Webster supported Clay's bill, thus standing for the admission of Utah and New Mexico with or without slavery as they might decide. Douglas in the discussion, with his eye for the concrete, pointed out that the ordinance of 1787, and the Missouri Compromise as well, were practically dead letters. As to the free law respecting Oregon, Oregon had previously fixed the freedom status for herself. As to the fantastic proposition of striking a balance between the North and the South, giving them equal new states of freedom and slavery, he pointed out that that was a moral and physical impossibility. The cause of freedom had steadily advanced, the cause of slavery steadily failed. "We all look forward with confidence to the time when Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, and probably North Carolina and Tennessee, will adopt a gradual system of emancipation. In the meantime we have a vast territory, stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific, which is rapidly filling up with a hardy, enterprising, and industrious population, large enough to form at least seventeen new free states. Now, let me inquire, where are you to find the slave territory with which to balance these seventeen free territories, or even any one of them?"

This was not exactly placating the South. Douglas missed his opportunity as a demagogue.

Turning to Webster Douglas said: "California came in free according to those laws of nature and God to which the Senator of Massachusetts alluded. It would be free under any bill you may pass or without any bill at all." And Seward spoke for a law higher than the Constitution. Well, there were many laws of justice, mercy, and ethics which the Constitution did not comprehend. Still, if it came to a question of law, what law was to be observed? The laws that were written, the laws relating to the progress of the country, the laws that worked for peace among the American people? If Webster could vote for this compromise, surely Douglas could. Both might have to return to their homes, there to face hostility arising from a different vision of the questions than that these men had, acting upon their responsibility and attempting to reconcile many interests.

In point of fact, Douglas returned to Chicago to find a storm of disfavor rising about him. His enemies were multiplying. His own state was disappointed in him. The South distrusted him. But he had infinite confidence in his own strength. Webster was declining, both he and Clay were soon to die. But Douglas was only thirty-seven. More than thirty years yet before he would reach their age. Clay's Compromises had become a law. The slavery question was settled. Now for the Illinois Central railroad.



CHAPTER XLIII

We returned from Washington to New York, for much was going on in the metropolis. The newspapers day by day were full of Douglas and his difficulties in Chicago. The common council had adopted a resolution censuring Douglas, calling the Clay Compromises a violation of the laws of God. The aldermen of Chicago must have been affected by the religious psychology which was now sweeping the country.

We read that Douglas had heard that a mass-meeting was about to indorse the resolution of the city council; he had gone to the hall to defend himself and had been greeted by hisses and catcalls. He had faced his hecklers, forced them to adjourn until he could address them; then he had addressed them, carried them by storm and procured the resolutions to be expunged.

Evidently the city council did not understand the Clay Compromises. Or had Douglas' oratory swept them off their feet? It may not be a pleasing sight to see a slave returned to its master, but what are you going to do with the law? Are you willing to violate the Constitution for the negro? A heckler asked him: "Are not the provisions of the Constitution respecting the return of a fugitive slave a violation of the law of God?" Douglas was quick to reply: "The divine law does not prescribe the form of government under which we shall live, and the character of our political and civil institutions. Revelation has not furnished us with a constitution, a code of international law, and a system of civil and municipal jurisprudence. If this Constitution is to be repudiated for the law of God, who is to be the prophet to reveal the will of God and establish a theocracy for us?"

I began to think of this law of God. Men are always reaching for it. Sometimes it is only a club for interest or revenge. You have offended me. God will punish you. If God was opposed to slavery he could have prevented it in the beginning and He could terminate it now. Perhaps Douglas thought of this when saying that God had not provided a code of municipal law. If He had, He could have written freedom into the Constitution. Douglas was at least sure that he knew as much about the law of God as Garrison or Seward, or abolitionist lecturers in back halls.

De Tocqueville had written that "America is the country of the whole world where the question of religion has asserted the most real power over the souls of men." The ringing of church bells, church going, revivals, the calling upon God to note and punish sin, pervaded the country and the cities. The Bible was a textbook of God's thinking. It justified slavery in the South; it encouraged abolitionism in the North; it suggested interference and regimentation; it counseled forgiveness and vengeance.

At this time in New York one could not turn or pick up the most casual publication without finding something in the nature of a moral propagandum. At breakfast I read from the New York Independent that "Rum, profaneness and Sabbath breaking always go together." The editor was "sorry to find that the stockholders of the Saratoga railroad still run their cars upon the Sabbath. It is an odious and monstrous violation, not only of the laws of God, but of all the decencies of Christian society. And yet I had noticed ladies traveling in them, thundering into Saratoga on the Lord's Day. Women traveling in a public conveyance on the Sabbath. There is something in this peculiarly degrading and shameful. It ought to be only the lowest of the sex that would stoop to such debasement." And another paper said: "We are sorry to learn that the directors have established an accommodation train for Sunday morning between this city and Poughkeepsie, in addition to the mail train to Albany. Mr. James Boorman, through whose efficient service as President the road was mainly built, has resigned his office as director and has addressed a firm remonstrance to the Board against this impiety."

This was the time in which Douglas was now working. Every one knew what the law of God was. Every one appealed to the Bible as God's word. For much of this Douglas had perfect contempt; and he was quick to sense a taint of it in Seward, or any one whom it had infected. Such men as Stephens of the South were insisting now that the real intellect-of the North cared nothing about slavery, and only used it to masquerade their centralizing plots. If local self-government could be extinguished for the purposes of abolition why not for anything, in behalf of which a moral enthusiasm could be evoked? Why not a constitutional amendment establishing a state religion? Why not a state religion under the present constitutional clause which makes provision for the general welfare?

One day when Dorothy and I were seated at Niblo's at luncheon I felt some one touch my shoulder. I looked up and saw Aldington, back of him Abigail, who was laughing at my expression of surprise. We all broke into exclamations. They had just returned from Europe. They joined us in the meal; and there was scarcely enough time to tell back and forth all that was of mutual interest. He saw me with the Independent and began to rally me. "Did you know," he said, "that the early Puritans in New England were the progenitors of one third of the whole population of the United States by 1834? They constitute one half of the population of the states of Ohio and New York now, and they have gone into the northwest. They will make trouble for your Douglas. I admit that they have blighted art and hobbled literature. They have expurgated Shakespeare, they have fought the theater, they are always ready for the moral battle. They know what God wants better than anybody. In a sense they are hounds in pursuit of a lot of things in the great hunt of life. They are a stubborn lot. It will be hard to take away from them anything that is their own, and also to keep them from destroying anything that they don't want."

"Well, now don't you see," I asked, "that Douglas is against all these people and that he has all these influences to fight? For example, these Puritans cannot rule if popular sovereignty is adopted everywhere. They are numerically too inferior. How, for example, can you stop the railroads on Sunday if you let communities, states, control the matter? But if these fanatics get into control of the Federal government, they can do it. Don't you see the point? This is what Douglas is thinking about. He knows that you can have freedom about life only where every man has a say."

Then we began to talk of the religious revival. Periodicals were noting the great turn of the public mind to religion. "Fruits of the spirit" were extolled. Great and glorious works of divine grace were wrought in Maine. A village in Massachusetts had enjoyed "a heavenly refreshing from the presence of the Lord." In Cincinnati there was "an outpouring of the spirit." In the woods of Michigan men rode into a village to obtain mercy, having heard that the Lord was there. In New York City noon prayer meetings were held. A conductor found salvation suddenly while operating his horse car in Sixth Avenue. A sailor saw Christ at the wheel. Christ was met in parlors, in places of worldly gayety. An actor had been rescued from his wicked calling. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote: "We trust since prayer has once entered the counting rooms it will never leave it; and that the ledger, sandbox, the blotting book and the pen and ink will all be consecrated by heavenly presence." Her brother, the pastor of Plymouth church, had converted one hundred and ninety souls. A theater was used for a place of worship. Actors were called upon to repent: You who have portrayed human nature before the footlights, fall on your knees and acknowledge God! Rum had been driven from a saloon near this theater. "Thank God," said Beecher, "let us pray silently for the space of two minutes. What a history has been here. A place of fictitious joys but of real sorrows has been reformed. It is open for God's people to sing and pray in. God be thanked that Heaven's gates have been opened in this place of hell."

