Children of the Market Place Part 24

For the rest, what did it all come to? Like two pugilists Lincoln and Douglas blocked each other's blows, drove each other into corners.

Lincoln twitted Douglas about being on both sides of the matter of extending the Missouri Compromise. Then Douglas tripped Lincoln, who had a.s.serted that only slavery had ever disturbed the peace of the Union.

"How about the War of 1812, and the Hartford convention?" asked Douglas.

How about the tariff and South Carolina in 1832? He might have asked, how about the Alien and Sedition laws and the Kentucky resolutions of 1798. But for the rest, what did it all come to?

Lincoln contended that Congress had the power to forbid slavery in the territories; Douglas worked up from a position, which scarcely denied the power, but rather shrank from its use, to the position that sovereignty abode in the people of the territory; and that as Congress has no express grant of power to legislate upon slavery as to a territory, the territorial sovereignty had the only power to do so. He attacked Lincoln's position that a territory is a creature of Congress as a property, to be clothed with powers or denied powers; and particularly with powers not possessed by Congress itself. This doctrine led to imperialism. Douglas held that Congress had the power to organize territories under the clause providing for the admission of new states; but when they were organized they a.s.sumed an organic sovereignty out of an inchoate sovereignty, and had the right to legislate as they chose to the same extent as a state. It was the old fight between implied powers and strict construction.

What in the Const.i.tution forbade slaves from being taken into the territories? Not a thing. Moreover the territories were the commons of all the states, won by their common valor and blood. Could not a liquor dealer from Chicago take his stock to Kansas? a.s.suredly. Why then could not a planter from Louisiana take his slaves to Nebraska? Liquor and slaves were property. Who said so? The fugitive-slave clause of the Const.i.tution, and the fugitive-slave law of 1850 which Lincoln admitted he would not alter.

But after the liquor was in Kansas or the slave in Nebraska could they flourish? That depended on the territorial law, the att.i.tude of the people. Did Congress have to pa.s.s favorable legislation? From what clause flowed the duty and the power? Did a territorial legislature have power to pa.s.s favorable legislation? It was not called upon to do so by anything in the Federal Const.i.tution. Therefore, the mere right to take a slave into free territory under the Dred Scott decision, take it as property, was a naked right without local support. "This popular sovereignty is as thin as soup made from the shadow of a starved pigeon," said Lincoln. Nevertheless, it was what it was and no more. And Lincoln's catch question on the legal right to keep slavery out of the territories did not catch Douglas. The mere right to take a slave into free territory could coexist with no protective legislation after the slave was there. It could coexist with unfavorable legislation and social opposition. Let natural processes rule.

What was the difference between this and girding the slave states around with freedom? That could scarcely be done without the aid of natural processes.

But since Douglas did not admit that Congress had to give favorable legislation to a slave owner who had taken his slave into a territory, the South was drawing away from him. He was not their friend to the extreme doctrine of taking a slave into a territory and keeping him a slave against the will of the territory. Was Douglas unmoral? What of the unmorality of taking Kansas and Nebraska from the Indians? Was he syllogistic, a.n.a.lytic, intellectually hard? But was not Lincoln so too?

Douglas derived from Jefferson through Jackson; Lincoln from Hamilton through Webster, whatever else could be said of them.

Thus I read on through the night until I had finished all that Douglas and Lincoln had said at the six debates then finished. The next morning Reverdy and I started for Alton.

I could scarcely wait to get my first glimpse of Lincoln.

CHAPTER LVII

Alton, this old town that I had visited so many times before, was crowded with people drawn from the surrounding country, from across the river in Missouri. As to the temper of the audience, it rather favored Douglas. I saw the leering, ugly faces that I had seen in the lobbies of the hotels in St. Louis years before at the railroad convention, when Captain Grant was lounging there and planters swarmed at the bar and cursed Yankees and n.i.g.g.e.r-lovers.

It was the fifteenth of October, fair and temperate. Thousands swarmed around the speaker's stand in the public square, which was bare of flags or mottoes by express orders of the masters of ceremony. The time arrived. Lincoln came to the platform and took a seat.

He was tall, enormously tall, long of limb, angular, narrow shouldered.

His skin was yellow and dry, wrinkled. His hair was black and coa.r.s.e.

