Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [96]
ARRIVING ON THE NATIONAL SCENE at this same dramatic moment, Chase expected to take a leading role in the fight. He, too, labored over his speech for weeks, poring through old statute books and exchanging ideas with fellow crusader Charles Sumner. The bond between Chase and Sumner would continue to grow through the years, providing both men with emotional support in the face of the condemnation they suffered due to their strong antislavery views. “I find no man so congenial to me as yourself,” Chase confided in Sumner. For his part, Sumner considered Chase “a tower of strength” whose election to the Senate would “confirm the irresolute, quicken the indolent and confound the trimmers.”
“I cannot disguise the deep interest with which I watch your movements,” Sumner wrote Chase shortly before he was to give his speech. “I count confidently upon an exposition of our cause which will toll throughout the country.” When Chase took the floor on March 26, for the first part of his five-hour address, however, Seward had already delivered the celebrated address that outlined most of the positions Chase intended to take and had instantly made the fiery New Yorker the foremost national voice among the antislavery forces.
Nor did Chase possess Seward’s compelling speaking style. If, over the years, constant practice had improved his range and delivery, he was unable to eradicate the slight lisp that remained from his boyhood days. Although his arguments were thoughtful and well reasoned, the chamber emptied long before he finished speaking. Writing home, he admitted great disappointment with the result, which was “infinitely below my own standards…and fell below those of my friends who expected much.”
“You know I am not a rousing speaker at best,” he conceded in a letter to a friend. He wanted it understood, however, that the speech was delivered “under very great disadvantages”: the first chapter of the celebrated Benton-Foote confrontation, “which so engaged the attention of everybody,” occurred on the very same day, so that “I had hardly any chance of attention, and in fact, received not much.”
Chase was referring to a dramatic argument that broke out on the Senate floor between Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri and Senator Henry Foote of Mississippi. Benton had called Foote a coward, leading Foote to recall an earlier histrionic incident when Benton himself had behaved in cowardly fashion. In response to this personal attack, Benton rose from his chair and rushed forward menacingly. Foote retreated behind a desk and then drew and cocked a pistol. “I disdain to carry arms!” Benton shouted. “Let him fire!…Stand out of the way, and let the assassin fire!” The melodrama was finally brought to a peaceful close when Foote was persuaded to hand over his pistol to a fellow senator and Benton returned to his chair.
Chase’s disappointment over his failure was compounded by Sumner’s praise for Seward’s compelling maiden effort, which, Sumner told Chase, had filled him with gratitude. “Seward is with us,” Sumner exulted. “You mistake when you say ‘Seward is with us,’” Chase replied, with a heat not unmixed with resentment. While Seward “holds many of our Anti Slavery opinions,” he continued, his loyalty to the Whig Party made him untrustworthy. “I have never been able to establish much sympathy between us,” he explained in a follow-up letter. “He is too much of a politician for me.”
Over the course of the previous decade, Seward and Chase had maintained a dialogue on the most effective methods to promote the antislavery cause. Despite their divergent views on whether or not to join a third party, Chase had always held Seward in the highest esteem and looked forward to working with him on antislavery issues in the Senate.
The alteration in his attitude was likely spurred by