192 CONFEDERATE PORTRAITS
ence and the thunderous voice, must have gone a long way to produce submission, if not conviction. Listen to the way in which he upbraids the Senate for sloth and hesitancy. ** Are we incapable of deciding subjects here? Why, sir, the gravest questions of peace and war and finance and everything concerning a great government, are decided in almost all countries in one sitting. Here, after years of labor, seas of words, boundless, illimitable seas of words, and speeches to enlighten others, we come now to what I trust is a consummation of this difficulty, and we are asked for time because gentlemen do not un- derstand it. I do not think they will ever understand it any better." ^^
But of course all other disputes and battles were trifling and of minor significance compared to the great struggle between slavery and abolition, between North and South. The opportunities given by such a conflict were things of ecstasy to a nature like Toombs's, and he breathed the fiery atmosphere as if it were his native clime. Scene after scene is depicted, in which he stood out alone against a howling mob, bellowing at them what pleased him without regard to what pleased them, and in the end overcoming even hatred by mere force of temperament.
Toombs's power in this regard was divined by Ste- phens long before the actual crisis came and the latter gives a striking account of sending his friend to New York to face a bitterly hostile audience and of the way in which Toombs, partly by clever ruse, partly by over-
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