Garrison saw the point. Of the revival he wrote that it had "spread like an epidemic in all directions, over a wide extent of country. Prayer meetings, morning, noon and night; prayer meetings in town, village, and hamlet, North and South. The whole thing is an emotional contagion without principle. This revival, judging from the past, will promote meanness, not manliness; delusion, not intelligence; the growth of bigotry, not of humanity; a spurious religion, not genuine piety."

Theodore Parker denounced the mania too, and was attacked for it by Methodists and others. He sew that the North had its rain gods, its prosperity gods, its bread and butter gods, its rituals and devotions for these gods; and that the South had the same number of gods.

What then of the law of God? Douglas was at one with Garrison and Parker in this criticism of the religious mania.

Thus we talked along together. The principal thing about Abigail was that she despised the South, but for the reason that there was nothing there but the political mind and that it was concerned almost entirely with the negro. It had no literature. Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier, Lowell were producing works of merit; and the South was doing nothing. Poe was born in Boston, had lived South, but had written out of nowhere. He had died about a year before, discouraged and broken.

The most silent voice at the table was Dorothy's. She did not really enter into these discussions. Her softer, altogether feminine nature was disturbed by these things. Abigail began to laugh. "Why," she asked, "does every one say here 'how's your health' instead of 'good morning' as they say in England? People look careworn to me in America; they are spare and pallid. Not many ruddy complexions. Why all these sharp-faced, lantern-jawed, lean, sallow, hard-handed people? Why this depression of spirits? Perhaps they really get a thrill out of religion after all. Why all these advertisements of quack remedies, why all this calling on God? This is a place of bright sunshine and exhilarating air. After all, I do not understand it."

"All due to the habits of life," said Aldington. "Look at the fast eating—look at them here. Too much hot bread and sweets—too much pie for breakfast. Too much pork. Too much living at hotels and boarding houses. Too much drinking before meals; not enough wine and beer with meals. Too much tobacco chewing. No exercise. Only the farmer, the laborer works. They go too far. But where do you see outdoor sports? No cricket, no rowing. Nothing but trotting around in buggies. Recreation consists of lounging around on sofas at Saratoga. All the public men ill. I hear that Toombs is indisposed. Sumner is in poor health. Douglas, the little giant, is losing strength. What a curious people, aged and young, corrupt and idealistic, candid and hypocritical, religious and materialistic, hoarders and spenders, self-righteous, licentious, Puritanical." "Like all others," I interjected.

"Like no other," Aldington rejoined. "Go back to your native England and see. You have forgotten some things. There is such a thing as a definite stock. And if you call the English bulldogs, for example, your America is a mixture of the wolf, spaniel, lapdog, shepherd, and about all breeds; and according to the occasion any one of them, with quick changes. Abigail and I have been here for a number of days and we have been entertained by some of her splendacious friends, to use Thackeray's adjective for American fashion; and the impression it all makes on me is beyond description. I want to see a better thing made of Chicago. I really hate it here, all this striving for money—but of course no place can beat Chicago for that—but also the idlers here, the worship of Mammon, the dullness and the gloom of elegant people, the extravagant dressing, the liveried servants, all this imitation. And all this talk here of America being the only religious, free, and enlightened people in the world. Why, they are not free at all. The mind must be free before the man is free, and the mind cannot be free in a despotism. The slavery of the North is just as bad as the slavery of the South. For look at these people; slaves to fear, slaves to stupid customs, slaves to superstition, slaves to foreign ideas of dress, fashion, wealth; slaves to all the vices by which money is made, and all the tricks and hypocrisies by which it is piled up and invested with rulership; slaves to absurd ideas; slaves to every foolish reform. Why, sometimes as I think of it, I see the negro in the South as the freest man in America. He is only a slave as to his labor. Every one must work. Instead of receiving money he gets clothes and a hut. He can't go away from the plantation, but why go away? One must be somewhere. And as to these other things, he is not a slave at all."

"Yes, and that's not all," I said. "A money power is fast growing up in this country which will rule the country so thoroughly that the small dictation of the cotton industry of the South will not be a comparison. Slavocracy is only one of the scales on the tail of the dragon of plutocracy. Gold and silver, tariffs, subsidies, colonies, banks of issue—these are the claws and teeth of the big slavery."

"So says Adam Smith," Aldington interjected.

"Exactly so, and it's all true. Every one of the old timers knew these things, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton. I am beginning to think that Franklin, Payne, and Jefferson were the truest thinkers and greatest planners for a republic that America has had. And what do you think of Douglas now? He is a Nationalist with Jackson, and a Republican with Jefferson; a let-alone philosopher all the time."

"Oh, yes, but Douglas is not educated. He is not really sound. He is not deep enough. He is not—I hate the word spirituality—but he hasn't the right heat, the right light. I may not be able to put my finger on the exact fault—it is not exactly demagogy—but I see him using blocks of people, who are bound together by a common emotion or idea, as a man might use a block of stone for his house. He picks them up and puts them in the place that suits his own ambition. There is one thing, however, with which I am inclined to sympathize with Douglas. His appeal is really more intellectual than emotional. You see an ocean-bound republic requires imagination to get the thrill out of it, but you can catch anybody in America with a military uniform. And while Douglas may be a war man, so to speak, he is really too honest to play that game. I'll grant him that much. I think that the Whigs are outplaying him. And it looks to me that the emotions of America—what some people might call the conscience of America—are being drawn away from Douglas by this slavery matter. Just now territory and railroads are not so strong, or will not be so strong pretty soon as the cry for emancipation." "I am glad to hear you say these things," I said. "Douglas is only thirty-seven; he will not fully mature his powers for ten years yet. I have talked with him many times and have known him intimately and I think I understand the man. He is distrusted in the South simply because he will not bend all law making to the slave interests. He has just been written down in Chicago on the law of God doctrine. And yet he stands his ground against both the North and the South without flinching. He defies his enemies. He has the very sanity that you have extolled here at this table. I think he has the only rational solution for this slavery question. He is a very great man in my opinion."

"What do you think of Barnum?" asked Aldington. Abigail looked up and said: "Yes, I would like to hear a little about Barnum and less about Douglas. I hear that Jenny Lind is coming to town." "It's to-day," said Dorothy. "And don't we want to see her arrive? I do, let's go."

And we all hurried forth to witness the greetings given to the Swedish nightingale.



CHAPTER XLIV

Barnum had been taken by De Quincey as an epitome of America: "A great hulk of a continent, that the very moon finds fatiguing to cross, produces a race of Barnums on a pre-Adamite scale, corresponding in activity to its own enormous proportions."

Barnum had resorted to daily advertising, a great sensationalism to keep up interest in the arrival of the singer. We went from our table to the pier to see her descend from the steamer. Triumphal arches of evergreens and flowers had been erected over the way she passed. A great crowd had collected. Bands were playing. Her face came into view. Shouts arose. She bowed and smiled to the wild throngs about her as she rode with Barnum to the Astor House. Here the Swedish and American flags floated in her honor. New York was in a frenzy of delight. But the tickets to hear her! All this excitement had been worked up for use at the box office. And Aldington could not afford the price. We wished Abigail and Aldington to be with us. I therefore submitted to the Barnum extortion for the whole party.

Jenny Lind sang at Castle Garden, where I had sat nearly twenty years before, when New York had about half the population. The crowds pressed around the entrances. Those who could not afford to enter hoped to get a glimpse of her anyway. It was an enormous audience, and all of distinguished New York was there. Senator Webster had been one of those to receive her at the pier, and he was in the audience too. We were all deeply moved by this wonderful voice. Poor Dorothy was frequently drying her eyes. And when she sang one of her own national airs, Webster sat entranced. At its close she courtesied to him. He arose and bowed to her with the majestic manner of a great monarch. The audience went into a fury of applause. Every one spoke of her as good of heart, sweet and natural of manner. She had given her share of the proceeds of this concert to various charities in New York City. A feeling of uplifted life spread over the metropolis. She melted the souls of thousands, and purged the craft of money getting. We came away from her as from a higher realm. "What," said Abigail, "is anything in the world, money or statesmanship, what, of all these things of which we have talked to-day can be compared to an art like that, a divine influence like song?"

After this we started on a round of the theaters. I prevailed upon our friends to prolong their stay, to be our guests. We saw Burton and Edwin Booth. We went to the Opera, saw the ballet which Fannie Ellsler had previously inaugurated. The Independent was denouncing the theater as an unmitigated evil; the ballet was a shocking exhibition of legs. Still they had come, and New York had them.

