CHAPTER VI.

HENRY WILSON.

Lincoln, Chase and Wilson as Illustrations of Democracy-Wilson's Birth and Boyhood-Reads over One Thousand Books in Ten Years-Learns Shoemaking-Earns an Education Twice Over-Forms a Debating Society-Makes Sixty Speeches for Harrison-Enters into Political Life on the Working-Men's Side-Helps to form the Free Soil Party-Chosen United States Senator over Edward Everett-Aristocratic Politics in those Days-Wilson and the Slaveholding Senators-The Character of his Speaking-Full of Facts and Practical Sense-His Usefulness as Chairman of the Military Committee-His "History of the Anti-Slavery Measures in Congress"-The 37th and 38th Congresses -The Summary of Anti-Slavery Legislation from that Book-Other Abolitionist Forces-Contrast of Sentiments of Slavery and of Freedom - Recognition of Hayti and Liberia; Specimen of the Debate-Slave and Free Doctrine on Education-Equality in Washington Street Cars-Pro-Slavery Good Taste -Solon's Ideal of Democracy Reached in America.

It is interesting to notice how, in the recent struggle that has convulsed our country and tried our republican institutions, so many of the men who have held the working oar have been representative men of the people. To a great extent they have been men who have grown up with no other early worldly advantages than those which a democratic republic offers to every citizen born upon her soil. Lincoln from the slave states, and Chase and Henry Wilson in the free, may be called the peculiar sons of Democracy. That hard Spartan mother trained them early on her black broth to her fatigues, and wrestlings, and watchings, and gave them their shields on entering the battle of life with only the Spartan mother's brief -"With this, or upon this."