And news now came to
Washington on every subject: markets, fires, catastrophes, elections.
The public press was very active. The country was in a ferment. The
great West agitated the more sensitive, the listening East. From beyond
the Atlantic news of thrilling import poured upon us. In truth the whole
world was trembling at the threshold of a new era. Douglas was keenly
conscious of these world changes. They occupied my own thoughts.
In France Louis Philippe had been dethroned, a republic had been
established with Louis Napoleon as President. The ideas of the
revolution had worked a democratic triumph as to the suffrage and the
form of the government. This was February, 1848, the same month that
Douglas made his first speech in the Senate.
This February revolution in France had lighted the fires of liberty
throughout Europe. In England there was agitation and violence. The
people there were demanding the right to vote. In Italy there was a cry
for reform and free constitutions. Mazzini was proclaiming the fact that
the people in Spain, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Russia, were oppressed.
He called the cause of all peoples a common cause. The French Revolution
had announced the liberty, equality and fraternity of individual men;
the new revolution should proclaim the liberty, equality and fraternity
of nations.
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