The investigations
into alleged outrages at the South, and wrongs connected with
them, have been conducted by that Committee. So it has been
my fortune to be prominent in nearly all of the matters that
have come up in the Senate since I have been a member of it,
which have excited angry sectional or political feeling. Matters
of finance and revenue and protection, while deeply interesting
the people, do not, in general, cause angry feeling on the
part of the political leaders. To this remark, the state
of mind of our friends, whom we are in the habit of calling
Mugwumps, and who like to call themselves Independents, is
an exception. They have commonly discussed the profoundest
and subtlest questions with an angry and bitter personality
which finds its parallel only in the theological treatises
of the dark ages. It is lucky for some of us that they have
not had the fires of Smithfield or of the Inquisition at their
command.
So, at various times in my life, I have been the object of
the most savage denunciation, sometimes from the Independent
newspapers, sometimes from the Democratic newspapers, especially
those in the South, and sometimes from the press of my own
party whom I have offended by differing from a majority of
my political friends.
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