s employer an account of the meeting, in which he said
that reporting was simply impossible, and he could only say the
speaking was "beautifully terrible." As a stump-speaker Col. Gibson
was then without a rival in the West. His oratory was an irresistible
fascination, and no audience could ever grow tired of him. The
speeches of Mr. Bingham were always admirable. His rhetoric was
singularly charming. He was an artist in his work, but seldom
repeated himself, while gathering fresh inspiration, and following
some new line of thought at every meeting. After our work was done
in the Toledo district I accompanied Mr. Ashley to Jefferson, where
he and others were to address a mass-meeting, which we found
assembled in front of the court house. The day was rainy and
dismal, and the meeting had already been in session for hours; but
after additional speeches by Ashley and Hutchins I was so loudly
called for a little while before sunset, that I responded for about
three-quarters of an hour, when I proposed to conclude, the people
having been detained already over four hours while standing in a
cold drizzling rain; but the cry of "go on" was very emphatic, and
seemed to be unanimous. "Go ahead," said a farmer, "we'll hear
you; it's past milking time anyhow!" It seemed to me I had never
met such listeners. I was afterward informed that the test of
effective speaking on the Reserve is the ability to hold an audience
from their milking when the time for it comes, and I thought I
passed this test splendidly. After my return from Ohio I made a
brief canvass in Iowa, along with Senator Harlan and Governor
Stone, and spent the remainder of the fall on the stump in my own
State.

In the 38th Congress, Speaker Colfax made me Chairman of the
Committee on Public Lands, which gratified me much. It opened a
coveted field of labor on which I entered with zeal. On the 14th
of December I introduced a bill for the repeal of the Fugitive
Slave Law, and in order to test the sense of the House on the
question, I offered a resolution instructing the Judiciary Committee
to report such a bill. Greatly to my astonishment it was laid on
the table by a vote of yeas eighty-two, nays seventy-four. Many
Republicans declined to vote, and we were evidently still under
the lingering spell of slavery. Early in January an organized
movement was set on foot in the interest of Mr. Chase for the
Presidency, and I was made a member of a Central Comm