Children of the Market Place Part 16

I had left my affairs in the hands of an agent manager, who did not a.s.sume authority to meet the terms of the strikers. Upon my return I was obliged to settle it myself. I did this by promptly acceding to the demands made upon me. What was a quarter of a dollar more a day to me? I wanted my building to be finished.

One could not escape observing all this rebellion abroad and in America, this awakening of the worker, this fight for human rights upon slavery in the South, even if he did not have it brought to his mind in the concrete way that I did. Slavery might be wrong, that was one thing; it might cut into the rights, first or last, of the free worker; but if the negro was owned in body and in energy, and his labor taken for nothing, except the food, shelter, and clothing required to keep him efficient, was that anything but just a matter of degree from the case of the white man who was paid so much a day, enough to give him food, shelter, and clothing, and thus keep him a fit machine? Thus there was a moral sympathy between the white workers and the black workers; all were making money for an upper man. If it was wrong to appropriate all the black man's labor, it was wrong to appropriate too much of the white man's labor. The Declaration of Independence was a hard nut to crack.

While only a few hare-brained agitators wanted negro equality, even Douglas did not like slavery.

The new lands of the West brought fresh troubles to Douglas and desperate struggles to the South. The emigration of revolutionaries from Europe added to the enemies of the slave system. It was hard for them to understand that the Declaration of Independence did not include the negro.

This was the state of affairs in the campaign of 1848. The Democrats had nominated Mr. Ca.s.s, of Michigan, for President, and presented him to the people on a platform which placed the responsibility for the Mexican War upon the aggressions of Mexico; it congratulated the American soldiers of that war for having crowned themselves with imperishable glory; it tendered to the Republic of France fraternal salutations upon the success of republican principles, upon the recognition by the French of the inherent right of the people in their sovereign capacity to make and amend their forms of government. It spoke for American Democracy, a sense of the sacred duty, by reason of these popular triumphs abroad, to advance const.i.tutional liberty, to resist monopolies. It advocated a constant adherence to the principles and compromises of the Const.i.tution. It praised the administration of Mr. Polk for repealing the tariff of 1842, and making a start toward free trade.

And not a word about slavery. The convention voted down a resolution which favored "non-interference with the rights of property of any portion of the people of this confederation, be it in the states or the territories, by any other than the parties interested in them."

What of the Whigs? They made no declaration of principles whatever.

Complete silence. They nominated General Taylor, as Douglas had predicted, upon his record in the Mexican War, the war successfully prosecuted by President Polk, and through which California, with her gold, had come to the United States. Taylor, the slave owner of Louisiana! But this was not the end of Whig cunning. Millard Fillmore was nominated for Vice President. He was from New York, had been in Congress, had opposed the annexation of Texas, was a tariff man, had fought side by side with J. Q. Adams for the abolition of slavery. But also he had been the Congressman who had carried the appropriation of $30,000 for Morse's telegraph. A mixed man! His good was Taylor's evil.

Taylor's evil was his good.

Well, the native Americans had a ticket in the field; the Barn-burners had a ticket in the field; and the Abolitionists. Mr. Van Buren was running for President as a Barn-burner on a platform which declared that there should be no more slave states, and no more slave territory.

Where was I to stand amid all this confusion and contradiction?

Naturally with Douglas. But I wanted to see what he had to say.

It was not long before he came to Chicago and our interesting a.s.sociation was renewed. He had had something of a quarrel with Mr.

Polk, but it had been patched up. Before now he had proposed that the line of the Missouri Compromise be extended to the Pacific Ocean. Was he, too, becoming uncertain of mind? Sometimes I thought he was overworked, that his energies were concerned with too many subjects. He was making speeches; he was talking railroads; he had his own political fortunes to watch. The Whigs were gaining ground. He scoffed at them. He derided their hypocrisy. He laughed at their piebald character. Yet he saw a cunning plot in this presentation to the electorate of men who appealed so diversely: Taylor of the South, and of slavery; Fillmore of the North, and of free soil, backed by the powerful mercantilism of the North, like the bank and the tariff. Both were using Jefferson to win the mob, and Hamilton to satisfy the strong.

It was in the fall just before the election that Reverdy and Sarah came to visit us, bringing Amos, now about fourteen, and Reverdy Junior, about twelve, and Nancy, who was ten.

