bearing at its head the name of Millard Fillmore. He claimed that it represented resistance to the encroachments and dangers which he saw in the enormous foreign immigration of the period, and above all in the increasing despotism of the Roman Catholic hierarchy controlling the Irish vote. Most eloquently did my old friend discourse on the dangers from this source. He insisted that Roman Catholic bishops and priests had wrecked every country in which they had ever gained control; that they had aided in turning the mediaeval republics into despotisms; that they had ruined Spain and the South American republics; that they had rendered Poland and Ireland unable to resist oppression; that they had hopelessly enfeebled Austria and Italy; that by St.
Bartholomew massacres and clearing out of Huguenots they had made, first, terrorism, and, finally, despotism necessary in France; that they had rendered every people they had controlled careless of truth and inclined to despotism,--either of monarchs or ``bosses'';--that our prisons were filled with the youth whom they had trained in religion and morals; that they were ready to ravage the world with fire and sword to gain the slightest point for the Papacy; that they were the sworn foes of our public-school system, without which no such thing as republican government could exist among us; that, in fact, their bishops and priests were the enemies of everything we Americans should hold dear, and that their church was not so much a religious organization as a political conspiracy against the best that mankind had achieved.
``Look at the Italians, Spanish, French to-day, ``he said. ``The Church has had them under its complete control fifteen hundred years, and you see the result. Look at the Irish all about us;--always screaming for liberty, yet the most abject slaves of their passions and of their priesthood.''
He spoke with the deepest earnestness and even eloquence; others gathered round, and some took his tickets.
I refused them, saying, ``No. The question of all questions to me is whether slavery or freedom is to rule this Republic,'' and, having taken a Republican ticket, I went up-stairs to the polls. On my arrival at the ballot-box came a most exasperating thing. A drunken Irish Democrat standing there challenged my vote. He had, perhaps, not been in the country six months; I had lived in that very ward since my childhood, knew and was known by every other person present; and such was my disgust that it is not at all unlikely that if one of Gardner's tickets had been in my pocket, it would have gone into the ballot-box. But persons standing by,--Democrats as well as Republicans,--having quieted this perfervid patriot, and saved me from the ignominy of swearing in my vote, I carried out my original intention, and cast my first vote for the Republican candidate.
Certainly Providence was kind to the United States in that contest. For Frmont was not elected. Looking back over the history of the United States I see, thus far, no instant when everything we hold dear was so much in peril as on that election day.
We of the Republican party were fearfully mistaken, and among many evidences in history that there is ``a Power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness,'' I think that the non-election of Frmont is one of the most convincing. His election would have precipitated the contest brought on four years later by the election of Lincoln. But the Northern States had in 1856 no such preponderance as they had four years later.
No series of events had then occurred to arouse and consolidate anti-slavery feeling like those between 1856 and 1860. Moreover, of all candidates for the Presidency ever formally nominated by either of the great parties up to that time, Frmont was probably the most unfit. He had gained credit for his expedition across the plains to California, and deservedly; his popular name of ``Pathfinder''
might have been of some little use in a political campaign, and some romantic interest attached to him on account of his marriage with Jessie Benton, daughter of the burly, doughty, honest-purposed, headstrong senator from Missouri.
But his earlier career, when closely examined, and, even more than that, his later career, during the Civil War, showed doubtful fitness for any duties demanding clear purpose, consecutive thought, adhesion to a broad policy, wisdom in counsel, or steadiness in action. Had he been elected in 1856 one of two things would undoubtedly have followed: either the Union would have been permanently dissolved, or it would have been reestablished by anchoring slavery forever in the Constitution. Never was there a greater escape.
On March 1, 1857, I visited Washington for the first time. It was indeed the first time I had ever trodden the soil of a slave State, and, going through Baltimore, a sense of this gave me a feeling of horror. The whole atmosphere of that city seemed gloomy, and the city of Washington no better. Our little company established itself at the National Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, then a famous hostelry. Henry Clay had died there not long before, and various eminent statesmen had made it, and were then making it, their headquarters.
On the evening of my arrival a curious occurrence showed me the difference between Northern and Southern civilization. As I sat in the reading-room, there rattled upon my ear utterances betokening a vigorous dispute in the adjoining bar-room, and, as they were loud and long, I rose and walked toward the disputants, as men are wont to do on such occasions in the North; when, to my surprise I found that, though the voices were growing steadily louder, people were very generally leaving the room;presently, the reason dawned upon me: it was a case in which revolvers might be drawn at any moment, and the bystanders evidently thought life and limb more valuable than any information they were likely to obtain by remaining.