We dined at Niblo's, at Castle Garden. We drove about the city. We went out to see Trenton Falls where Jenny Lind had been taken as part of her entertainment, and where she had sung in the woods and been answered by the birds.

I began to notice that Dorothy was unusually quiet. She complained of fatigue, of pain. We had done too much perhaps. One morning she could not arise. Abigail and Aldington were returning to Chicago. We had expected to go with them. But Dorothy could not travel now—she could not stand that terrible journey of boats and cars, of changes and delays. So we bade adieu to our friends.

Dorothy did not rally, as I had expected. She grew weaker day by day. She became gravely ill. In the midst of the extra labor thrown upon Mammy, she too was compelled to take to her bed. I was forced to look about for servants, finding two Irish girls at last. Then quite suddenly Mammy died. She was very old. And thus we were cut off from all our past, Nashville, the old days. And I stayed almost constantly by Dorothy's side, trying to bring back her strength. It entered my mind at times that after all I was not as tender a husband to Dorothy as I should have been. I was with her a good deal, to be sure. At the same time, I was much preoccupied. She did not like politics, and could not share my interest in that direction. The condition of the country really distressed her. She had seen slavery in its benign aspect, and she was impatient with any criticism of the institution.

It was months before Dorothy sat up and began to walk again. I could see that she was frailer than before and might never be strong again. Our boy Reverdy was not robust. And the winter was coming on. At the same time Dorothy did not wish to return to Washington. She wanted to hear no more of politics. I had to select her books for her, something that soothed her, led her into dreams. Uncle Tom's Cabin was now appearing in serial form. I was reading it with great amusement. But I dared not show it to Dorothy. I had heard Beecher and knew his sentimental attitude. This book had for me the same quality. Yet it helped me to pass many hours while watching by Dorothy's side. Somehow I felt that it would produce a storm akin to the religious psychology which was sweeping the country. Critics were already noting its moral effect. Mrs. Stowe was hailed by Sumner as a "Christian genius," a Joan of Arc. Garrison said that it would make two million abolitionists. In Paris it was compared to Dumas' The Three Guardsmen as a popular tour de force. Others detected in it a resemblance to Rousseau's Nouvelle Heloise. One pleaded for the liberty of the slave, the other for the rights of the peasant. But I knew that the book was not really true. It forefronted the brutality of slavery, it minimized the benevolent aspects of the institution, which I had myself seen. It was written with intensity of feeling, with the revivalist's method and emotion. It was like her brother's sermons, and equally unauthentic. Yet how strangely was this book received. It won Macaulay and Longfellow and George Sand, and stirred the heart of Heine. It exasperated the South. The winds of destiny previously let loose were blowing madly now.

In the midst of my own cares I awoke one morning to read that Douglas was on his way to Cuba. The thought went through my mind, why not take Dorothy and go in order to give her the benefit of this summer climate through the winter? As Douglas had traveled by way of New Orleans he had stopped in Memphis and I read in the Tribune what he had said to the people there: "If old Joshua R. Giddings should raise a colony in Ohio and settle down in Louisiana he would be the strongest advocate of slavery in the South; he would find when he got there that his opinion would be very much modified; he would find on those sugar plantations that it was not a question between the white man and the negro, but between the negro and the crocodile. You come right back to the principle of dollars and cents."

At New Orleans he had uttered the God of nature doctrine: "There is a line or belt of country meandering through the valleys and over the mountain tops which is a natural barrier between free territory and slave territory, on the south of which are to be found the productions suitable to slave labor, while on the north exists a country adapted to free labor alone. But in the great central region, where there may be some doubt as to the effect of natural causes, who ought to decide the question except the people residing there, who have all their interests there, who have gone there to live with their wives and children?"

No recognition of a right and a wrong, to be sure. But no express advocacy of a wrong. I could not see then, and have never been able to see since, why Douglas with this practical facing of the business of life could not fare equally well with public opinion as Hamilton has fared with it, who advocated corruption in government as a means to a national power.

I went to Dorothy with my plan about Cuba, telling her that Douglas had gone there. It stirred her languid spirits. She was all eagerness to start. We took passage from New York, sailing around Florida, at last around Morro Castle into the harbor of Havana. The blueness of the water, with the balmy wind blowing almost incessantly began to restore Dorothy. The Spanish city lying before our eyes, yellow and continental, awoke her interest. At the dock there were crowds of idlers, Spaniards, negroes, to see us fasten and disembark. With Dorothy and our son and two maids we made our way to a hotel near the water. I was anxious to look up Douglas; but it was impossible the first evening, owing to Dorothy's indisposition. She had been seasick and the journey had fatigued her. Nevertheless we went to the roof of the hotel together and sat there until nearly midnight, inhaling the luxurious breeze from the gulf and gazing up at the brilliant stars of this tropical sky.

The next morning I was down to breakfast early, leaving Dorothy to be served in her room. The hotel was drab and decayed exteriorly; but the dining room was a continental elegance of marble, gilt, and mirrors. Douglas was not stopping here, as I had already learned. I concluded that he would be at one of the better known hotels on the Prado, and I hurried thither as fast as I could. I soon located him; but he had gone out for a few days, was making something of a tour of the island, including a visit to the celebrated cave of Matanzas. Leaving a note for Douglas which apprised him of my hotel, I hurried back to Dorothy. The city was so brilliant under the golden sunshine, and the air so delightful, that I wished to spend these wonderful hours in seeing the city.

Havana was as novel to me as to Dorothy. It was Spanish, therefore having no resemblance to London or any other English town. It seemed to me to be about the size that New York was in 1833. We spent three days driving through the Paso de Paula, along the Malecon, up and down the Prado lined with laurels and distinguished for fine houses and clubs. We visited the parks, the Exchange, the old churches, the navy yard, La Fueza, built by De Soto, the old markets of Colon and Tacon, the Palace; and we stood in the Cathedral before the medallion which marked the burial place of Columbus when his remains were removed here from Santa Domingo in 1796. We dined about the cafes and hotels, and attended the theater, and walked, when Dorothy felt equal to it, through the parks, or along the wall of the sea which stretched from the punta.

I have already recorded so much of wrangling politics and the debates of infuriate minds that one might infer that I was leading no life of my own. Do you think that I am only a shadow or a registering machine, and that Dorothy is not flesh and blood? Sometimes it occurs to me that I am not treating her as a woman in spite of my desire to be thoughtful. A vast world of rich imagination, of vital emotion was in truth moving about me all the while, and in breasts that I did not comprehend. For all my life up to this time and beyond it, as you shall see, was occupied with money making and with watching principally the epic development of America. But I was later to awake as from a day dream or from a life in a shell, to the consciousness of a brighter world of sunlight and of wings. I was at peace now, and with Dorothy, whose frailty required my watchfulness and my care, and whom I delighted to please with lovely things. That was the extent of my emotional life. And so we drove, and visited the shops in Opispo Street. For I was waiting for Douglas. I wanted to take him off to a bull fight or a cock fight. And I was eager to hear him talk of his plans, of America, of anything that came from his fluent and restless mind.

One evening when Dorothy and I were in the comfortable lounging chairs on the roof of the hotel, looking over toward Morro Castle, counting the largest of the richly brilliant stars, Douglas came upon us. He had returned from his trip only that afternoon. Finding my note, and leaving other engagements, he had come over to call, delighted and surprised to find that we were in Havana. Cuba already had a railroad, but it was not of much extent. He had been traveling by carriage, and in the hillier localities in a vehicle of two enormous wheels, drawn by horses driven in tandem. He had seen the cave, the pineapple fields, the sugar plantations. His imagination was already at work for America.