His eyes were sunk back in his head with a melancholy expression which could flame into humor or indignation. But his forehead was full, shapely, and n.o.ble. The largeness of his nose, tilted a little to one side, gave sculptural strength to his face. His great mouth with its fleshy underlip, supplemented the nose. Both were material for grotesque caricature. He looked like an educated gawk, a rural genius, a pied piper of motley followers. He was a sad clown, a Socratic wag, a countryman dressed up for a state occasion. But he was not a poor man defending the cause of the poor. There was nothing of the dreamer in his make-up, the eccentric idealist. His big nose and mouth and Henry Clay forehead denied all of this. He sat in self-possession, in poise, clothed in the order of confident reason, unafraid, sure of himself but without vanity, in a wise detachment, on a vantage point of vision. His frock coat, rusty from dust and wear, did not fit him. The sleeves escaped his wrists by several inches; his trousers had hitched up as he sat down, so that one half of his shanks was exposed to view, leaving his monstrous feet, like the slap-boots of a negro minstrel, for ludicrous inches over the floor. His neck was long and feminine, and stuck up grotesquely much above a sort of Byronic collar held together by a black stock tie. I had never seen a man so absurd.

Douglas was as ludicrously short as Lincoln was tall; broad shouldered where Lincoln was narrow; thick chested where Lincoln was thin; big headed where Lincoln was small; of ma.s.sive brow where Lincoln was full and shapely; of strong bull-like neck where Lincoln was small and delicate; of short, compact, powerful body where Lincoln was tall, loosely constructed, awkward, and muscular. Douglas' face wore determination, seriousness, force, pugnacity, and endurance. But his hair was grayer than mine; he looked tired. He arose and in that great melodious voice which always thrilled me, he said: "It is now nearly four months since the canva.s.s between Mr. Lincoln and myself commenced."

He went on and controverted Mr. Lincoln's "house divided against itself," going over the ground of the previous debate. There was not a sound of disturbance in the audience. They were in a charm, a trance.

Oratory could rise to no greater heights. Then after saying that the Declaration of Independence did not include the negro, Indians, or Fiji Islanders, but that all dependent races should be treated nevertheless with fairness, and that it did not follow that because a negro was an inferior he must be a slave, he appealed to the rights of the states and the territories to control slavery for themselves. He closed with these memorable words:

"Why can we not thus have peace? Why should we allow a sectional party to agitate this country, to array the North against the South, and convert us into enemies instead of friends merely that a few ambitious men may ride into power on a sectional hobby? How long is it since these ambitious northern men wished for a sectional organization? Did any one of them dream of a sectional party as long as the North was the weaker section and the South the stronger? Then all were opposed to sectional parties; but the moment the North obtained the majority in the House and in the Senate by the admission of California and could elect a President without the aid of southern votes, that moment ambitious men formed a scheme to excite the North against the South and make the people be governed in their votes by geographical lines, thinking that the North being the stronger section would outvote the South and consequently they, the leaders, would ride into office on a sectional hobby. I am told that my hour is out. It was very short."

Short it was. I thought he had just begun. What would this strange creature now rising to six feet four inches of awkward angularity say in reply to this wonderful oration? He opened his great mouth and spoke.

What is this? A falsetto note, a piping instead of the musical thunder we have heard. He poses strangely, his gestures shoot up and out like the arms of a dislocated clothes rack. He rises on his toes with a quick springlike movement, as if he were a puppet loosened by a spring from a box. He sways from side to side to give emphasis to his words. His mouth opens to huge proportions in moments of excitement. His black hair falls over his forehead. His great nose sticks out like a signboard. Is he scoring?

I know, for I have read the other debates. He is wasting no words; he is meeting Douglas point by point, whether successfully or not. He seemed embarra.s.sed, diffident at first. Why not? He is fighting a giant; then there are ugly faces in the audience, men in drink, slave owners from Missouri, Democrats who hate sectionalism and loathe the rise of the Republican party. Whispers are near me: "He amounts to nothing. Douglas has laid him out. He is scared. The Little Giant has choked him."

