He is
bold. He shrinks from nothing. Like Danton, he may cry, "l'audace!
l'audace! toujours l'au-dace!" but even his audacity cannot compass this
work. The Senator copies the British officer who, with boastful swagger,
said that with the hilt of his sword he would cram the "stamps" down the
throats of the American people, and he will meet a similar failure. He
may convulse this country with a civil feud. Like the ancient madman, he
may set fire to this Temple of Constitutional Liberty, grander than
the Ephesian dome; but he cannot enforce obedience to that Tyrannical
Usurpation.
The Senator dreams that he can subdue the North. He disclaims the open
threat, but his conduct still implies it. How little that Senator knows
himself or the strength of the cause which he persecutes! He is but a
mortal man; against him is an immortal principle. With finite power he
wrestles with the infinite, and he must fall. Against him are stronger
battalions than any marshalled by mortal arm--the inborn, ineradicable,
invincible sentiments of the human heart; against him is nature in all
her subtle forces; against him is God. Let him try to subdue these. * * *
With regret, I come again upon the Senator from South Carolina (Mr.
Butler), who, omnipresent in this debate, overflowed with rage at the
simple suggestion that Kansas had applied for admission as a State;
and, with incoherent phrases, discharged the loose expectoration of his
speech, now upon her representative, and then upon her people.
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