Significant.
The speech of Senator Trumbull at Chicago is significant in more respects than one. It shows that those among the Abolitionists who are able to see an inch beyond their noses begin to look forward already to a time when they may have to invoke that protection from the Constitution and the laws which they have uniformly done their utmost to prevent their adversaries from receiving. Senator Trumbull is a very unscrupulous, at the same time that he is a very sagacious politician, and no man is more deeply committed against the South and in favor of Abolitionism. Did he believe that the tenure by which the Abolition party now hold power was entirely secure, he would be the last man to recommend respect for the Constitution and obedience to its requirements. He would have continued to shout and throw up his cap at every fresh proof that Lincoln gave of his utter contempt for law, and his determination to be himself the State. But with the sagacity common to politicians of his calibre, he perceived that the wind is shifting, and is desirous to throw an anchor ahead before it be too late, lest he be driven upon the shallows and quicksands of a minority, which he straight before him and full in his view, although unseen by others of less sagacity. --It is evidently, however, too late to provide against the danger.For the impatience of the audience, and their determination to hear nothing against the despotism of Lincoln, proves but too clearly that Abolitionism has done its work effectually, and that every vestige of respect for the Constitution has been eradicated from the minds of that people. Their teachers have been so long telling them that it was an incubus which they were not bound to submit to or respect, that they have all come to regard it in that light, and now let them unteach them if they can. Trumbull and his fellows resemble the pupil of the magician, who, having raised the d — l by means of his master's spells, was unable to lay him again, and was torn to pieces for his pains.
It is humiliating to the pride of humanity to observe the rapid progress which despotism has made in subduing the souls of its victims, and rendering them fit subjects for the iron rule of the tyrant. Every manly feeling, every free aspiration, every independent thought, seems to have been crushed out of the souls and bodies of these unhappy people. They no longer even claim to be a free people, governed by a written Constitution, and laws of their own enactment. They are as absolutely slaves as though they were the subjects of Alexander II., as though Chicago were St. Petersburg, and every petty military tyrant a marshal of the Prussian Emperor. And yet these are the people who promised themselves that freedom would run riot with the election of Abraham Lincoln; that there should no longer be slavery, or the semblance of slavery, from the St. Johns to the Rio Grande; that professed themselves willing to go on a crusade against the whole world in favor of freedom, and that have converted the Southern States into a huge slaughter-pen in pursuit of their favorite idea.
