54-40 or Fight Part 47

EPILOGUE

"'Tis the Star Spangled Banner; O, long may it wave, O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!"

--_Francis Scott Key_.

On the night that Miss Elisabeth Churchill gave me her hand and her heart for ever--for which I have not yet ceased to thank G.o.d--there began the guns of Palo Alto. Later, there came the fields of Monterey, Buena Vista, Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Cherubusco, Molino del Rey--at last the guns sounded at the gate of the old City of Mexico itself. Some of that fighting I myself saw; but much of the time I was employed in that manner of special work which had engaged me for the last few years. It was through Mr. Calhoun's agency that I reached a certain importance in these matters; and so I was chosen as the commissioner to negotiate a peace with Mexico.

This honor later proved to be a dangerous and questionable one. General Scott wanted no interference of this kind, especially since he knew Mr.

Calhoun's influence in my choice. He thwarted all my attempts to reach the headquarters of the enemy, and did everything he could to secure a peace of his own, at the mouth of the cannon. I could offer no terms better than Mr. Buchanan, then our secretary of state, had prepared for me, and these were rejected by the Mexican government at last. I was ordered by Mr. Polk to state that we had no better terms to offer; and as for myself, I was told to return to Washington. At that time I could not make my way out through the lines, nor, in truth, did I much care to do so.

A certain event not written in history influenced me to remain for a time at the little village of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Here, in short, I received word from a lady whom I had formerly known, none less than Senora Yturrio, once a member of the Mexican legation at Washington.

True to her record, she had again reached influential position in her country, using methods of her own. She told me now to pay no attention to what had been reported by Mexico. In fact, I was approached again by the Mexican commissioners, introduced by her! What was done then is history. We signed then and there the peace of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in accordance with the terms originally given me by our secretary of state.

So, after all, Calhoun's kindness to a woman in distress was not lost; and so, after all, he unwittingly helped in the ending of the war he never wished begun.

Meantime, I had been recalled to Washington, but did not know the nature of that recall. When at last I arrived there I found myself disgraced and discredited. My actions were repudiated by the administration. I myself was dismissed from the service without pay--sad enough blow for a young man who had been married less than a year.

Mr. Polk's jealousy of John Calhoun was not the only cause of this.

Calhoun's prophecy was right. Polk did not forget his revenge on me.

Yet, none the less, after his usual fashion, he was not averse to receiving such credit as he could. He put the responsibility of the treaty upon the Senate! It was debated hotly there for some weeks, and at last, much to his surprise and my gratification, it was ratified!

The North, which had opposed this Mexican War--that same war which later led inevitably to the War of the Rebellion--now found itself unable to say much against the great additions to our domain which the treaty had secured. We paid fifteen millions, in addition to our territorial indemnity claim, and we got a realm whose wealth could not be computed.

So much, it must be owned, did fortune do for that singular favorite, Mr. Polk. And, curiously enough, the smoke had hardly cleared from Palo Alto field before Abraham Lincoln, a young member in the House of Congress, was introducing a resolution which asked the marking of "the spot where that outrage was committed." Perhaps it was an outrage. Many still hold it so. But let us reflect what would have been Lincoln's life had matters not gone just as they did.

With the cessions from Mexico came the great domain of California. Now, look how strangely history sometimes works out itself. Had there been any suspicion of the discovery of gold in California, neither Mexico nor our republic ever would have owned it! England surely would have taken it. The very year that my treaty eventually was ratified was that in which gold was discovered in California! But it was too late then for England to interfere; too late then, also, for Mexico to claim it. We got untold millions of treasure there. Most of those millions went to the Northern States, into manufactures, into commerce. The North owned that gold; and it was that gold which gave the North the power to crush that rebellion which was born of the Mexican War--that same rebellion by which England, too late, would gladly have seen this Union disrupted, so that she might have yet another chance at these lands she now had lost for ever.