But Lincoln goes on. His earnestness deepens, his seriousness becomes more impressive. His voice is carrying even though it pipes. He has endurance, too, and courage and fighting will. But Douglas has made it very difficult for him; indeed he has brought Lincoln to his terms on nearly everything--all but the 'house divided against itself' doctrine; and the right and duty of Congress to keep slavery out of the territories. These are issues between him and Douglas still; but is this the real issue after all? He is nearly through. He has been going on as if he were making a statement of a case. It is interjected with argument; but it is largely statement of positions. It is declaratory and follows the form of a poem, not an argument. It a.s.sumes premises; he says "I think so." It has reason back of it, but it is the reason of things proven. It is fortified by matters of general acceptance. It has logic, but the logic of things existing inherently, not made. And at last, more earnestly than before, he says:

"On the point of my wanting to make war between the free and the slave states, there has been no issue between us. So too when he says that I am in favor of introducing a perfect social and political equality between the white and the black races. These are false issues upon which Judge Douglas has tried to force the controversy. There is no foundation in truth for the charges that I maintain either of these propositions. The real issue in this controversy--the one pressing upon every mind--is the sentiment upon the part of one cla.s.s that looks upon the inst.i.tution of slavery as a wrong, and of another cla.s.s that does not look upon it as a wrong. The sentiment that contemplates the inst.i.tution of slavery in this country as a wrong is the sentiment of the Republican party. It is the sentiment around which all their actions, all their arguments, circle, from which all their propositions radiate. That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silenced. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles--right and wrong--throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of Time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same spirit that says: 'You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of man as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle."

What had come over Lincoln? He was no longer awkward. A divine grace permeated his being. The October sun threw glory upon his brow, gave us a look into his deeply illuminated eyes, left nothing of the great nose and mouth but their strength, the sculptural impressiveness of stone features in the sides of hills. What would Serafino think if he could hear this?

Then of a sudden I saw Pinturicchio in Lincoln's face, the same gentleness along the sunken cheeks, the same imaginative glow in the whole countenance. Here in this warped and homely face, this face out of the womb of poverty and sorrow, the winter loneliness of the forest, the humbleness and the want of the log cabin, the mystical yearning of humanity on the prairies and under the woodland stars, I saw for a swift moment in the glancing of the sun, as he uttered these words, the genius of the poet who knows and states, who has lived years of loneliness and failure, who has seen others grow rich, notable, and powerful, and who has remained obscure and un.o.beyed, with nothing but a vision which has become lightning at last in a supreme moment of inspiration. Lincoln had had his hour whatever should befall him.

The debate was over--the debates were over. Reverdy and I walked away with the great crowd hurrahing for Douglas, a few hurrahing for Lincoln.

I began to repeat to myself what Douglas had said years before in the Senate in replying to Webster: "There is a power in this nation greater either than the North or the South--a growing, increasing, and swelling power that will be able to speak the law of this nation and to execute the law as spoken. That power is the country known as the Great West.

There, sir, is the hope of this nation--the resting place of the power that is not only to control but to save the Union."

This prediction had now been fulfilled. This West had produced Lincoln and Douglas. One of them was sure to have the responsibility of executing the law as spoken. Of this I was sure.

CHAPTER LVIII

When I got back to Chicago I found a letter from Isabel. It read:

"My dear friend: It hurts me to think that you stole off in the darkness. I can see you in imagination walking the lonely way, carrying your satchel. Perhaps it made no difference that you did not stay until morning, but still it hurts me. And what can I say to you now? Are we like two people who are kept from each other by circ.u.mstances that they do not control, like friends whom a war separates? I hardly know how to express myself. There seems to be nothing to say; and yet there is so much for which I wish I had words; or I wish some word of mine could alter the circ.u.mstances. I am loath to lose your friendship, your a.s.sociation. We have so much in common that can be enjoyed through letters; and I do wish you to write me. Above all you must not think that anything of depreciation or disregard has entered my heart. If this be true, why must you change toward me? Do I speak fantastically when I ask you to try out a marriage of the mind? The experiences through which you and I have pa.s.sed have enabled me to penetrate the reality of my wishes and so even to have had them. I have known one kind of devotion; and I can fancy disillusionment coming over something more intensely emotional. Can we not think that we might grow tired of each other, and that we are to-day where we would be if we should become disillusioned but without having the bitterness of such an experience? Our poor human natures are cursed with fatigue, and with the loss of beauty and vision consequent upon daily intimacy. Let me say to you then that I love you and shall always love you, and that I have nothing in my heart that would not console you if everything in my heart was frankly expressed to you. If I ever should marry any one you will not lose your place in my affections. I turn to my life which I left for you. And you must see that if you have tragedy, so have I. As far as possible lift yourself out of the disturbing things of politics, and leave lesser personalities with the G.o.ds who are fashioning this world in the image of more enduring truths. There is solace to me, and I hope there may be to you, in the fact that we two are in the world together and that I can think of you as my friend and I trust can write to you as I hope you will write to me. Let us face the reality and consider that after all we have the sweetest and best of things that can be between a man and a woman.

