There are not enough Potters, Wades, and Landers, as yet. The
Northern mind needs time to realize the deliberation of Secession.
The great leaders of the free States are dead or in the gloomy
retirement of age. Webster and Clay are no more. There are yet men
of might to fight under the banners streaming with the northern
lights of freedom. Douglas, Bell, Sumner, Seward, and Wade are drawing
together. Grave-faced Abraham Lincoln moves out of the background
of Western woods into the sunrise glow of Liberty's brightest day.
On the Pacific coast, restraint has never availed. Here, ancestry
and rank go for naught. Here, men meet without class pride. The
struggle is more equal.
California's Senator, David C. Broderick, was the son of an humble
New York stone-cutter. He grapples with his wily colleague, Senator
Gwin.
It is hammer against rapier. Richard and Saladin. Beneath the
banners of the chieftains the free lances of the Pacific range
themselves. Neither doubts the courage of the opposing forces. The
blood of the South has already followed William Walker, the gray-eyed
man of destiny, to Sonora and Nicaragua. They were a splendid
band of modern buccaneers. Henry A. Crabbe found that the Mexican
escopetas are deadly in the hands of the maddened inhabitants of
Arispe.
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