He went on to say to me that whenever the people of Cuba should show themselves worthy of freedom by asserting their independence and should apply for annexation to the United States, they ought to be annexed. And that whenever Spain should be ready to sell Cuba, with the consent of its inhabitants, the United States should accept the chance. With spirit he exclaimed that if Spain should transfer Cuba to England, or any other European power America should take Cuba by force. "It is folly," he said, "to debate the acquisition of the island. It naturally belongs to the American continent. It guards the mouth of the Mississippi River, which is the heart of the American continent and the body of the American nation." This led Douglas to speak, and with bitterness, of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, which had given England joint control of any canal across the Isthmus of Panama. "I was disgusted with this treaty as I was disgusted with the settlement of the Oregon boundary. Just look at it! Here the Monroe Doctrine has been an avowed policy for thirty years, declaring that no European colonization will be permitted in America. And what happens? Whenever there has been no opportunity to enforce the doctrine, because there has been nothing at issue, we have cock-a-doodle-dooed; and whenever a chance has arisen to enforce it we have beaten a retreat, frightened to death by the awful consequences if we do enforce it. Frightened by our own spokesmen, Senators and others. Frightened by England in the main; for truly we have no other power to fear. So when the Clayton-Bulwer treaty came up I fought it as I fought Polk on the Oregon boundary of '49. I said then, and I say now, that the time may come when we shall want to possess some portion of Central America. It has come to the pass that I can't stand for America as to new territory without having the Abolitionists charge me with favoritism to the South. But it's a lie and history will vindicate me. But if I want Cuba or Central America for slavery I want them also for America. And what does England want them for? For freedom, I suppose, for the good of America! The agreement not to fortify the canal was not reciprocal, because England holds Jamaica, which guards the entrance to the canal. What rights did England have to the Mosquito Coast? Well, her title is at least doubtful.

"But what I hate about the canal treaty is the recognition of the right of European powers to intervene in American affairs. We contracted with England to protect any canal or railroad across the Isthmus; and not only that, we invited other European powers to join with us in that protection. And that lets in all the kings of Europe, and where's your Monroe Doctrine? It vanishes into air. Study it out; you will see all these Whigs and all these motley groups joining the Whigs, pulling together by a sort of momentum started by the old crowd which sided with England against America in the Revolution. They are the same crowd that tried to break down the American system when they were banded together as Federalists. They tried secession at Hartford, when they didn't like the War of 1812; then they held up their hands in horror when South Carolina threatened to secede over the tariff. They called on God to avenge the Mexican War; then they grabbed this slavery matter to give them a moral push into power. They elected a President, but were afraid to formulate a platform. All the while they had played with England, skulking and running and fawning upon England, when our vital interests were at stake, and siding with England on the canal and on Oregon. They are better than other men! They are more holy! They are pure, just, broad! They love God! They are the only Christians! There is only one evil and that is slavery! But there are many gods, of which banks and tariffs are not the least; yet I notice that they do not give away Texas and California, those unholy fruits of a wicked war for which you fought, my friend. They like the gold and the wheat. And in order to ride into power they put forward old Taylor, and blow hot and cold with him and Millard Fillmore."

The great organ-like voice of Douglas poured forth a steady stream of talk as we sat together under the wonderful stars of a clear sky, with the soft breeze from the Gulf blowing around us. Dorothy had fallen asleep. I got up and looked at her, and finding her resting peacefully I returned to my chair. It was now near midnight. We could hear the rattle of cabs on the cobblestones, the cries of strange voices in Spanish; and we saw the lights in the harbor, the lights in the Prado, over the city which was still feasting and playing. Then Douglas confided to me that he was going to be a candidate for President in this next campaign of 1852.

The prospects were very good, he thought. If he could get two or three western states to speak out in his favor he would win. He wondered if I could not go to Iowa for him. He hoped to have the leading politicians of Illinois as delegates at Baltimore. He wished me to be a delegate, not that I was a leading politician, but I counted for as much since I was an old friend and a sympathetic adherent. I told him to use me in any way that would serve him.

Having all these enterprises on his hands he was leaving for Mobile in the morning. No time to see a bull fight. "I'll not say good night to Mrs. Miles," he said. "Let her sleep." He got up to tiptoe away. "Good night, Senator," called Dorothy. She had aroused at the cessation of our talk. Douglas returned and in his most gallant manner bade Dorothy good night. Then he strode away, stepped through the trapdoor, began to descend, disappeared. I looked up at the great stars. Then lifting Dorothy into my arms, I carried her to the stairs and on my back to our room.



CHAPTER XLV

Dorothy and I lingered in Havana until we were sure that spring had come to Chicago. Then we took a boat to New Orleans; and once again I ascended the Mississippi to St. Louis, and thence to Chicago by the Illinois River and the canal.

It was still cool in Chicago, the air fresh and vital. Great spaces of deep blue stood far back, cool and thrillingly serene; against these spaces the white clouds coming over from the far west and disappearing into havens over the lake and into Michigan. The lake was roaring to the stiff breezes of the blustering spring.

Chicago was a thrilling spectacle. The Illinois Central railroad was being built. The railroad mileage in the country had now risen to more than ten thousand miles. The short roads with steamboat connections were giving way to the trunk lines. Boston was now connected by rail with Montreal. There were nine hundred miles of railroad in Ohio; six hundred in Indiana; about four hundred in Illinois. The Michigan Central connected Chicago with Detroit. The Michigan Southern was opened, and the first train from the East had entered Chicago. A train had started west from St. Louis on the first five miles of the Pacific railroad. Telegraph lines stuck forth everywhere into the great spaces of the country, like the new shoots of a tree.

The breech-loading gun had been invented. The fire-alarm telegram system had come into use.

Thackeray had come over from England to smile upon us genially, to lecture at the rate "of a pound a minute," as he had expressed it. Young America was putting old America behind her.

Calhoun was gone. Clay, defeated in his life's ambition to be President, had crept to his grave. Webster was a dying man. The slavery question had vexed and shadowed his dying years. He had supported the Compromises of 1850 and had been bitterly denounced for it. Whittier had expunged his name from the list of the great and the good. He had wanted to be President too. Men like General Harrison had secured the prize over his head. He was reduced to the rejection of the proffered Vice Presidency. He had been Secretary of State under Harrison, Tyler, and Fillmore. He had supported the bank, the tariff, implied powers, and Hamiltonism. He had followed Clay's leadership. Still he had risen to great heights of oratory and legalistic reason. Carlyle had called him a logic machine in pants. His debate with Hayne, however, was to furnish the material for one of the greatest of state papers, to be written less than a decade from this day. From the hills of Massachusetts he failed to see the West. Young Douglas had fronted him and told him of the power of the new and growing country along the Mississippi River. Old America was passing. The West was asking for the highest recognition. Douglas was thirty-nine and seemed to be the man for President.

I did not pretend to be a politician, but only an observer and Douglas' friend. I read everything that was written about the questions of the day, the newspapers, the Congressional Record. It was clear to me that the Democrats had been split in 1848 by their attitude toward the Wilmot Proviso, which was intended to keep slavery from the Texan territory. Then came the Compromises under a Whig administration. The Compromises were hated by the South and cursed by the Abolitionists in the North. The Democrats were united by an acquiescence in the Compromises. And now the Whigs were divided because of them. They had played foxy in '48 by a no-platform. They were unable to have one, because they had no united voice. The Free Soil party had collapsed in Illinois. Altogether hopes ran high for the Democrats. But who should be the candidate?

Douglas! He seemed to me the ideal man, as Webster seemed the ideal man to admiring Whigs. But Douglas, like Webster, was doomed to fail, at least in this convention. The prize was captured by Franklin Pierce, whom no one knew, but it was not until the forty-ninth ballot. On the forty-eighth ballot Douglas had thirty-three votes to Pierce's fifty-five. Then there was a stampede to Pierce. The West had lost. Young America was put aside for a fair-sized man from New Hampshire.

The Whigs met the same month in Baltimore. Webster, soon to die, was again a candidate. The platform was made and submitted to him. He approved of it. It indorsed the Compromises. But again there was an old soldier in the field, in the person of General Scott. He had fought the British in 1812. He had made treaties with the Sauk, Fox, Winnebago, and Sioux tribes after the Black Hawk War. Yes, he had made a brilliant record in the Mexican War. In mental stature he was up to the knees of Webster, and no more. But Webster had no imaginative appeal. He could only pull twenty-nine votes on the first ballot, as against Scott's one hundred and thirty-one votes. Webster never had more than thirty-two votes. On the fifty-third ballot Scott was nominated. And in a few months Webster died, and left the tangles of statecraft to other hands.

Who was Franklin Pierce? Pretty soon Hawthorne, whose romances I had enjoyed so much, put forth a life of his long-time friend. "When a friend dear to him almost from boyhood days stands up before his country, misrepresented by indiscriminate abuse on the one hand, and by aimless praise on the other, it is quite proper that he should be sketched by one who has had opportunities of knowing him well and who is certainly inclined to tell the truth." These were Hawthorne's words. Pierce was a gentleman of truth and honor, devoted to his family and to his country, accomplished, of fine appearance, and always Democratic. But how could this man win against an old soldier? Webster and Douglas had lost the nomination, how could a gentleman win the election?

