On Easter Monday,
after breakfast with Mr. Olmsted, I drove over to visit Senator Douglas.
Originally engaged in some mechanical avocation, by his ability and eloquence
he has raised himself to the highest position in the State short of the Presidency,
which might have been his but for the extraordinary success of his opponent in
a fortuitous suffrage scramble. He is called the Little Giant, being modo
bipedali staturรข,
but his head entitles him to some
recognition of intellectual height. His sketch of the causes which have led to
the present disruption of parties, and the hazard of civil war, was most vivid
and able; and for more than an hour he spoke with a vigor of thought and
terseness of phrase which, even on such dreary and uninviting themes as
squatter sovereignty and the Kansas-Nebraska question, interested a foreigner in
the man and the subject. Although his sympathies seemed to go with the South on
the question of slavery and territorial extension, he condemned altogether the
attempt to destroy the Union.
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, p. 55
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