Children of the Market Place Part 19

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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d! 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 l.u.s.ts 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 G.o.d 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 ca.n.a.ls, 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 G.o.d 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: "G.o.d 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 inst.i.tution. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sumption 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 a.s.sumption 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 emanc.i.p.ate the slaves? For a slave is certainly property, and if needful rules and regulations as to the negro require his emanc.i.p.ation, why can't he be emanc.i.p.ated 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 Const.i.tution 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 pa.s.sing 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 n.i.g.g.e.rs 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 att.i.tude 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 const.i.tutional 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 a.s.serted 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 Const.i.tution, 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.