The Douglases came to dine with us, and after the dinner Reverdy, Douglas, and I retired to the library. Again we had the bottle between us, but Reverdy was an abstainer. He was satisfied with Douglas'

personal att.i.tude toward slavery; Douglas' evident wish that the inst.i.tution was not among us; his refusal to have anything to do with Mrs. Douglas' slaves. Reverdy was a man of peace and believed that Douglas' non-interference policy would ensure peace. He approved of leaving the matter of slavery to the people of the territories. He feared a war, and he opposed the agitation that might bring it. At the same time, he preferred a free soil and a free people. Reverdy was typical of many men in America. And indeed, my heart went with Reverdy in these things, even while my thinking went with Douglas.

Douglas was now the master of his party in Illinois, and it seemed to me that no one could dispute his leadership in the nation. He had perfected the party organization in the state from the small beginnings of which I have told. He was proud of his work and the strength and discipline of his party. He looked forward to victory this fall over the hermaphroditic ticket of Taylor and Fillmore. He was never more brilliant than he was this evening. He was compelling to look at, not when standing, for then his short legs caricatured and belittled his great body. But when he was seated his wonderful face and majestic head truly represented his nature.

Outside the house, in the streets, we could hear the cries, "free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men!" Douglas looked annoyed, ironic lights pa.s.sed across his face. He said in a satiric way: "Just listen to that." These cries could not be met by direct denial, by an epigrammatic retort. One could not so aptly say "slave banks, slave tariffs, slave labor conditions." These required arguments to expound.

If labor conditions presaged slavery for white men were they freed by negro slavery? Was not this roar outside of the house a part of the tumult in Germany and France? Was not this America hailing Europe? Had not this crowd caught up the Democratic platform which congratulated the republicans of France? What would the German vote do, the Irish vote, all the foreign vote? Had not the Whigs, marching through these streets of Chicago, captured all the effective thunder of the Democratic party?

As Douglas sat before us I saw him as a giant around whom great forces were gathering. The light played a curious trick with his forehead, throwing part of it into fantastic shadows. There was a moment's silence in which the deep brilliancy of his eyes flashed upon me. Then his great voice spoke again: "It is easy to have a war--among ourselves." Reverdy looked at Douglas in a sort of terror. Just then Amos came to the door to call us to see a political parade which was pa.s.sing the house.

We three arose, joining Mother Clayton, Dorothy, and Mrs. Douglas who were already watching it. It was a demonstration of Free Soilers.

Douglas had voted against the prohibition of slavery in Texas. This was the answer. These banners, bearing the words "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men," were the challenge. The men who bore them did not know how to apply their principles to anything but the negro.

Douglas knew this. At the same time he knew that he had helped to create this demonstration, that he had been influential in initiating this new momentum.

I looked at Douglas to see what effect the shouts, the pushing, running, limp-stepped throng would have upon him. A smile flitted across his face. His eyes were intense and concentrated. He made no comment. The last men of the parade pa.s.sed with shouts. A drunken marcher fell. The lights faded. We turned into the room. Douglas was laughing.

CHAPTER XLI

What was the result? General Taylor had 1,360,099 votes and 163 electoral votes; Ca.s.s had 1,220,544 votes and 127 electoral votes. The Abolitionists polled 300,000 votes in the country. The Free Soilers had polled 291,263 votes in the country. Illinois was lost to General Taylor. The Free Soilers had swept the northeastern counties. There had been great Democratic desertions. Voltaire and Rousseau were still at work. These fermentations of Europe had bubbled and exploded around Chicago. The concrete thing known as negro slavery heard the rumble of the ground. The tariff, the bank, imperial power in Congress unwittingly renewed their strength--unwittingly on the part of the Free Soilers.

A slave owner had become President; a man of the fresh blood of the northwest of Michigan had been defeated. A New Yorker, wedded to the tariff, had been put in place to be President by the death of General Taylor. And Douglas found the forces that were to embattle him drawing up in line.

The state was saved to the local offices. The legislature was Democratic, but it proceeded soon to instruct Douglas as Senator to procure the enactment of laws for the territories for the exclusion of slavery from them. The members from Egypt, however, sustained Douglas in his position against the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to keep slavery from Texas. The state was thus disrupted. The opposition to the extension of slavery dated from 1787, from the work of Jefferson in 1800. However, let the people of the territories decide the matter.

Local self-government was a popular cry. Between saying that Congress could keep slavery out of the territories, thereby treating the territories as property, not as subordinate sovereignties, and Congress sending slavery into the territories, because the Const.i.tution was over them, what juster pragmatism were possible than to let the people of the territories decide the matter for themselves? If the general government was one of granted powers, where did it get the right to prohibit slavery in the territories? No such power could be indicated.

