o National issues."

It is instructive to remember that in little more than eight years
after this conversation, and but three years after Colonel Benton's
death, the civil war began, and opened to Mr. Sumner the opportunity
of leading in a political and social revolution almost without parallel
in modern times.

A singular interest was added to the moral eulogies of Mr. Sumner by
the speech of Mr. Lamar of Mississippi, who had just returned to the
House of Representatives which he left thirteen years before to join
his State in secession. It was a mark of positive genius in a
Southern representative to pronounce a fervid and discriminating eulogy
upon Mr. Sumner, and skilfully to interweave with it a defense of that
which Mr. Sumner like John Wesley believed to be the sum of all
villainies. Only a man of Mr. Lamar's peculiar mental type could
have accomplished the task. He pleased the radical anti-slavery
sentiment of New England: he did not displease the radical pro-slavery
sentiment of the South. There is a type of mind in the East that
delights in refined fallacies, in the reconciling of apparent
contradictions, in the tracing of distinction and resemblances where
less subtle intellects fail to perceive their possibility. There is a
certain Orientalism in the mind of Mr. Lamar, strangely admixed with
typical Americanism. He is full of reflection, full of imagination;
seemingly careless, yet closely observant; apparently dreamy, yet
altogether practical.

It is the possession of these contradictory qualities which accounts
for Mr. Lamar's political course. His reason, his faith, his hope,
all led him to believe in the necessity of preserving the Union of
States; but he persuaded himself that fidelity to a constituency
which had honored him, personal ties with friends from whom he could
not part, the maintenance of an institution which he was pledged to
defend, called upon him to stand with the secession leaders in the
revolt of 1861. He was thus ensnared in the toils of his own
reasoning. His very strength became his weakness. He could not escape
from his self-imposed thraldom and he ended by following a cause whose
success could bring no peace, instead of sustaining a cause whose
righteousness was the assurance of victory.

Alexander H. Stephens took his seat in the same Congress with Mr.
Lamar. He had acquired a commanding reputation in the South by his
sixteen years' service in the House from 1843