I returned to Chicago and to my business. But Douglas' term for Senator was about to expire, and he necessarily entered the campaign with vigor. He traveled from Virginia to Arkansas, from New York to Illinois and all over his own state. He mocked Scott's letter of acceptance, attributing its composition to Seward. His physical endurance seemed exhaustless. All the while he was living and confraternizing and drinking. Pierce was elected. Douglas won the legislature for another Senatorial term. In the midst of these excitements Mrs. Douglas died.

She had been to our house but recently. If I had prophesied between her and Dorothy I should have believed the end would come to Dorothy first. Dorothy was so frail, so incapable of effort. Already I was beginning to think of a milder climate for her for the winter.

Douglas now seemed to lose heart. His temper became bitter. His dress was slovenly, his manners familiar, his associations indifferent. He was drinking too much. In his public utterances he was more emphatic, more caustic of tongue. If the loss of the nomination had disappointed him, the death of Mrs. Douglas had overwhelmed him. He was not interested in his Illinois Central. He was doing nothing with his large tract of land three miles south of Madison Street. He was very well off. But he had no heart to enjoy his prosperity. He was doing nothing about founding his university. He was a giant sorely smitten, ready to rouse from irritability into fury against his enemies. He was in a poor way to master his own spirit and future.

I suggested to him a trip to Europe to forget his sorrows, to recuperate his spirits. He liked the idea. But first he had to return to the Senate. There he spoke of Cuba and its annexation, almost in the same words he had used when talking to me that midnight on the roof of the hotel in Havana. Bitterly he denounced the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. Audaciously he excoriated England. Almost immediately he was off to visit England, but not to see Queen Victoria, although invited to her presence. He went to Russia, saw the Czar. He visited the Crimea and Syria. From New Orleans I followed his travels. I had taken Dorothy there to escape the Chicago winter.



CHAPTER XLVI

New Orleans had grown to be a city of 170,000 people. Its commerce was enormous. It was the great entrepot of the continent's sugar and cotton industries.

Day by day I stood on the wharves, watching the steamers unload and load, gazing over the busy mass of humanity back of which was labor, black and white, slave and free! The great Mississippi, broad and foul, waking from its sleep in the lowlands above, gathering speed here, feeling the call of the sea, begins to move with increased life. Across from the city are lowlands, sugar refineries, smoke stacks. The negroes call to each other, laugh with spontaneous, childlike humor. The wharf officers, the brokers, pass with intense faces. It is hot. Sweat drips from black faces and from white. Whips crack. Mules trot and stumble over the loose and resounding boards. Heavy wheels rumble. And the life of gambling, drinking, pleasure, crawls about the French quarter, along Canal Street, on Royal Street. The bell in the Cathedral rings. I catch the whiff of flowers. Gulls fly over the muddy water.

I think of Douglas far away in Russia, of all my life in its early days, now growing so misty. I am more than thirty-seven; and sometimes I feel weary. I grieve for Dorothy. She has wound herself with tenderness around my heart. But less and less can she share life with me.

I go to the Place d'Armes to see the equestrian statue of Jackson which has been erected here since my last visit. It is now called Jackson Square. The St. Louis Cathedral has been largely rebuilt. I wander through the Cabildo again, visit the old cemeteries, read the names of the dead. The scent of strange blossoms affects me poignantly. I stroll through the parks, and I visit the life in the French quarter.

Dorothy can drive with me at times, but not for long. Our boy distresses her; and a governess keeps him away much of the time. There are memories all about me. La Fayette has been here. He was in this very Cabildo. The old hero of New Orleans, who blessed Dorothy and me, walked these streets. Now he is long gone. Clay is gone, Webster, Calhoun. The country is at a pause. Hawthorne's friend is President. And Douglas is in St. Petersburg, riding a horse grotesquely, and bringing his western ways into the very presence of the Czar.

Sometimes I wonder if Zoe is not alive, if some kind of consummate trick was not played on me. Fortescue did not kill her. He did not seem to me like a man who would commit murder. Why would any one murder Zoe? Might she not have been sold for her loveliness to some man desiring a mistress? No! Zoe would write to me if she were living. Yet I went everywhere in New Orleans searching for Zoe.

Often I visited the St. Louis hotel, for there young quadroons and octoroons on sale, tastefully dressed, were inspected by men with all the critical and amorous interest with which a roue would look upon the object of his desire. Their eyes were gazed into, their hair stroked, their limbs caressed and outlined, their busts stared at and touched. Men went mad over these beauties.

A story went the rounds that a young man in Virginia fell in love with an octoroon slave while on a visit to a country house. The girl had gone to her mistress for protection, and received it, against the man's advances. But he had returned, saying that he could not live without the girl. The mistress had sold her to him for $1500. Did Zoe meet that fate, and not violence?

So I searched the cafes, the places of amusement, the bagnios for Zoe. And into every octoroon's face in which I saw a resemblance to Zoe I peered, hoping that it would be she. For with Dorothy so much ill, and with no one in the world of my own but Dorothy and our boy, I had hours of profound loneliness. In New Orleans this winter I was more lonely than I had ever been in my life. I no longer had to strive, I had money enough. And all the while my real estate investments in Chicago doubled and trebled while I traveled.

There were many French in New Orleans; there was reverence there and memory for Bonaparte. There was gladness and exultation now that Louis Napoleon had accomplished a coup d'etat and established a throne upon the ruins of the republic. His soldiers were in the Crimea, fighting as desperately as if great wealth or fame could be won by their valor and death. But it was all for the glory of the French throne! A French monarchy again, after the struggles of Mirabeau, after the agony of Marat, and after the rise of republican principles which Douglas had hailed with delight! If these things could be done with honor and applause, did Douglas deserve the hostility which was rising up against him? Was America so immaculately free that Douglas' subordination of the negro to the welfare of the republic at large should be so severely dealt with?

On the bulletin boards in great headlines, the progress of the Crimean War was heralded. The French soldiers were winning imperishable glory. The Light Brigade had died for God and the glory of England in the charge at Balaklava. Cavour had sent the Sardinians to help France and England against the Russians; these were soon to fight for the liberty of Italy. Always liberty and God! Russia had gone to war against the Turks because of a quarrel between the Greek and Latin Christians at Jerusalem. Then the Czar demanded of the Turk the right of a protectorate over all Greek Christians in the Ottoman empire. It was refused. Hence war. And England and France and Cavour's Sardinians are fighting Russia. Perhaps the Latin church is the inspiring cause. Minds and noses concur, and the result is conscience.

America is in a distressed condition and growing worse. Politics raves. Malice, destroying forces are abroad. Always war with or without the sword. The Greek Christian must be protected; but the Turk must not be vanquished, his country taken by Russia. Louis Napoleon would win a little glory. England needs the Turk, because she lusts for Egypt and India. France wants Algeria and Morocco. In America the North wants power; the South wants power. Men are anxious for office. Labor has interests at stake; so has manufacturing. Farsighted money makers, imperialists, deploy these factions; parties are formed; the populace is fooled with war records and catch words. Men must be destroyed in order to achieve results—for God and liberty. Among others, Douglas must be destroyed!

He has risen from obscurity to be the first man in America in the realm of statecraft. He has been a cabinet maker, a lawyer, a legislator, a judge, a Senator, then a leader, now chairman of the committee on territories. He has perfected political efficiency, introduced the convention system, done for representative government what the reaper has done for the harvest field. He has done this all himself without wealth or family to boost him. He is charged with being clever and resourceful, but no one points to corruption in his life. Is there a statesman in Europe or one in America with a cleaner record? His whole energy has been devoted to the development of the country. He has worked for schools, for colleges, for canals, for railroads, for the quick dissemination of intelligence, for the rule of the people on every subject, including slavery, and for that rule in places of maturing sovereignty, like territories, and in places of complete sovereignty, like states. He is spiritually hard, hates the sap-head, the agitator, the simple-hearted moralist. He is indifferent to slavery, when it stands in the way of his republic building. He knows that slavery cannot thrive in the North. He knows that prairies of corn, hills of iron and coal, fields of wheat are as alien to slavery as the tropics are alien to polar bears and reindeer. He sees a God who works through climate; and he sees that the cotton calls for a certain kind of worker, and corn for another. He did not read and he did not know much of anything of the work of Marx and the Revolutionary Manifesto of 1848. He did not need to. He sensed the materialistic conception of history. He had no horror of slavery, knowing exactly what it was; on the other hand he was falsely accused of trying to plant it in the territories.

