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He paid Lincoln the compliment of saying, "He is the strong man of his party, full of wit, facts, dates, and the best stump-speaker, with his droll ways and his dry jokes, in the West. He is as honest as he is shrewd, and if I beat him my victory will be hardly won."
You think it mighty queer that an old stump-speaker like myself should not be able to address a crowd like this outside without a written speech. But you must remember that in a certain way I am talking to the country, and I have to be mighty careful. Now, the last time I made an off-hand speech, in answer to a serenade, I used the phrase, as applied to the rebels, "turned tail and ran."
He has been noted as a stump-speaker and as an advocate. Since the war he has been so pronounced a partisan as in some degree to lessen the genial humor which had always been one of his leading personal traits. John S. Williams of Kentucky succeeded Thomas C. McCreery in the Senate.
All that was known of him was that he was a good stump-speaker, nominated for his availability, that is, because he had no history, and chosen by a party with whose more extreme opinions he was not in sympathy.
Democrat, Republican, Liberal-Republican, and Anti-Monopolist; speculator, lawyer, farmer, lecturer, stump-speaker, editor, and author; preacher of morals and practicer of shrewd political evasions; and always a radical he was for many years a force to be reckoned with in the politics of his State and of the nation.
Immediately after the 14th of July," 1789, he organized in his quarter of the city a small independent republic, aggressive and predominant, the center of the faction, a refuge for the riff-raff and a rendezvous for fanatics, a pandemonium composed of every available madcap, every rogue, visionary, shoulder-hitter, newspaper scribbler and stump-speaker, either a secret or avowed plotter of murder, Camille Desmoulins, Freron, Hebert, Chaumette, Clootz, Theroigne, Marat, while, in this more than Jacobin State, the model in anticipation of that he is to establish later, he reigns, as he will afterwards reign, the permanent president of the district, commander of the battalion, orator of the club, and the concocter of bold undertakings.
In the canvass which followed he distinguished himself as a stump-speaker; showing, by his tact and ability, by the skill and ingenuity with which he met his opponents in debate, by his shrewdness in attack and readiness in retort, how much he had profited by the training of the previous years.
The stump-speaker holds his audience by well-worn stories; the preacher wakes up his congregation by a graphic narrative; and the Sunday-school teacher leads his children into all goodness by the entertaining path of romance; we even had a President who governed the country nearly by anecdotes.
All that was known of him was that he was a good stump-speaker, nominated for his *availability,* that is, because he had no history, and chosen by a party with whose more extreme opinions he was not in sympathy.
I want no better Governor than that, and I guess we shall want him a long time before we get one as good. I found out upon our electioneering tours that I was not a good stump-speaker, especially on the wing with five-minute stops of the train. It used to pull out with me inwardly raging, all the good things I meant to say unsaid.
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