Michigan historical collections. [Vol. 17]

MICHIGAN IN THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856.

275

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to my theme it is here inserted. "I perceive and admit the faults,
the vices of our system of electioneering; and yet I hold that an American
presidential canvass, with all its imperfections on its head, is of immense
value, of inestimable utility, as a popular political university, whence
even the unlettered, the ragged, the penniless may graduate with profit
if they will. In the absence of the stump, I doubt the feasibility of
maintaining institutions more than nominally republican; but the stump
brings the people face to face with their rulers and aspirants to rule;
compels an exhibition and scrutiny of accounts and projects, and
makes almost every bitizen, however heedless and selfish, an arbiter in
our political controversies, enlisting his interest and arousing his patriotism. The allowance of a monarch, exhorbitant as it is, falls far
below the cost of choosing a president; but the acquaintance with public
affairs diffused through a canvass is worth more than it costs. There
never was yet a stirring presidential canvass which did not leave the
people far better, and more generally informed on public affairs than it
found them. The American stump fills the place of the coup d' etat and
the Spanish-American pronunciamento. It is in an eminently practical
sense, the conservator of American liberty, and the antidote to official
tyranny and corruption. The canvasser, if fit to be a canvasser, is
teaching his hearers; fit or unfit, he can hardly fail to be instructed
himself, and never was there a better or more effective way, to teach
and convince the people, than he had. It was more popular, and far
better, in regard to getting in touch with the masses, than the best
in-door meeting could be. Day by day the stump speaker was presenting his facts and arguments, and reading in the faces of his hearers
their relative pertinence and effectiveness. It was in such an enthusiastic public school that our greatest political orators have been developed. It was in such a school "that Abraham Lincoln trained himself
to be the foremost convincer of his day-the one who could do his
cause more good and less harm by a speech than any other living
man."
DEMOCRATIC MASS MEETING IN KALAMAZOO, SEPT. 5, 1V56.
The park was filled with a dense crowd of democrats gathered about
the mound which rose in their midst, like an acropolis surmounted
with a rostrum, on which were the officers of the day and the distinguished orators who were to address them. These were Gen. Lewis
Cass, Daniel S. Dickinson of New York, John C. Breckinridge and
Col. Preston of Kentucky, Jesse D. Bright of Indiana, then president
of the U. S. Senate, Flavius J. Littlejohn and other Michigan orators.