He was hunted and traduced! Moralists prattled of his lack of a moral nature; envy tracked him, shooting from ambush! He had become rich and famous. He was the first man in his party. He was young and full of power. He might be President. The sanctimonious quoted Scripture against him. "Where a man's treasure is, there will be his heart also," said an enemy in the Senate, referring to the fact that Douglas had married a woman who was a slave owner. Douglas had replied in these manly and tender words: "God forbid that I should be understood by any one as being willing to cast from me any responsibility that now does or has ever attached to any member of-my family. So long as life shall last and I shall cherish with religious veneration the memories and virtues of the sainted mother of my children—so long as my heart shall be filled with paternal solicitude for the happiness of those motherless infants, I implore my enemies who so ruthlessly invade the domestic sanctuary to do me the favor to believe that I have no wish, no aspiration to be considered purer or better than she, who was, or they who are slaveholders."

It was while I was in New Orleans that Douglas wrote me a letter regarding the Presidency. "I do not wish to occupy that position," he said. "I think that such a state of things will exist that I shall not desire the nomination. Yet I do not intend to do any act which will deprive me of the control of my own action. Our first duty is to the cause—the fate of individual politicians is of minor consequence. The party is in a distracted condition, and it requires all our wisdom, prudence, and energy to consolidate its power and perpetuate its principles."

It was this letter that stirred my reflections as I went about New Orleans reading of conditions in Europe and foolishly searching for Zoe. Moreover, I was beginning to be tired of everything in America, and particularly worn with New Orleans. I longed to be back in Chicago in the fresh air by the lake, away from the steam, the heat, the sensual atmosphere of this southern city. Yet Dorothy could not just now venture into the changeable climate of Lake Michigan. I was forced to stay on for her sake. I continued my wanderings and my thoughts about the city, guiding my business interests in Chicago by correspondence.

But at last we started.



CHAPTER XLVII

I wanted to stop on the way to see Reverdy and Sarah. I had a call to the renewal of the old days, to an overlooking of the farm, the places I had first known in Illinois. But as Dorothy wished to be home, to settle into a regular life of comfort at once, I had to take her to Chicago and then return later to Jacksonville. Before leaving I had several conferences with Mr. Williams about our joint interests; and we talked of Douglas too.

Mr. Williams thought that Douglas was getting deeper and deeper into trouble. The Compromises of 1850 were only partially satisfactory. They had not appeased the Abolitionists. A new party was growing up around the discontent which those Compromises had created. Mr. Pierce's administration had met some disturbances, though it had sufficed in the main. He had gone into office with the support of many of the best men of the country, as, for example, Bryant, the poet, and of course Hawthorne, his boyhood friend. Since his election the Whig party had gone to pieces. There was no party but the Democratic party. Beside it nothing but factions and groups trying to find a way to unite. Chief of these was the Know-nothings who stood for what they called Americanism, and raised an opposition to Catholicism. Next were the Abolitionists. There were smaller bodies, all inharmonious. I felt that Douglas was destined to drive these lawless resolutes into defeat and become President. He was not in Chicago now; but I was soon to see him. In the meanwhile I thought I would go to see Reverdy and Sarah.

Reverdy was now in the middle fifties, and aging. Sarah looked thin and worn. She was really an old woman. Amos was a man. He had taken up with farming near Jacksonville. Jonas was nearing his twentieth year. The story was for the most part told for them all as one family.

Reverdy and I drove about the country; and it had changed so much. Boundaries had disappeared; forests had vanished. Familiar houses had given way to pretentious residences, many built in the southern style of Tennessee or Kentucky. Great barns dotted the landscape. Yet the pioneer was still here. My old fiddler in the woods had aged, but he was much himself. He played for us. And we went to the log hut, in which I had lived during my first winter on the farm. Here it was with its chimney of sticks, its single room of all uses, the very symbol of humble life, of solitariness in the woods. I had lived here when the country was wild, but Reverdy said that before my coming to Illinois it was wilder still and more lonely. "What do you think," said Reverdy, "of a man and a woman living here in the most primitive days; no church, no schools. No doctors to relieve suffering, or scarcely to attend a birth. No books, or but few. The long winters of snow; silence except when terrible storms broke over a roof like this. Imagine yourself born and reared in such a place; all the family sleeping in this one room in the bitter cold of winter. Sickness without medicine. Imagine Douglas living here. His early youth had its hardships; but after all he has had a comfortable life. He soon became prosperous. Now he is rich. What public man has become so rich? Yes, here is the American cotter's home; and so many boys have come out of a place like this and gone to the wars or into public life. It is America's symbol."

"You do not like Douglas, do you, Reverdy?" I asked, as we turned away. "Yes, I like him, I have always supported him—but somehow I feel that he is not good enough. I don't know what else to call it. You know, I don't like slavery; at the same time I don't know what to do with it. Sometimes I think Douglas' plan is all right, again I am not sure. All the time I feel that there is not enough sympathy in his nature for these poor negroes. I confess that at times I am for letting the territories manage it for themselves; and at other times I am for keeping it out of the territories by law. All the while I like Douglas' plan for the West. He has done wonderful work for the country. I wish I could make myself clearer, but I can't. I saw slavery in the South and know what it is. I am a good deal like Clay. He had slaves but disliked the institution. I have never had any slaves and I dislike it as much. Yet the question is what to do. If you keep it where it is you simply lay a siege about it. Great suffering will come in that way to the negroes of course. It is a kind of strangulation, selfish and small. On the other hand, if you give it breathing space what will become of the country? I know Douglas' argument that it cannot exist in the North. But suppose you have it all over the South, that's pretty big. Besides, what's to hinder new work being found for the slaves? Why can't they dig coal and gold like peons? Why can't they farm? Perhaps not; and yet I am not so sure of Douglas on that. He is the most convincing man in the world when you are with him. But when he goes away from you his spell slips off and you see the holes in his argument."

"You have been reading and thinking, haven't you, Reverdy?"

"Oh, yes, all the time. What I am afraid of is a war. I had a little dab of it in the Black Hawk trouble. But a war between these states would shake the earth. I have two boys, you know. Sarah worries about it. Everybody's beginning to live in a kind of terror."

"I have read about it too, ever since I have been in America. I have applied my philosophically exercised faculties to it. I have talked with Mr. Williams about it many times and with Douglas. I have had dozens of conversations on all these things. It seems to me that I could advance some new arguments myself."

"What new arguments could you advance?" asked Reverdy.

"Well," I said, "suppose I wanted to take a definite stand that slavery is wrong, which these Whigs won't. They only play with the question. They want to limit it perhaps. But why? Is it wrong? Or is it against northern interests? What? But suppose I took such a stand and needed a legal foundation. Couldn't I say that Congress could prohibit slavery in the territories under the power it has to regulate commerce between them? I put this question to Mr. Williams and he hadn't thought of it; but he told me that Judge Marshall held that commerce was traffic. Very well? Isn't slavery traffic? It's buying and selling. It impresses things that are bought and sold—cotton. And slaves are the subject of traffic. Therefore to regulate it—keep the slaves out of the territories where they might be bought and sold after getting into the territories, as well as where they might be sold into the territories—is the regulation of commerce, isn't it? Well now, isn't that better than calling the territories property and subject to the arbitrary rule of Congress as merely inert matter? If you can rule the territories arbitrarily as to slavery, why not as to anything else? Suppose we annex Cuba; under this doctrine we could rule Cuba arbitrarily, just as England ruled the Colonies here arbitrarily. Then take the assumption that Congress has the power to keep slavery out of the territories; just the power, not the express duty; well, it follows that Congress has the power to let it in the territories. If it can put it in or out of the territories it can leave the territories to put it in or out. And why isn't that best? Right here is the point of my adherence to Douglas. For I see a growing central power in this country not acting on its lawful authority, but upon its own will, dictated by theories of morality or trade or monopoly. If this matter is left to the territories it is left to the source of sovereign power and to local interests; if it is controlled by Congress it means an increasing centralization. What I really mean is that this mere assumption that Congress can deal with the matter in virtue of some vague sovereignty, without pointing out some express power in Congress to do so, leads straight to imperialism. And thus on the whole, having a regard for the future of America and its liberty, I stand with Douglas. I have read Webster in his theories that the territories are property, and can therefore be dealt with under the clause which empowers Congress to make all needful laws and regulations for the territory and other property of the United States. Well, why doesn't he go farther and let Congress at one stroke emancipate the slaves? For a slave is certainly property, and if needful rules and regulations as to the negro require his emancipation, why can't he be emancipated under this clause? But if territory is property, so is a slave. And if territory is property, who owns the property? Why, all the states of course. And if they own the land and own the slaves too, why can't they take into their own land, unless they are forbidden to do so by a majority of the states, representatives legislating under some clause of the Constitution which gives them the right to do so?"

