In one sense he was no party leader. He possessed none of the instinct or experience of the politician, nor that sagacity of mind which appreciates and measures the importance of changing circumstances, or the possibilities and opportunities of the day. He lacked, entirely, the genius of organization. He never understood, nor did he value, the art of strengthening his following by timely concession, or prudent reticence, or advantageous combination and alliance. He knew nothing of management and party maneuver. Indeed, not unfrequently he alarmed many devoted friends of his cause by bold declarations, for which, they thought, the public mind was not prepared, and by the unreserved avowal and straightforward advocacy of ultimate objects, which, they thought, might safely be left to the natural development of events. He was not seldom accused of doing things calculated to frighten the people and to disorganize the anti-slavery forces.
Such was his unequivocal declaration in his first great anti-slavery speech in the Senate, that he held himself bound by every conviction of justice, right and duty to disobey the fugitive-slave law, and his ringing answer to the question put by Senator Butler of South Carolina, whether, without the fugitive-slave law, he would, under the Constitution, consider it his duty to aid the surrender of fugitive slaves, “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?”
Such was his speech on the “Barbarism of Slavery,” delivered on a bill to admit Kansas immediately under a free-State Constitution; a speech so unsparing and vehement in the denunciation of slavery in all its political, moral and social aspects, and so direct in its prediction of the complete annihilation of slavery, that it was said such a speech would scarcely aid the admission of Kansas.
Such was his unbending and open resistance to any