If I can ever help you in any way I shall be so glad. I sense somehow that you may fear me, thinking that you have become indifferent in my eyes. This is not true. I cannot too often a.s.sure you of this. I hope for good things for you and your Reverdy. Give my love to him from 'Mamma Isabel' and believe me, affectionately, Isabel."

And I wrote to Isabel: "Some of your admonitions came too late to me, for I am interested in politics again. I have just returned from Alton where I went to hear Douglas debate against a Mr. Lincoln, a lawyer of Springfield, who has been nominated for Senator by the Republicans. He is as much of a backwoodsman as anybody could be, as much so as Harrison and a good deal more so than Taylor. But he is not to be despised either in himself or on account of his backers. The Republican party in Illinois profits by the feeling of the German revolutionnaires; and Lincoln may be ever so poor and so humble, nevertheless the Republican party has drawn to itself some of the richest and most powerful interests in the country; interests which are far-sighted enough to see that if the Republican party can be put into power the mercantile ambition of the North to control the South and the whole country will be realized. No human being could have been a greater orator than Douglas was at Alton; while Lincoln, in spite of disadvantages of voice and manner and physique, rose to great heights of eloquence. The climax of his speech was when he spoke of the world-old struggle between right and wrong. I was swept off my feet for the moment and seemed to see in his face something of the genius of Pinturicchio. Now I wonder if I was not befooled both as to the value of Lincoln's utterance and as to his kinship with the great Italian artist. After all I do not know what is right and wrong; and I do not believe any one else does. I see that people get worked up into furies over what they think is right and wrong, and kill each other on account of it. Later ages view the matter as of no importance; and the lives that are lost in the struggle are as forgotten as the mult.i.tudinous leaves which bestrew the ground of an autumnal forest. I fear I am in a very bad state of mind. It is true, as you intimate in your letter, that I am pa.s.sing through a certain humiliation of spirit; and I am thus inclined to speculate on the value of all truths and philosophies. I seem to see that material things control truths and influence our human natures in every way. Our experience demonstrates this fact. And in the case of Douglas and Lincoln, Douglas is quick to sense the moralistic hypocrisy with which the Republicans are draping their trafficking ambitions. But, on the other hand, I believe that Lincoln is as honest in his desire to keep slavery out of the territories as Douglas is honest in his plan to let the territories decide the matter for themselves. Both of these men are ambitious. Lincoln is of the industrial faith which is backboning the Republican party, and Douglas is of the vaguer and less materialistic faith which for so long has appealed to American Democracy in terms and promises of all kinds of freedoms and independencies.... I would give my life almost to see you again, but somehow I do not know how to bring it about, while at the same time I am living in hope that it may be so, and trusting that you will see me in a different light, and that I can give you a.s.surances which will justify your vision. I am not very well and have been consulting a physician, since coming West, who seems to think that my nerves are in bad condition and that I am worn by striving and by life. It is curious too that Douglas, though bulky and fat, seems to me a tired man. Perhaps both of us have lost the way; and it may be true that later he will have the true vision as I did in you. I wish you could call me back to you. My mind wavers as I write. Affectionately, James."

With the exchange of these letters I merged my feelings into other things. The roar of Illinois and of the country tended to keep my mind from brooding on Isabel. There was a melancholy resignation in the words of Lincoln upon his own defeat for the Senatorship, which were in key with my own grief and helped me to sublimate it. He had written to a friend who chanced to show me the letter: "It gave me a hearing on the great and durable questions of the age, which I could have had in no other way; and though I now sink out of view and shall be forgotten I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone."

The cause of civil liberty! Had not Douglas stood for this too? He had won against the terrific opposition of the Buchanan administration. He had fought the slave const.i.tution of Kansas and he had beaten down in this campaign the enmity which had risen up around him because he had fought that const.i.tution. The Republicans were exceedingly glad that Douglas' contest had divided the support of his own party. They had no thanks for him for what he had done for civil liberty in that regard.

They were glad of his election over Lincoln for the sinister reason that Douglas' triumph, since Douglas was almost at one with Lincoln as to the matter of slavery, meant a decline and a division of the Democratic party as a whole. At the same time there was talk now of Lincoln for the Presidency. But Lincoln did not think he was worthy of the honor.