"Oh, yes," said Reverdy, "I have heard most of this before. But I'll tell you: the first man of account who rises up to say that slavery is wrong will be remembered, even if he is not honored. I am not talking about all these agitators and fellows; nor even of Seward or of Hale—they're too sharp and smart. I mean some man who puts the right feeling into the thing like Mrs. Stowe did in her book. You see, I was raised in Tennessee, and I don't care how you apologize for it, or make it look like labor of other kinds, or prove that all labor is slavery, just the same this negro slavery is vile. You can find good reasons for anything you want to do. I don't know where we get our right and wrong—it comes up from something deep in us. But when we get it, all this argument that Douglas is so skillful in simply melts away. I really wonder that so many women in the South favor slavery and that my mother was so wedded to it, and Dorothy now."

We were passing now the house I had built. "Who lives there now?" I asked. Reverdy gave me the name. It was not the man to whom I had sold the farm. I thought of Fortescue. "Where is Fortescue?" "Oh, he lit out from here," said Reverdy. "Do you know," I said, "I have thought it possible that Zoe might not be dead." "How could that be?" "I don't know. I feel that I went through that transaction dazed and without verifying things, as I should have done." "Oh, no, if Zoe were living you would know of it long before now."

After our drive we came back to Sarah and the meal that she had prepared for us. Women reflect the politics of the hour in nerves and anxiety, in anticipated sorrows. Sarah wished all agitations to stop. She longed for peace. She was in dread of war. Perhaps Dorothy's health had been affected by the growing turbulence of the country.

Young Amos and Jonas came in and ate with us. We turned to the talk of railroads and the growth of Chicago. Sarah took a hand now and said: "These things are all right. You won't get any war out of railroads and telegraphs. You men can reason and argue as much as you please about this slavery matter; but I have two sons, and I didn't bring them into the world to be killed in a war; and I won't have it if I can help it—not for all the niggers in the world."



CHAPTER XLVIII

If I were recording the life of an artist I should be dealing with different causes acting upon his development, or with different effects produced by the same times in which Douglas lived. Instead I am trying to set forth the soul of a great man who extracted from his environment other things than beauty; or rather the beauty of national progress. The question was, after all, whether Douglas was helping to give America a soul. What was he accomplishing for the real greatness of his country by giving it territory and railroads? What kind of a soul was he giving it? Who in this time was giving America a soul? Abigail had often hinted at these questions. And I had to confess that they occupied my thoughts.

I run over now with as much brevity as possible the events which led to the crisis of Douglas' life. With the Compromises of 1850 the Whig party began its rapid decline. The South did not like the Whig tariff. The Whig attitude on the slavery question was too ambiguous to appeal to the North. With its dissolution other organizations began to feed on its remains. The Know-nothings arose and disappeared, without accomplishing anything. Greeley said of them that they were "as devoid of the elements of persistence as an anti-cholera or anti-potatobug party would be."

In early 1854 the Whigs, Free Soilers and Anti-Slavery Democrats met at Ripon, Wisconsin, and proposed to form a new party, to be called the Republican party. They took part of the name which Jefferson had coined, dropping the word "national" out. Douglas, enraged by this blasphemy against Jefferson, suggested that the word "black" be put in where "national" had been left out, making the name Black Republican party.

A year later Douglas put through his bill for the organization of Kansas and Nebraska, which provided that they could come into the Union with or without slavery as they chose. He had long before voted against slavery prohibition in Texas; for the extension of the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific; for the Compromises of 1850, which made California free and left Utah and New Mexico to come in free or slave, according to their own wish. I had to confess that he had no clear constitutional theory himself. He was only growing more emphatic in favor of popular sovereignty as a name for territorial independence on the subject. He compared this popular sovereignty to the rights which the Colonies asserted against England to manage their own affairs, and for the violation of which the Revolution ensued. The principle had appeared in most of the bills that he had sponsored or supported. Now it was the real doctrine. He was like an inventor who, after making many experiments, hits upon a working device. He was like a philosopher, who conceives the theory, then clears it, shears away its accidents or even abandons it. He had long been distrusted in the South. The Kansas-Nebraska bill still further alienated the South. The South wanted slavery carried into the territories by the Constitution, even against the will of the people of the territories. What had Douglas to gain with popular sovereignty? He really overestimated its appeal. He knew that the South did not like it, but he believed that it was sound, and that it would win the majority of the people. He advanced it not only as a solution of a vexed condition, but in the name of Liberty.

He misconceived the case, and here his tragedy began to flourish. I was sorry to witness his discomfiture and his first forensic defeat. Clergymen denounced him; and thinking no doubt that they were the spokesmen of the back-hall radicalism and ignorant morality which he despised, he fought them back bitterly: "You who desecrate the pulpit to the miserable influence of party politics! Is slavery the only wrong in the country? If so, why not recognize the great principles of self-government and state equality as curatives?"

He was burned in effigy and branded a traitor, a Judas, a Benedict Arnold. The whole mob power was used against him. But he was Hercules furious. He was against the wall, but unrepentant. He came to Chicago and announced that he would speak in front of the North Market Hall. It was September, and still lovely summer weather. I could not induce Dorothy to go, so Mr. Williams, Abigail, Aldington, and I went to hear Douglas defend himself. All the afternoon before this evening bells were tolled, flags were hung at half-mast. I got to Douglas, telling him that I feared violence to his person. He waved me off. His brow was heavy with scowls, his eyes deep with emotion. He was like a man ready to fight and die. Finally the hour arrived, and he mounted the platform intrepidly, amid hisses and howls. He paused to let the tumult die. He began again. He was hooted. He stepped forward undaunted, and let forth the full power of his voice:

"I come to tell you that an alliance has been made of abolitionism, Maine liquor-lawism, and what there was left of northern Whiggism, and then the Protestant feeling against the Catholic, and the native feeling against the foreigner. All these elements were melted down in one crucible, and the result is Black Republicanism."

A voice called out: "You're drunk!" Bedlam broke loose. In a silence Douglas retorted: "Let a sober man say that." There were cheers. He went on:

"How do you dare to yell for negro freedom and then deny me the freedom of speech? I claim to be a man of practical judgment. I do not seek the unattainable. I am not for Utopias."

"Topers!" said a voice, and there were yells.

"Nor for topers," resumed Douglas.

"I want results. What have you done with prohibition of slavery in the North by Federal law? You who want negro equality, why don't you repeal the laws of Illinois that forbid the intermarriage of white and blacks, that forbid a negro from testifying against a white man, that allow indentures of apprenticeship, and that require registration of negroes brought into the state, the same as you license a dog? The Federal government does not prevent you. The Ordinance of 1787 gave you the start that you want for Kansas and Nebraska. Yet you have these things; and you don't have slavery. Why? Not because the Federal government says you can't have it, but because you yourself do not want it. I say that this northern country is dedicated by God to freedom, law or no law; if it hadn't been, General Harrison, who introduced slavery into Indiana against the Ordinance of 1787 would have introduced something that would be there now. So much for you Whigs who voted for Harrison in 1840."

A voice:

"How about Kansas and Nebraska?" There were more yells. "I am telling you, if you will hear me. You old Whigs who followed Henry Clay to the end, why do you denounce me when the Kansas-Nebraska bill is the same in principle as Clay's Compromises of 1850 ..."

"How about California?"

"It was a compromise. And as I have said before if the people of California had wanted a slave state they would have had it, any law to the ..."

Voices crying: "Benedict Arnold! Judas!" Douglas' voice rose to its fullest power. He was fulminating Black Republicans, Know-nothings, Anti-Catholics, humbug Whigs. I felt sure that he would be attacked. For two hours he fought with this wild and wicked audience. He appealed to their sense of fairness. If he was wrong, what harm to hear him through, the better to see the wrong? If he was right, why condemn him unheard? I could only make out a few sentences from time to time. He grew weary at last. He drew out his watch. The audience quieted to hear what he would say. "It is now Sunday morning. I will go to church and you may go to hell."

