively the vast disparity between their destinies, and what else was there left for him but to counsel his followers to assist the real giant,— f^iant in physical stature, giant in intellect, giant in moral elevation, who never more than compassionately rebuked him— then go home and give up the ghost?