the reverent sense that somehow placed them in the ideal past, whose problems had all been happily solved, rather than in the real present.
V
But up in the northwestern part of the state,
still referred to, even in days so late as those, with
something of the humorous contempt that attached
to the term, as the Black Swamp, there had risen
a young, fiery, and romantic figure who ignored the
past and flung himself with fierce ardor into a new
campaign for liberty. His words fell strangely on
ears that were accustomed to the reassurance that
liberty was at last conquered, and his doctrines perplexed
and irritated minds that had sunk into the
shallow optimism of a belief that there were no more
liberations needed in the world. It was not a new
cry, indeed, that he raised, but an old one thought
to have been stilled, and the standard he lifted in
the Black Swamp was looked upon by many Ohioans
as much askance as though it were another secession
flag of stars and bars. Indeed, it had long
been associated with the cause of the conquered
South, because that section, by reason of its economic
conditions, had long espoused the principle of
Free Trade.
This young man was Frank Hunt Hurd, then the congressman from the Toledo district, and in that city, where my father was the pastor of a church, he had won many followers and adherents,
