And when all was over, it was he and Lloyd Garrison who
were sent by government once more to raise our national flag on Fort
Sumter. You must see that a man does not so energize without making
many enemies. Half of our Union has been defeated, a property of
millions annihilated by emancipation, a proud and powerful slave
aristocracy reduced to beggary, and there are those who never saw our
faces that, to this hour, hate him and me. Then he has been a
progressive in theology. He has been a student of Huxley, and Spencer,
and Darwin,--enough to alarm the old school,--and yet remained so
ardent a supernaturalist as equally to repel the radical
destructionists in religion. He and I are Christ-worshippers, adoring
Him as the Image of the Invisible God and all that comes from
believing this. Then he has been a reformer, an advocate of universal
suffrage and woman's rights, yet not radical enough to please that
reform party who stand where the Socialists of France do, and are for
tearing up all creation generally. Lastly, he has had the misfortune
of a popularity which is perfectly phenomenal. I cannot give you any
idea of the love, worship, idolatry, with which he has been
overwhelmed. He has something magnetic about him that makes everybody
crave his society,--that makes men follow and worship him. I remember
being at his house one evening in the time of early flowers, and in
that one evening came a box of flowers from Maine, another from New
Jersey, another from Connecticut,--all from people with whom he had no
personal acquaintance, who had read something of his and wanted to
send him some token.
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