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230 LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

and a more numerous host were raised against it, the agitation becoming
broader and deeper. The times at this point illustrated the principle of tension
and compression, action and reaction. The more open, flagrant, and impudent
the slave power, the more firmly it was confronted by the rising antislavery
spirit of the North. No one act did more to rouse the north to a
comprehension of the infernal and barbarous spirit of slavery and its deter-
mination to "rule or ruin," than the cowardly and brutal assault made in the
American Senate upon Charles Sumner, by Preston S. Brooks, a member of
Congress from South Carolina. Shocking and scandalous as was this attack,
the spirit in which the deed was received and commended by the community,
was still more disgraceful. Southern ladies even applauded the armed bully
for his murderous assault upon an unarmed northern Senator, because of
words spoken in debate! This more than all else told the thoughtful people
of the North the kind of civilization to which they were linked, and how
plainly it foreshadowed a conflict on a larger scale.

As a measure of agitation, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise alluded
to, was perhaps the most effective. It was that which brought Abraham
Lincoln into prominence, and into conflict with Stephen A. Douglas (who was
the author of that measure) and compelled the Western States to take a deeper
interest than they ever had done before in the whole question. Pregnant words
were now spoken on the side of freedom, words which went straight to the
heart of the nation. It was Mr. Lincoln who told the American people at this
crisis that the "Union could not long endure half slave and half free; that they
must be all one or the other, and that the public mind could find no resting
place but in the belief in the ultimate extinction of slavery." These were not
the words of an abolitionist — branded a fanatic, and carried away by an enthu-
siastic devotion to the Negro — but the calm, cool, deliberate utterance of a
statesman, comprehensive enough to take in the welfare of the whole country.
No wonder that the friends of freedom saw in this plain man of Illinois the
proper standard-bearer of all the moral and political forces which could be
united and wielded against the slave power. In a few simple words he had
embodied the thought of the loyal nation, and indicated the character fit to
lead and guide the country amid perils present and to come.

The South was not far behind the North in recognizing Abraham Lincoln
as the natural leader of the rising political sentiment of the country against
slavery, and it was equally quick in its efforts to counteract and destroy his
influence. Its papers teemed with the bitterest invectives against the "back-
woodsman of Illinois," the "flat-boatman," the "rail-splitter," the ""third-rate
lawyer," and much else and worse.