Children of the Market Place Part 27

Douglas wishes without ostentation to make himself clear in his friendship and support of Lincoln. No envy, no pique, no chagrin. He has often prophesied this war. For years he has warned the country against sectionalism. He does not now say, I told you so. The war has come. He is for the North, as he told the South he would be if elected himself.

He is against disunion with all his heart. His health is broken; he has no future on this earth except to work to bring peace, and to win the South to save the Union. And he labors like a t.i.tan to these ends.

I waver in my plans to go to Washington to see Lincoln inaugurated. In any event I shall devour the report of the proceedings. I cannot keep my mind off the event. I cannot wait to see Douglas to express to him my great admiration, my deep affection. Yet I fear he is beyond the reach of such things. What does he care whether I admire him or not, or whether any one loves him or not? Such things cannot touch him now. But I would see him again. And I would see Lincoln too.

On the morning I am to start I leave my house in Chicago; then I return to my porch and think, holding my satchel. I start again, force myself to go. I drag myself on to the train. Things are changed now. I can go by rail all the way. No need of boats and ca.n.a.ls in this late February of 1861.

Washington is in a thrill. It is expected that the crack of a rifle from a tree or a housetop will fell the tall Lincoln from Illinois, as he faces the crowd to take the oath of office. But all was peace. The South only intended to go its way and let Lincoln do what he could, if anything. I stood with the rapt ma.s.s close to the stand where I could see every face on the platform. Lincoln came, Douglas came. Douglas was giving notice to the country that he was hand in hand with Lincoln for the Union.

Lincoln has no place to put his tall silk hat, brand new for this occasion. Douglas, gallantly not seriously, thoughtfully not showily, with grace and taste, takes Lincoln's hat and holds it while Lincoln reads his inaugural address.

Lincoln is now becomingly dressed. He is past fifty-two; no gray hairs, no beard, looks clean shaven and youthful, like a man of thirty, prematurely old. He is swarthy, wrinkled. He is powerful, rested, self-possessed, masterful. The cadence of his voice is full of kindness and conciliation. Its rhythms speak in sympathy and respect for the feelings of every one. Some of his words move me like great music. He says in closing so clearly, so beautifully, sounding as of silver trumpets blown by archangels:

"The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battle field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be touched, by the better angels of our nature."

I see Pinturicchio in his face. I hear the reverberations of Beethoven's dreams in his voice. This man is kindred to the greatest souls.

I know about the mystic chords myself. I have been in battle. I fought for Texas. Be that cause good or bad, it has now blossomed in me for the Union. I have followed Douglas for nationalism and progress. I am still with him, and the more so because Douglas is with Lincoln.

The crowd is moved. The great event is over. The railsplitter has disappeared to that house of state from whence he shall never emerge carefree and happy. And Douglas goes to consult with him, to aid him.

Lincoln depends now on Douglas, cannot dispense with him. They have known each other for a quarter of a century, in that Illinois of the West which Douglas prophesied would hold the balance of power in any crisis of the North and the South. That prophecy is fulfilled. It would have been fulfilled by giving Douglas to the Presidency. It had given Lincoln instead; and the prophecy is fulfilled.

Lincoln shows to Douglas his call for 75,000 men to put down the rebellion. Douglas approves of the wording of the order, but says it should call for 200,000 men. He knows the South!

"What do you wish me to do?" he asked Lincoln. Lincoln thinks it would be well if Douglas used his great influence to appeal to doubtful sections, or wavering peoples. In obedience to this suggestion Douglas sets off for Illinois.

I have preceded him. I know what war means. I know the processes, the psychologies, the technique. Bands are playing, men are enlisting and marching in Chicago. Orators are talking, women are singing and sewing.

Shrouds and coffins must be made as well as caps and cloaks. Iron must be cast, nitrate dug, thousands of laborers set to work to hammer, to nail, to mold, to fashion engines of destruction. Nurses must be trained, for there will be blood to stanch, wounds to dress, and the dying to comfort. That Captain Grant whom I saw in St. Louis years ago has come to Springfield from Galena, left his tannery for the war. He is training some regiments for the service. Amos, Reverdy's boy, has joined the army, and Jonas too. Reverdy writes me about it. Sarah is full of anger, resentment, terror, and sorrow against this huge thing that has broken over her hearth and taken her sons. I am too old to fight. But I have money to give. I throw myself into the work with the hope of forgetting myself, my losses, my loneliness, my life. What can I do for Douglas? I have this wealth. He is now broken financially. When he returns to Chicago I must open my purse to him. What other use have I for money but to give it to this war, or to Douglas?

