To address the minds of men sickened by disaster,
wearied by long trial, heated by passion, bewildered by uncertainty,
heavy with grief, and cunningly to turn them into one vindictive
channel, into one blind rush of senseless fury requires no great power
of oratory and no great mastery of the truth. It may be the trick of a
charlatan!"
He paused and gazed with deliberate and offensive insolence into the
faces of the men who had spoken. Their eyes blazed with wrath, and a
fierce thrill of excitement swept the crowd.
"For a man to address himself to an assembly like this, however, goaded
to madness by suffering, sorrow, humiliation, perplexity--and now roused
by venomous arts to an almost unanimous condemnation of the innocent--I
say to address you, turn you in your tracks and force you to go the
other way--that would indeed be a feat of transcendent oratorical power.
I am no orator--but I am going to tell you the truth and the truth will
make you do that thing!"
Men began to lean forward in their seats now as with impassioned faith
he told the story of the matchless work the great lonely spirit had
wrought for his people in the White House during the past passion-torn
years. His last sentence rang like the clarion peal of a trumpet:
"Desert him now and the election of _George B. McClellan_ on a
'Peace-at-any-Price' platform is a certainty--the Union is dissevered,
the Confederacy established, the slaves reshackled, the dead dishonored
and the living disgraced!"
His last sentence was an angry shout whose passion swept the crowd to
its feet.
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