sentiment had not risen
to a flood that swept all before it.

It is rather a curious circumstance that, at the crisis just alluded
to, the nearest approach to original Abolitionism that was to be
found, was in a slave State. In Missouri there was an organized
opposition to slavery that had been maintained for several years, and
which was never abandoned. The vitality displayed by this movement was
undoubtedly due in large measure to the inspiration of the man who was
its originator, if not its leader. That man was Thomas H. Benton.
Whether Benton was ever an Abolitionist or not, has been a
much-disputed question, but one thing is certain, and that is that the
men who sat at his feet, who were his closest disciples and imbibed
the most of his spirit--such as B. Gratz Brown, John How, the Blairs,
the Filleys, and other influential Missourians,--were Abolitionists.
Some of them weakened under the influence of the national
administration, but not a few of them maintained their integrity. Even
in the first days of the Civil War, when all was chaos there, an
organization was maintained, although at one time its only working and
visible representatives consisted of the members of a committee of
four men--a fifth having withdrawn--who were B. Gratz Brown,
afterwards a United States Senator; Thomas C. Fletcher, afterwards
Governor of the State; Hon. Benjamin R. Bonner, of St. Louis, and the
writer of this narrative. They issued an appeal that was distributed
all over the State, asking those in sympathy with their views to hold
fast to their principles, and to keep up the contest for unconditional
freedom. To that appeal there was an encouraging number of favorable
responses.

And thus it was that when Abolitionism may be said to have been lost
by merger elsewhere, it remained in its independence and integrity in
slaveholding Missouri, where it kept up a struggle for free soil, and
in four years so far made itself master of the situation that a
constitutional State convention, chosen by popular vote, adopted an
ordinance under which an emancipationist Governor issued his
proclamation, declaring that "hence and forever no person within the
jurisdiction of the State shall be subject to any abridgment of
liberty, except such as the law shall prescribe for the common good,
or know any master but God."

The writer entered on this work with no purpose of relating or
discussing the story of the Republican party, in whole or in any