spel; and the disappointment and rage of Southern
members, when the letter was produced, can be more easily imagined
than described. Mr. Brown labored very painfully to explain his
letter and pacify his Southern friends, but the effort was utterly
vain. He was branded with treachery and duplicity by Bailey,
Harris, Burt, Venable, Stanton, and McMullen, while no man from
the South pretended to excuse him. In the midst of great excitement
he withdrew from the contest for Speaker, and the catastrophe of
his secret maneuver was so unspeakably humiliating that even his
enemies pitied him. But he was unjustly dealt with by his Southern
brethren, whose fear of betrayal and morbid sensitiveness made all
coolness of judgment impossible. While he possessed very social
and kindly personal traits of character, no man in this Congress
was more inflexibly true to slavery, as his subsequent career amply
demonstrated. If he had been chosen Speaker he would doubtless
have placed some of the Free Soil members on the Committees specified,
but the whole power of his office would have been studiously
subservient to the behests of the slave oligarchy; and nothing
could excuse the conduct of Mr. Wilmot and his associates but their
entire ignorance of his political character and antecedents. I
regretted this affair most sincerely, for I knew Mr. Brown well,
and could undoubtedly have prevented the negotiation if I had been
present.

The Speakership was obviously the first question on which the slave
power must be met in the Thirty-first Congress. No question could
more completely have presented the entire controversy between the
free and slave States which had so stirred the country during the
previous eighteen months. In view of the well-nigh autocratic
power of the Speaker over legislative measures, no honest Free
Soiler could vote for a candidate who was not known to be sound on
the great issue. We could not support Howell Cobb, of Georgia,
the nominee of the Democratic party, however anxious our Democratic
constituents might be to have us do so; nor could we vote for Robert
C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, to please the Whigs and semi-Free
Soilers who affiliated with them, since Giddings, Palfrey and others
had demonstrated that he was wholly untrustworthy in facing the
ragged issue of slavery. This had been proved by his acts as
Speaker in the preceding Congress. We therefore united in the
determination to vote for neither of