Fate seemed still to be with us, after all, as I have so often had occasion to believe may be a possible thing. That war of conquest which Mr. Calhoun opposed, that same war which grew out of the slavery tenets which he himself held--the great error of his otherwise splendid public life--found its own correction in the Civil War. It was the gold of California which put down slavery. Thenceforth slavery has existed legally only _north_ of the Mason and Dixon line!

We have our problems yet. Perhaps some other war may come to settle them. Fortunate for us if there could be another California, another Texas, another Oregon, to help us pay for them!

I, who was intimately connected with many of these less known matters, claim for my master a reputation wholly different from that given to him in any garbled "history" of his life. I lay claim in his name for foresight beyond that of any man of his time. He made mistakes, but he made them bravely, grandly, and consistently. Where his convictions were enlisted, he had no reservations, and he used every means, every available weapon, as I have shown. But he was never self-seeking, never cheap, never insincere. A detester of all machine politicians, he was a statesman worthy to be called the William Pitt of the United States. The consistency of his career was a marvelous thing; because, though he changed in his beliefs, he was first to recognize the changing conditions of our country. He failed, and he is execrated. He won, and he is forgot.

My chief, Mr. Calhoun, did not die until some six years after that first evening when Doctor Ward and I had our talk with him. He was said to have died of a disease of the lungs, yet here again history is curiously mistaken. Mr. Calhoun slept himself away. I sometimes think with a shudder that perhaps this was the revenge which Nemesis took of him for his mistakes. His last days were dreamlike in their pa.s.sing. His last speech in the Senate was read by one of his friends, as Doctor Ward had advised him. Some said afterwards that his illness was that accursed "sleeping sickness" imported from Africa with these same slaves: It were a strange thing had John Calhoun indeed died of his error! At least he slept away. At least, too, he made his atonement. The South, following his doctrines, itself was long accursed of this same sleeping sickness; but in the providence of G.o.d it was not lost to us, and is ours for a long and splendid history.

It was through John Calhoun, a grave and somber figure of our history, that we got the vast land of Texas. It was through him also--and not through Clay nor Jackson, nor any of the northern statesmen, who never could see a future for the West--that we got all of our vast Northwest realm. Within a few days after the Palo Alto ball, a memorandum of agreement was signed between Minister Pakenham and Mr. Buchanan, our secretary of state. This was done at the instance and by the aid of John Calhoun. It was he--he and Helena von Ritz--who brought about that treaty which, on June fifteenth, of the same year, was signed, and gladly signed, by the minister from Great Britain. The latter had been fully enough impressed (such was the story) by the reports of the columns of our west-bound farmers, with rifles leaning at their wagon seats and plows lashed to the tail-gates. Calhoun himself never ceased to regret that we could not delay a year or two years longer. In this he was thwarted by the impetuous war with the republic on the south, although, had that never been fought, we had lost California--lost also the South, and lost the Union!

Under one form or other, one name of government or another, the flag of democracy eventually must float over all this continent. Not a part, but all of this country must be ours, must be the people's. It may cost more blood and treasure now. Some time we shall see the wisdom of John Calhoun; but some time, too, I think, we shall see come true that prophecy of a strange and brilliant mentality, which in Calhoun's presence and in mine said that all of these northern lands and all Mexico as well must one day be ours--which is to say, the people's--for the sake of human opportunity, of human hope and happiness. Our battles are but partly fought. But at least they are not, then, lost.

For myself, the close of the Mexican War found me somewhat worn by travel and illy equipped in financial matters. I had been discredited, I say, by my own government. My pay was withheld. Elisabeth, by that time my wife, was a girl reared in all the luxury that our country then could offer. Shall I say whether or not I prized her more when gladly she gave up all this and joined me for one more long and final journey out across that great trail which I had seen--the trail of democracy, of America, of the world?

