entertained no aspirations for a political career. When discussing with a friend of his youth—now a man of fame—what the future might have in store for them, he said: “You may be a Senator of the United States some day; but nothing would make me happier than to be President of Harvard College.”
And in later years he publicly declared: “With the ample opportunities of private life I was content. No tombstone for me could bear a fairer inscription than this: ‘Here lies one who, without the honors or emoluments of public station, did something for his fellow-men.’ ” It was the scholar who spoke, and no doubt he spoke sincerely. But he found the slavery question in his path; or, rather, the slavery question seized upon him. The advocate of universal peace, of the eternal reign of justice and charity, could not fail to see in slavery the embodiment of universal war, of man against man, of absolute injustice and oppression. Little knowing where the first word would carry him, he soon found himself in the midst of the struggle.
The idealist found a living question to deal with, which, like a flash of lightning, struck into the very depth of his soul, and set it on fire. The whole ardor of his nature broke out in the enthusiasm of the anti-slavery man. In a series of glowing addresses and letters he attacked the great wrong. He protested against the Mexican war; he assailed with powerful strokes the fugitive-slave law; he attempted to draw the Whig party into a decided anti-slavery policy; and when that failed, he broke through his party affiliations, and joined the small band of Free-Soilers. He was an abolitionist by nature, but not one of those who rejected the Constitution as a covenant with slavery. His legal mind found in the Constitution no express recognition of slavery, and he consistently construed it as a warrant of freedom. This placed him in the ranks of those who were called “political abolitionists.”
