CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
In November, 1897, when evil forebodings were everywhere hovering about, Mark Mishler, a robust, big-hearted, good-natured lawyer, sat one day in his office at Springfield, Ill. He had just been beaten in a case he had tried before the Supreme Court because the law on which he based the case was declared by the Court to be unconstitutional. He never was mad; his good soul would not let him; but if ever he was perplexed it was now. His mind reverted to the Constitution of the State. He read it over, as he had done many times before, but now he took a special interest in reviewing it. As he read and reread he said to himself: “Thank God! There is one thing bigger than a Court—that is the Constitution, and the people are above that yet. They make the Constitution itself. It ought to have more laws embodied in it, and this one should have been a part of it.”
And as he thought on, his mind reverted to the Constitution of the United States. He turned to it and scanned it over for the first time in many years, perhaps since he was a law student. He had little practice in the United States Courts, and had had no occasion to read it. After he had finished he leaned back in his chair in a meditative mood, saying to himself: “There is the foundation of all our institutions, State and National. That was the beginning. It was the corner-stone of the Republic, and on it all that is good in this country is based.”
He thought on, and added to himself: “And all that is evil, then, must likewise find its basis there.”
The very thought surprised him. In deep meditation, and with strange, unaccountable feelings, he continued until he read the article recognizing human slavery, and declaring the slave trade should not be prohibited before the year 1808. He always knew that, yet he could hardly believe his eyes. He read on till he came to the amendment freeing the slaves, adopted nearly three-quarters of a century afterward.
“Well,” he gasped, almost aloud, “I knew that; I helped pass that very amendment freeing the slaves and, as we were charged at the time, ‘confiscating millions of dollars’ worth of property.’ But lawyer as I am, with twenty-five years of practice, I never thought but Lincoln’s proclamation freed the slaves.”
He dropped back in his chair, lost for half an hour in silent study. As he sat, entirely consumed in his own thought, his very countenance unconsciously brightened. His heart grew light. His eyes beamed within him. He felt a sort of inspiration. A new idea, and a happy one indeed, sprang like an angel of light into his mind.
He well knew, and had studied much, of the rise and fall of the grand ancient civilizations, and with evil forebodings hovering like a dark, dreary, dangerous cloud over our land, he had often pondered long as to what would be the outcome with this one. As he went to and from his office and his home, and each day met men strong, hearty, but pale-faced, asking, not for bread, but in the name of God for work, he could not well preventthe question recurring to his mind. He had often thought the last star of hope for our civilization had almost set, but as he sat there that moment, in all-absorbing thought, behind a suddenly beaming countenance, all those evil forecasts left him. Our civilization would live! The sad pictures of strikes, riots, war, famine, and pestilence, and a constantly decaying civilization, were no longer stern realities. It was like being awakened from an ugly nightmare by the sweet chipper of the birds on a bright spring morning, with the beautiful rays of the rising sun streaming through his windows.
He had seen, as by a flashlight, the people’s great highway to peace, to prosperity, and to happiness. He saw wherein lay the power, the strength, of the people. The ballot was indeed all-powerful. When properly applied it was above and beyond Congress and Courts. It was the Legislature that made laws for legislatures. It was the Court of Courts, and from its decision there was no appeal. He had read again, for the first time in years, the article (No. V.) in the United States Constitution providing for its amendment, and for a Constitutional convention. Through the United States Constitutional convention the people’s will was law, upon which no court could pass judgment, even if their law provided that the Court itself be abolished and the judges retired to private life without salary or with the additional penalty that they be transported. Anything the people wanted they might have. What more could they ask or hope for by resorting to riot and war? How many of the people knew this? Practically none of them.
Mark Mishler then and there declared to himself that