It was an illustration of how rapidly public opinion is changed, and with what force it may be brought to bear upon a given question in a period that is filled with the spirit of revolutionary excitement.

If five years before the most pronounced anti-slavery man in the country had been told that not only would slavery be abolished, not only would the slave be transformed into a citizen, but that the National Government would confer upon him all the civil rights pertaining to the white man and would stretch forth its arm to protect him in those rights throughout the limits of the Republic, it would have seemed to him as the wildest fancy of a distempered brain.

But his had actually come to pass through the ordinary forms of legislation, and by such a preponderating display of senatorial and representative strength as had scarcely ever before controlled a public policy since the foundation of the Government.
It was not, of course, without some misgiving, without a certain timidity and distrust, that many Republicans were brought to the support of these measures.

They did not object to their inherent and essential justice and rightfulness, but with instinctive caution they feared that an attempt to wipe away the prejudices of two centuries in a single day might lead to a dangerous re-action, and to a consequent change in the political control of the country.

Many who were borne along in the irresistible current of aggressive reform dreaded all the more the effect of the votes which the moral and political pressure of their constituents compelled them to give.