Douglas comes back from southern Illinois where he has been speaking. He is going to address a Chicago audience. It is not likely that they will hoot him now. After some difficulty I find him. His face lights up with a certain gladness as he sees me. But he is a dying eagle that ruffles its feathers when food is offered it; then sinks back upon its broken wing when it sees that it cannot eat. What is my friendship now to him?

What is any earthly thing to him? He bears the sorrows of earth without the consolation that any Heaven can cure them. His voice is hoa.r.s.e, his face is worn and streaked with agony. His eyes look through me, over me, beyond me. He sees me, but what am I? His hair is gray--much grayer than mine. He is only 48 but he is an old man. He has no place in life now but to save the Union. All his strength and activity have come to this simple faith, as simple as the faith of a child. He reaches back into the years when he was 21 and first came to Illinois, to that substance of his being, always inherent and of his genius, which was and is now compact of nationalism, progress, intelligence, the firm union of sovereign states. This is all he has to sustain him now. He has laid up this food for the last hours, for this crisis of his soul. All souls must lay up something spiritual, even as they must lay up food for the winter of life, for the bleak bright hours of the soul's sterile fight.

And this old love which led him to Jackson when I was there with Dorothy, which led him to Jackson for the great privilege of looking into the old hero's face is all that sustains Douglas now. He is poor in purse but rich in service and love; he can never be President if he wished to be. This new era will take all his devotion, but it will not even make him Senator again. But what need? The office is nothing now to him. He has no place politically, except as a leader of all men. He is without a party, but he has a country.

I offer him my purse. He smiles and thanks me. No time now to think of his affairs--later perhaps. Something deeper than money friendship is required to arouse the depths of him; and only the depths of him are left. Will I come to hear him speak? I go.

He is on the heights now. The purest fires leap from his being. The eloquence of great truths flows from his lips, along the melodious waves of that voice of thunder. He has become Orpheus; his Isabel is the Union now embodied in the strength, the beauty of the North which he has always wooed and never won until now. The crowd draws toward him, gives its spirit to him, casts its devotion at his feet. He is on the heights.

For Death is near him and Death is the sincerest and most authentic of inspirers. He has nothing to ask now--only that the Union be saved. He has no reproaches for any one except disunionists. He has become impersonal on all things but the Union. I know that the end is near for him. No one can speak so who is not prompted by Death.

He has fallen ill at his hotel in this Chicago that he loved and dowered with a university and linked to the South with a great railroad in the interests of peace and a firmer Union. I go to see him. Mrs. Douglas cannot admit me. He is unconscious of those around him, but his soul is at work. "Telegraph to the President and let the column move on." "Stand for the Union." "The West, this great ..."

I go into the mad streets so grief-stricken, so alone. Dorothy is long dead. Isabel is lost to me. My boy is away. My home is haunted with loneliness. I would be rich if Douglas was to be too. Now he is rich, I am poor; he is poor, I am rich. Men are marching, bugles calling. The city roars. At the foot of Clark Street I see the masts of scores of sailing craft. Chicago has become a great mart.

The June sky is blue and cool, and great white clouds sail through it so indifferently. They were here when I first came to Chicago; here when the French explored the wilderness. Here they are now just the same; and Illinois has more than a million souls, and every heart carries the burden of war. Over them this sky, these clouds. They do not care.

It seems but a few minutes and the words go about the streets: "Douglas is dead." The newsboys cry it soon. I am prepared, but the city is not.

It is shocked and wounded. Douglas is dead! This voice that spoke to us so lately is stilled. The great man who submerged everything of self in a cause of many is no more. I am dumb, a few tears ooze from my eyes; but on I go through the crowds. Now I shall throw myself more than ever into the work of the war. I pa.s.s a theater where speeches are being made. From it I hear a voice singing "Annie Laurie." I stop to look at a sign containing the name of Madam Zante. And I go in to hear her sing. I draw near her to get a seat. It is Zoe!