He stepped from the platform, walked boldly through the angry mob, ready to assault him. Without a tremor, fearlessly he edged his way along to his carriage, got into it, and was driven away, the mob hooting, bolder rowdies running after him, and covering him with vile epithets.

We walked away slowly without speaking to each other. We were too shamed, too sympathetic with Douglas to tolerate this exhibition of lawlessness. We were disgraced by an American audience which had tried to disgrace an American Senator, who asked for nothing except for the privilege of being heard.

When we arrived at Clark and Randolph streets Aldington and Abigail paused for a moment before turning in a direction different from mine. They said good night and went on. I walked with Mr. Williams until I arrived at my house. Then I went in, to lie awake and to think of the spectacle of the evening.



CHAPTER XLIX

The next day I went out to look at the ten acres which Douglas had given for the founding of the University of Chicago. I walked over the ground, came to the lake. I was thinking that if Douglas' life were ending in failure how futile was my own life! I was rich to be sure, but what had I done? I had inherited money. Douglas had started in poverty and accumulated a fortune. I had done nothing but increase my wealth. Douglas' activities had covered many fields, and now if he was to fall! What was American liberty? How could their devotion to a liberty, bring liberty to him? Douglas' wife was dead; Dorothy was an invalid.

In a few days I went around to see Abigail. That terrible evening remained a subject that must sometime be discussed between us.

Abigail was never more gracious than on this occasion, and seemed to understand that I needed to be lifted out of my reflections. She knew what Dorothy's invalidism meant to me, and she was sympathetic with my devotion to Douglas, in so far as it was an expression of human friendship. She had a point of view about everything, which had been developed and clarified by reading and travel. It came over me that I had been nowhere in Europe, that I had been wandering up and down America. My life in England was by now almost obliterated from my consciousness. We were not long in the talk before she said that a man should have more than one interest, that music or some form of art, or a hobby in literature should be taken up as a relaxation from business. What were politics but the interpretation of business? She showed me some pictures she had been painting. A teacher had opened a studio in Lake Street. Why did I not try my hand? I would find it a diversion from other things. I had always loved etchings. I wished I could do that. Well, this artist taught etching too. She inspired me at once to see him. His name was Stoddard, and she gave me the number. I conceived an enthusiasm for this new activity, thinking that it would take me out of myself and away from the America that was closing around me with such depressing effect.

Then Abigail and Aldington in supplement of each other began to recall the names of men then living whom they characterized as light-bearers. "Really," said Abigail, "there are only a few men of real importance in America to-day. These politicians and orators—Seward, Sumner, even the late Webster—amount to very little after all. They are even less than Lowell, whom Margaret Fuller recently characterized as shallow and doomed to oblivion. Longfellow is an adapter, a translator, a simple-hearted man. Whittier—well, all of them have fallen more or less under the moralistic influence of the country."

"That is what I like about Douglas," I said. "He is not a humbug. I like his ironical voice against all these silly movements, like liquor laws; these ideas like God in the little affairs of men; all this barbarism which breaks into religious manias; all these half-baked reformations. They carry me with him into an opposition to negro equality—all this stuff of Horace Greeley, Emerson, and in which men like Seward and Sumner, and American writers and poets, big and little, share."

"Oh, yes," said Abigail, "but after all you can say Douglas is just a politician. You do not need to grieve about him. He is tough enough to stand anything. He was put down by that mob. But I dare say he was not as much disturbed about it as you were. If he should die to-day what would the world lose? He has no great unfinished books, no half-painted pictures, no musical scores without the final touches. Look over the world, my friend. Do you realize who is living in it to-day? In Russia, Tolstoi and Turgenieff; in Germany, Schopenhauer, Freytag, Liszt, Wagner—Wagner is just Douglas' age too. In France, Hugo, George Sand, Renan, Berlioz, Bizet. In England, Tennyson, Macaulay. These are only a few. What has Douglas written or said that will live? What has he done that will carry an influence to a future day? I want to see you lift yourself out of this. Frankly, you seem to me like a man who has never come to himself. You have lived here in Illinois since you were a boy. You found work to do, and you did it. You wanted to be rich, you have had your wish. But the material you have handled has become you. It has entered the pores of your being, and become assimilated with its flesh. You have gone on oblivious of this greater world. There is another thing, and I have never known this to fail: you were a soldier in the Mexican War, and the causes for which it was fought have burned themselves into your nature. You are like a piece of clay molded and lettered and shoved into the hot oven of war. You came forth with Young America, Expansion burned into you. Douglas, being your close friend, and being for these things, gave interpretations to these words. Your glaze took the reflection of his face; and these words became other words of like import, or imaginatively enlarged by the lights which his winning art cast upon them. Give Douglas wit, humor, and he would carry the whole country. For it runs after greatness of territory, railroads, the equality of man, the superiority of the white race. As dull as the mob is it knows that Douglas does not stand for its morality and its God. If he had wit he could make them laugh and forget the distance that divides him from them. We all understand why he has enemies; why the revolutionaries from Germany, Hungary, Austria, divide in doubt over him. But what has he to carry against them that will be a loss to the world, if he fails?" I felt a little apologetic for my devotion to Douglas as Abigail talked. Had I made a god of a poor piece of clay? No, it was not true. I knew him, I believed in him. He was the clearest voice in all this rising absurdity of American life. But Abigail had given me one idea that I wished to act upon.

I went the next day to see Stoddard and started to learn etching. If I could only transfer to the copper plate what I had seen of sand hills, pines, pools of water, the gulls over the lake, the picturesque shacks of early Chicago of 1833 and 1840; the old wooden drawbridge, which was over the river in 1834, with the ships beyond it toward the lake and the lighthouse, and in the forefront canoes on the shore, covered with rushes and sand grass. After a few days I saw Douglas. He came on an evening when I was just about to go to him. I had been thinking of him day by day, but waiting for the effect of his rough experience in front of the North Market to wear away from his thoughts and mine. He was now himself again, his eye keen, his voice melodious, his figure pervaded by animation. I noticed perhaps for the first time how small and graceful were his hands. The greatness and shapeliness of his head could not be overlooked. From beneath shaggy and questioning brows his penetrating eyes looked straight through me. Had his pride been wounded, his spirits dampened? Not at all. He was willing to face any audience anywhere. He had told the South unpleasant truths. He had satirized the groups that went to the making of the Republican party. "I have a creed," he said, "as broad as the continent. I can preach it boldly, and without apology North or South, East or West. I can face Toombs or Davis, if they preach sectional strife, or advocate disunion. I can continue to point out the narrow faith of Sumner and Seward. I shall not abate my contempt for the ragged insurrectionists who are going about the country for lack of better business, scattering dissension. Am I to be President? There is trouble now in Kansas and Nebraska. Can I help that? I have stood for the right of the people there to have slavery or not as they chose. But if any trick is played on either of them, whether in favor of slavery or against it, they will find me on the spot ready to fight for an honest deal."

Seeing Douglas in all his strength and self-confidence again I was happy. We talked of the old days and drank from the old bottle. I took him to the door, followed his retreating figure down the street, so short but so massive. Then I went to Dorothy, to find her sleepless and unhappy.



CHAPTER L

No way to mark time quicker than by Presidentials. Four years pass in the space of two or less; for no sooner is a President installed than committees meet for reformations and plans. Six months between the election and the installation of a President! When he has served a year the election is nearly two years passed. Thus, as it seemed, the election of 1856 was upon the country before we had time to appreciate what Mr. Pierce had done. Had he had a fair chance in such a brief period to do anything? I was at work attending to my business, trying to etch too, but I could not keep my mind off the game of politics. Among the tens of thousands of men in Illinois who were devoted to Douglas no one was more loyal to his ambition than I, and perhaps no one was less conspicuous. I followed the New York Tribune, the Springfield Republican, the North American Review, the Independent, Harper's Weekly, and the southern press, as well as the papers of Illinois. I had made a large book of clippings, which expressed the journalistic thought of the country. All these things put together kept me fully occupied. Our son Reverdy was coming to an age when his schooling would need attention. I wished to send him to England. But that was difficult to do, because, while Dorothy was urging a trip abroad she wished to go to Italy, on account of the climate.