At last we reached Oregon. It holds the grave of one of ours; it is the home of others. We were happy; we asked favor of no man; fear of no one did we feel. Elisabeth has in her time slept on a bed of husks. She has cooked at a sooty fireplace of her own; and at her cabin door I myself have been the guard. We made our way by ourselves and for ourselves, as did those who conquered America for our flag. "The citizen standing in the doorway of his home, shall save the Republic." So wrote a later pen.

It was not until long after the discovery of gold in California had set us all to thinking that I was reminded of the strange story of the old German, Von Rittenhofen, of finding some pieces of gold while on one of his hunts for b.u.t.terflies. I followed out his vague directions as best I might. We found gold enough to make us rich without our land. That claim is staked legally. Half of it awaits an owner who perhaps will never come.

There are those who will accept always the solemn a.s.severations of politicians, who by word of mouth or pen a.s.sert that this or that _party_ made our country, wrote its history. Such as they might smile if told that not even men, much less politicians, have written all our story as a nation; yet any who smile at woman's influence in American history do so in ignorance of the truth. Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton have credit for determining our boundary on the northeast--England called it Ashburton's capitulation to the Yankee. Did you never hear the other gossip? England laid all that to Ashburton's American wife! Look at that poor, hot-tempered devil, Yrujo, minister from Spain with us, who saw his king's holdings on this continent juggled from hand to hand between us all. His wife was daughter of Governor McKean in Pennsylvania yonder. If she had no influence with her husband, so much the worse for her. In important times a generation ago M. Genet, of France, as all know, was the husband of the daughter of Governor Clinton of New York.

Did that hurt our chances with France? My Lord Oswald, of Great Britain, who negotiated our treaty of peace in 1782--was not his worldly fortune made by virtue of his American wife? All of us should remember that Marbois, Napoleon's minister, who signed the great treaty for him with us, married his wife while he was a mere _charge_ here in Washington; and she, too, was an American. Erskine, of England, when times were strained in 1808, and later--and our friend for the most part--was not he also husband of an American? It was as John Calhoun said--our history, like that of England and France, like that of Rome and Troy, was made in large part by women.

Of that strange woman, Helena, Baroness von Ritz, I have never definitely heard since then. But all of us have heard of that great uplift of Central Europe, that ferment of revolution, most noticeable in Germany, in 1848. Out of that revolutionary spirit there came to us thousands and thousands of our best population, the st.u.r.diest and the most liberty-loving citizens this country ever had. They gave us scores of generals in our late war, and gave us at least one cabinet officer.

But whence came that spirit of revolution in Europe? _Why_ does it live, grow, increase, even now? _Why_ does it sound now, close to the oldest thrones? _Where_ originated that germ of liberty which did its work so well? I am at least one who believes that I could guess something of its source.

The revolution in Hungary failed for the time. Kossuth came to see us with pleas that we might aid Hungary. But republics forget. We gave no aid to Hungary. I was far away and did not meet Kossuth. I should have been glad to question him. I did not forget Helena von Ritz, nor doubt that she worked out in full that strange destiny for which, indeed, she was born and prepared, to which she devoted herself, made clean by sacrifice. She was not one to leave her work undone. She, I know, pa.s.sed on her torch of principle.

Elisabeth and I speak often of Helena von Ritz. I remember her still-brilliant, beautiful, fascinating, compelling, pathetic, tragic.

If it was asked of her, I know that she still paid it gladly--all that sacrifice through which alone there can be worked out the progress of humanity, under that idea which blindly we attempted to express in our Declaration; that idea which at times we may forget, but which eventually must triumph for the good of all the world. She helped us make our map. Shall not that for which she stood help us hold it?

At least, let me say, I have thought this little story might be set down; and, though some to-day may smile at flags and principles, I should like, if I may be allowed, to close with the words of yet another man of those earlier times: "The old flag of the Union was my protector in infancy and the pride and glory of my riper years; and, by the grace of G.o.d, under its shadow I shall die!" N.T.