Oh, well, there was opportunity for infinite speculation. At the same time, here were the territories and here was slavery. The powerful North was a.s.suming a definite opposition to a weaker South. Iron and coal were stronger than cotton. What was to be done by a man who had the burdens of leadership? How should the whole people be at peace? Since slavery could not be removed from the states, why not let its tendrils creep into the territories and there flourish or wither according to the soil?

Since it was practical, not radical policy to confine it to the states, and not to abolish it in the states, it was practical and not radical policy to let the territories decide the matter for themselves. If the first course aroused the fury of the Abolitionists, the second course found no favor with the Free Soilers, and ambitious Whigs, drawing upon abolitionism and free soilism for food, for northern mercantilism and for a larger slavery of both blacks and whites.

I had now lived so long in America, seen so much of the country, read so extensively of politics and history, that I was able to follow the questions involved in this crisis. All the while I had the benefit of Douglas' a.s.sociation, who talked to me intimately of his own plans and of persons and issues, as they arose. There were calls upon him now to resign the Senatorship; but he had no intention of doing so. His fighting blood was aroused. He was hardened to contests and to misunderstanding and abuse. He had been berated for coa.r.s.eness and charged with the half-culture of the West. His sagacity had been caricatured as cunning; his presence of mind taken for vulgar audacity; he was held up as a half-educated debater, filled with a miserable self-sufficiency. He was attacked as a demagogue. The East held itself aloof from him in unctuous self-righteousness, because of his stand in the Mexican War. His fight for Oregon had aligned against him the friends of England in America. Yet men were in power because of him. A Whig had been elected President upon a war record of a fight for Texas.

Who wished to part with Texas, New Mexico, California, or Oregon?

If Douglas had the slavocracy back of him and catered to it, he did not have plutocracy back of him. If he had been a demagogue he would have done the bidding of some faction. He did the bidding of no faction. His mind was budding with railroads now, for the Far West. What he was now doing made for a money control of the country in the future; but that was not apparent to him. What one of us saw that we could not make an ocean-bound republic without a supremacy of wealth, even if it was brought about by a plebiscite? This did not make it democratic.

It was at this time that Mother Clayton's health began to be frail, and Dorothy was by no means strong. The winters in Chicago had been very trying upon both of them. Just now I had so many interests that I could not leave the city. But Mother Clayton wished to return to Nashville for a few months, and Dorothy decided to go with her. Our boy was not as robust as we should have wished. Mammy, by no means to be left out of our consideration, was aging and longed for the old scenes of Nashville.

We closed our house, and I went to the hotel. Then Abigail and Aldington were married. They went abroad to study European conditions. Thus the most of my a.s.sociations were interrupted. All but those I had with Douglas.

To go to Nashville was an inconvenient trip, but I made it on several occasions. Once on a mission of deep sorrow. Mother Clayton died in June just as she and Dorothy were preparing to join me in Chicago. I was thinking of going to California on account of the gold discoveries. So I brought Dorothy and Mammy back, although Mammy was very old and could not be of much service.

Thousands were turning their faces to the West. How to get there, how to equip oneself, were the questions. Some went by Cape Horn, some by the Isthmus of Panama, some by the overland route. Thousands joined companies. Others bought ships or chartered them. The wildest of rumors spread of the richness of the discoveries. Fabulous reports of fabulous prices and wages in California were scattered broadcast. I wanted to go.

But why, after all? I could get richer, but why get richer? Besides, there were my interests and Dorothy. I felt the adventurer stir within me, and talked with Douglas about going. He did not wish me to leave Chicago. What soil could be richer than that south of Madison Street?

Besides, he was working on the Illinois Central railroad project, and that would mean all the money that I would care for, if I would take advantage of the opportunities which the railroad would create. Then there were the transcontinental lines to be built. A convention was soon to be held in St. Louis, and Douglas wished me to go along with him.

It was held in October and I went with Douglas to attend it. The proposition was the construction of a railroad from the Mississippi to the Pacific. The delegates were mostly from the Mississippi valley, more than 800 in number, and Douglas made me a delegate from Illinois.

He was promptly elected to preside over the convention. The first thing proposed was the construction of an emigrant route on the line of the proposed railroad. This was in the interest of the gold seekers. A delegate who said he had constructed more than 7000 miles of telegraph offered to string a wire to California if Congress would lend its aid.

There should be stations along the way, with troopers to defend the emigrants against Indians. The troopers could carry the mails, thus insuring the delivery of a letter from St. Louis to San Francisco in twelve days. Another delegate advised the convention that Charleston and New Orleans would soon be joined by telegraph. As a means of communication, he proposed that for the sending of messages from Washington to Oregon, it could be done in fifteen days by transmitting a telegram by boat from New Orleans to Laredo, and thence by telegraph to some point on the Gulf of California; thence to San Francisco and to Washington or Oregon again by boat.