Zoe! I send up my name by an usher. The word comes back quickly to join her behind the scenes. There she is waiting for me. And we fall into each other's arms and sob. She is all I have left in the world except little Reverdy. I hold her from me. She is majestic, glorious in the maturity of great beauty, intelligence, art. She has long been a singer of note under this name of Madam Zante. What of Fortescue? She ran away from him. What was the explanation of Fortescue's trick? So far as we could guess at it, only that he had used the murder of another woman to get the property that he had learned from Zoe that she had inherited.

But we had no time to talk of this now. "Come with me, Zoe, to my house." And Zoe came. But she was soon off again to nurse in the hospitals.

It is November, 1861. Word comes to us that Reverdy's boy, Amos, has been killed in the battle of Belmont. Douglas has now been in sleep five months; now Amos is a sacrifice to the war. He had joined Captain Grant's army against Sarah's fierce protest. He had gone forth happy and proud. Now he was to rest in the cemetery in Jacksonville near the dust of my father, near the dust of Major Hardin, and Lamborn.

And so it was that Zoe and I stood side by side touching the dead hand of Amos. Sarah was too grief-stricken to be surprised at Zoe's reappearance in our lives. She wailed incessantly: "What is free territory to me? My boy is dead! What is the end of slavery to me? My boy is dead! There was no use for this war, no use, no use! It needed never to be. If they had only listened to Douglas. What are Lincoln and Jeff Davis thinking of? My boy is dead."

And for nights after returning to Chicago I heard Sarah's voice crying: "my boy! my boy!"

The battle of Gettysburg has been fought. That single thing that makes or destroys every man had come upon General Lee and commanded him to follow. In his case it was audacity. He had invaded Pennsylvania and been hurled back. And not long after I heard that Isabel's husband had been killed in that terrible battle. She did not write me. The silence of life had come over us.

I read the Gettysburg address of Lincoln. It moved me like a symphony.

But I did not believe it to be true. This government was not conceived in liberty. It was not dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. We were not engaged in a strife which tested whether this government so conceived and so dedicated could survive. The South could have set up a separate government and the same liberty and the same equality which informed the union would have remained intact. Isabel's husband, and the other thousands who had died there had not consecrated the ground unless the Union meant something more than a union. It had to mean liberty and more than the emanc.i.p.ation of the negroes for that ground to be consecrated. And a few years later its glory was detracted from by the machinations of merchants who grew fat on the blood of that battle. And yet I was moved by Lincoln's words more profoundly than by anything that I had ever read.

CONCLUSION

It is April 23d, 1900. Three hundred and thirty-six years ago to-day a man named Shakespeare was born. He lived with some gnawing at his heart, wrote some plays, and died. He was wise enough, I fancy, to see that the joke is on those who remain in life, not those who leave it.

Eighty-seven years ago to-day Stephen A. Douglas was born. He lived, stormed about these States, talked of great principles, was tossed aside by a squall on the universe of things, and died. It is now thirty-nine years since he summed up his life's wisdom in the words: "Tell my children to obey the laws and support the Const.i.tution." That was about the summation of Socrates' wisdom, this matter of the laws, as he lay in prison opposite the Acropolis. He refused to walk forth free, except by the law. If I live until June the eighteenth I shall be eighty-five years of age. On the score of age I should feel much wiser than Douglas who died at forty-eight and Socrates who died at sixty. I feel that I am a good deal like Shakespeare. I have very little respect for the laws--at least for the written laws. I am not so sure about the higher law, if I am left to determine it. But in truth I am a good deal in doubt as to what is right, and what is wrong, what good and what evil.

And I never know what the law is. I have wondered about it all my life.

I have thought at times I knew, but I have been for the most part betrayed and fooled.

And why not now? Miss Sharpe, delicate, spiritual, active of mind, lives at the boarding house where I do. She thinks I am a fine old gentleman.

She likes my society. I am to her taste interesting because I am experienced. I am richer intellectually than any man could be at an earlier age. She reads to me, often reads to me:

"Grow old along with me, The best is yet to be, The last of life for which the first was made."