Lincoln was writing and saying: "What is the use of talking of me whilst we have such men as Seward and Chase, and everybody knows them, and scarcely anybody outside of Illinois knows me; besides, as a matter of justice, is it not due to them? I admit I am ambitious and would like to be President.... But there is no such good luck in store for me as the Presidency of these United States." There was a pathos about this man Lincoln which won my heart.

I spent some evenings now with Aldington and Abigail. We drove out to see the Douglas property south of the town. A horse-car line was being built from Randolph Street to 12th Street, but beyond that was the waste of sand and of scrub oaks, and the land which Douglas had all but lost in financing himself in this campaign. I was ready to help Douglas with money if he would accept it from me; but just now he was not an easy man to find, and he did not come to me.

The trial and execution of John Brown was another thunderclap. And Abigail showed me what was being said about it. A certain Henry Th.o.r.eau, a strange, radical soul living in the woods near Concord, Ma.s.sachusetts, had compared John Brown to Christ. "Some eighteen hundred years ago," Th.o.r.eau said, "Christ was crucified; this morning perchance Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of the chain which is not without its links. He is not old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.... I foresee the time when a painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject. The poet will sing it, the historian will record it; and with the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown."

Could it be possible that this Captain Brown should have his Pinturicchio? Well, might it not be so since Victor Hugo, living in exile, had also given Brown an apotheosis? Abigail also had Walt Whitman's _Leaves of Gra.s.s_, who was preaching the doctrine of brotherhood, democracy, resistance to the law.

"What sort of country is this?" I asked Abigail. "Can every one set himself up as a judge of the laws and disobey them if he chooses? If you had heard Douglas' speech you would be convinced that this sort of mania will cease or there will be war. Even Emerson is among these idealistic rebels, for he says that it is a lack of health to cry 'madman' at a hero as he pa.s.ses. I think the Bible is responsible for much of this turmoil and foolish rebellion, if not all of it. Lincoln founded his campaign upon the Bible: a house divided against itself cannot stand.

And just because Christ is taken as divine, every word and act of his is lived up to by some madman as justification for acts like those of Brown."

In the meantime Abigail had found among her papers the words of Victor Hugo: "He is not a New Englander," she said, "nor an American idealist.

And he says--I'll translate it for you: 'In killing Brown the Southern States have committed a crime which will take its place among the calamities of history. The rupture of the Union will fatally follow the a.s.sa.s.sination of Brown. As to Brown, he was an apostle and a hero. The gibbet has only increased his glory and made him a martyr.'"

Well, was not Douglas a martyr too? Who had done more for his country?

Was Lincoln any more radical than Douglas? Lincoln was defeated to be sure, but Douglas was penalized for what he had said in these debates.

No sooner had he returned to Washington than he found himself deposed from the committee on territories. He was beginning to be a man without a party. He was paying for his ideas.

A book called _Helpers, the Impending Crisis of the South_ had at this time woven itself into the clouds of the gathering storm. It had influenced the election of a Speaker in Congress, for although Lincoln was defeated in Illinois, the Republicans had 25 Senators to 38 Democrats; and the House had 109 Republicans to 128 Democrats. A crisis was indeed impending, with Douglas, the greatest man in the country, dishonored and disarmed by the Southern States. What was growing up, and from what source, which should be the master of the destiny of the country? What was giving it strength but some form of materialism? The phrase "the struggle for existence" crept into our conversation, for Darwin's _The Origin of Species_ had made its appearance this year. We discussed its principles as far as we could make them out from the reports of the book. Every one knew that strength survives. But what is strength? Did the North have strength, or the South? Did moral ideas have strength, or did war? All the while, where did G.o.d come in? Abigail said: "He comes in in this very struggle, defeat and devouring. For all the while there is triumph in the realm of the mind, and mind is G.o.d. My friend, you can think of Douglas and slavery and politics, and impending war; I know of something that overtops them all and can handle all of them as playthings. That is chemistry."

"Where do you get all these things?" I asked Abigail. "From Richard, from books, from publications, everywhere. I am watching this thrilling thing called life and I can laugh when I see you taking Douglas and Lincoln so seriously; for really they amount to very little. Douglas has given some of his land to found a university. What will they teach in it? Anything of Douglas'? What? No, young minds will read philosophy there and study mathematics and chemistry by which engines, bridges, telegraphs, will be constructed. Here is a funny thing. You remember the Atlantic cable was laid last summer. Poor old Buchanan, the mighty President of a mighty Republic, is so ignorant that he doubts the verity of the message which Queen Victoria sent to him. Douglas and Lincoln!