It was a vital, noisy a.s.semblage of men; and Douglas was a perfect talent as a presiding officer. His great voice could easily be heard over the entire hall and it seemed altogether fitting, since he had so long been interested in binding the country together with railroads and telegraphs, that he should be the spokesman of this body of men, who were inaugurating this magical transformation of America.

The lobby of the hotel was full of faces of all descriptions. The millionaire was there, the countryman, the slave dealer, the man with the goatee. The barrooms and corridors were noisy with excitement, loud talk of politics, of railroads, of trade, of slavery; denunciation of the Whigs, curses for the defeat of Ca.s.s. I saw bloodshot eyes, reeling steps, coa.r.s.eness, cruelty, wastefulness in drink. Yankees and Dutch were denounced as trash and as cowards and traitors. They had defeated the Democratic party the previous fall. Plans were made on the moment among various excited groups to go to California. A transcontinental line must be put through at once.

Amid this motley throng stood Douglas. He glowed in the admiration he received. He was acclaimed, cheered; his hand was taken in a rough and hearty manner by scores, wherever he stood or walked. One moment he was talking with a group of men from Tennessee; again he was exchanging salutations with Captain Grant, who was here now without prospects, drinking too much, quite a sorry figure, lounging about waiting for something to turn up. Not so with the dignified Major Sherman. He had been to California, on field duty in the Mexican War. Now well groomed and of fine bearing, he stood about the lobby interested in the projected railroad. Douglas, Grant, Sherman,--all had a definite relation to the Mexican War, and the new territory. Douglas seemed to be taking renewed life from this interesting experience. I was his companion all the time, loitering near as he talked to various notables. I looked over this ma.s.s of humanity and thought of America as a whole, and wondered what it would do with its rich possessions, and its problems. Its fate seemed hopelessly entangled, in spite of the material prosperity--perhaps because of it.

CHAPTER XLII

I felt now the truth of Webster's picturesque words that "the imprisoned winds were let loose." We might have a transcontinental railroad, and Douglas' Illinois Central might connect Chicago with the Gulf of Mexico.

All of this building might go forward successfully. But at the same time the slavery question would not down. Even railroad building was a bone of contention, for as to a line to California it had been debated whether it should start from Chicago or from St. Louis. Hence it was that every activity of Douglas had to reckon with the negro. There were now great things to be done at Washington. And as Dorothy had enjoyed herself so much during the winter that we had spent there, she was urging me to return. I had my affairs now under better management, and communication with Chicago was rather convenient; besides Dorothy was not well. The loss of Jenny and the death of her mother had visibly affected her health. I decided at last to spend the winter in Washington.

The trip from Chicago to New York by boat and by train was as wearisome as before. When we arrived in New York, Dorothy had to take to her bed and rest for two days before proceeding to Washington.

We took a house again, keeping Mammy for intimate service and supplementing her with two colored women who fitted in fairly well. Our boy Reverdy was put in school.

I began to attend the sessions of the Senate, taking Dorothy when she wished to go. Clay of Kentucky, after an absence of eight years, was back; here were also Webster and Calhoun, the lions of an earlier day.

They were enacting their last parts, trying to re-imprison the winds of destiny, which the events of the Mexican War had set to roaring over the land. Young America, in the person of Douglas, faced the hierarchy of the earlier republic; and Seward of New York, older than Douglas by some twelve years, but less versatile and attractive, stood now as a spokesman for a new party.

If there were pessimists who believed that the Union was in danger at this time, Douglas was not of them. He could not see the South, if reasonably accommodated, interfering with his ocean-bound republic. He had elasticity, a fresh edge. The coldness of dying arteries was not upon him, as in the case of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun. He had great projects to forward, such as grants to secure the construction of the Illinois Central railroad. He knew what railroads meant to the country.

He was of the West and he understood it. He was quick to offer a bill in the Senate for a grant of land for the construction of this railroad from Chicago to New Orleans, and it was pa.s.sed. In the debate over the bill Douglas of Illinois faced Webster of Ma.s.sachusetts. It was a dramatic ant.i.thesis. Douglas, young and devoted to the prairies, Webster, old and fixed in his admirations for the East. The old question of disunion arose. If we would have liberty and union forever, railroads would insure them. Douglas had said that if the North should ever be arrayed against the South, the pioneers of the northwest and the southwest would balance the contest. Webster had spoken slightingly of the West which Douglas so greatly loved. And these were Douglas'

inspiring and prophetic words in reply: