Two things Stevens did for his adopted State, by which he repaid largely all her hospitality and favor. He taught her to cherish Education for the People, and he taught her respect for Human Rights. The latter lesson was slower learned than the former. In the prime of life, when his faculties were in their highest vigor, he became conspicuous for earnest effort, crowned by most persuasive speech, whose echoes have not yet died away, for those Common Schools, which, more even than railways, are handmaids of civilization, besides being the true support of republican government. His powerful word turned the scale, and a great cause was won. This same powerful word was given promptly and without hesitation to that other cause, suffering then from constant and most cruel outrage. Here he stood always like a pillar. Suffice it to say that he was one of the earliest of Abolitionists, accepting the name and bearing the reproach. Not a child in Pennsylvania, conning a spelling-book beneath the humble rafters of a village school, who does not owe him gratitude; not a citizen, rejoicing in that security obtained only in liberal institutions founded on the Equal Rights of All, who is not his debtor. When he entered Congress, it was as champion. His conclusions were already matured, and he saw his duty plain before him. The English poet foreshadows him, when he pictures “one in whom persuasion and belief Had ripened into faith, and faith become A passionate intuition.”[1] Slavery was wrong, and he would not tolerate it. Slave-masters, brimming with Slavery, were imperious and lawless. From him they learned to see themselves as others saw them. Strong in his cause and in the consciousness of power, he did not shrink from encounter; and when it was joined, he used not only argument and history, but all those other weapons by which a bad cause is exposed to scorn and contempt. Nobody said more in fewer words, or gave to language a sharper bite. Speech was with him at times a cat-o’-nine-tails, and woe to the victim on whom the terrible lash descended!