How glorious is old age! She comforts me, makes me contented with my state at times; she makes me forget how I feel when I rise in the morning, stiff, bewildered, sometimes wondering where I am. She helps me to establish my mind when it thinks of too many things at once, and cannot choose for paltering and fumbling. I walk with a cane; but legs are nothing. The soul is the prize, the flower. My food does not digest itself well; my heart flutters and stumbles; my eyes refuse to work even with the best of gla.s.ses. The doctor says I have an old man's arteries.

I know when my memory falters that it is due to the brain which has shrunk, and to the incrusted arteries which do not carry enough blood cells to the brain to give me memory. Still the best is yet to be, and this is now it. I think the law of old age will get me eventually just as the law of the new era caught Douglas and destroyed him.

It is thirty years now since the great Chicago fire swept my fortune away. I saved one lot out of the wreck. A skysc.r.a.per wanted it to complete its necessary ground s.p.a.ce. So I leased it; and the rental keeps me. The lease will be out in 1989--but no matter for that. Between 1871 and 1890 I had a hard time of it. I tried to repair my fortune and couldn't do it. Then the building of skysc.r.a.pers struck Chicago, and I came into an income through this lease. I have a good room at the boarding house and all I wish of everything. Perhaps I shall revise my will and leave something to Miss Sharpe. I should like to depart from the customary bequests to hospitals and colleges. If the University founded by Douglas had not been taken over by the money made by the Standard Oil Company I might give something to it. Some say that the University stands for spiritual hardness, a Darwinian scientific which distinguished Douglas, but I am not sure. Yes, I believe I shall revise my will in favor of Miss Sharpe. Sometimes I suspect that she wants to marry me. She talks of nothing but the soul, as Isabel did in Rome. I am sure I have plenty of soul. I have no one else to give my money to but Miss Sharpe. My boy died in the middle sixties.

As for the rest, they are all gone. Zoe and I lived happily together until the rage of the influenza in 1889; then she died. Mr. Williams, Abigail, Aldington pa.s.sed away and were buried in a cemetery about a mile north of the river. Then their bodies were removed somewhere, for the cemetery was turned into a park. Lincoln Park it is now. Reverdy, Sarah, gave up the battle years ago. They went to sleep by the side of their son, Amos, who was killed in the battle of Belmont. Their other children are scattered to unknown quarters. I know not if they live.

A strange thing happened yesterday. Mr. Williams' grandson called upon me. He is going to South Africa with a load of mules for the British.

Almost every one in America wants the Boers put down. He asked me to go along and for a moment I took him seriously. The adventurer in me arose.

Then I became conscious of my stiff legs. Besides was I ever much of an adventurer after all? Why did I not travel in the splendid forties and the leisurely fifties? Still I believe I have had as much out of life as Cecil Rhodes. He started out to be rich. So did I. He got diamonds and gold. I got land. He wished to see England world-triumphant. I wanted to see America an ocean-bound republic. I followed Douglas. He was inspired by Ruskin. For Ruskin had fired young Rhodes at Oxford with these words: "England must found colonies as fast and as far as she is able, formed of her most energetic and worthy men; seizing every piece of fruitful waste ground she can set her foot on, and there teaching her colonists that their chief virtue is to be fidelity to their country, and that their first aim is to be to advance the power of England by land and by sea."

Accordingly Rhodes had set out to become rich; he plotted the supremacy of England in South Africa. And now there is war on President Kruger of the Transvaal, who was at the head of its affairs in the years when Douglas was settling Oregon and California and talking of popular sovereignty. Gold was discovered there, as it was in California; and there was a great exodus of English; and now the question is whether the Ruskin idea will triumph or Kruger's idea, which is derived from the Bible, shall triumph. The Bible is used in many ways and on all sides of everything. Kruger is an abolitionist concerned with abolishing Great Britain. But I think Great Britain will abolish him, and find plenty of Biblical authority for it. Many sacred hymns will be sung, and G.o.d will be loudly praised when the end comes.

Rhodes is using his great wealth to a.s.sist England in her war against the Boer Republic. He has advocated from a youth up the formation of a secret society with the following objects, as expressed by himself: "The extension of British rule throughout the world.... The colonization by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labor, and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the valley of the Euphrates, the islands of Cypress and Candia, the whole of South America, the islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and j.a.pan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire."

A large l.u.s.t for land, dwarfing to Douglas' call to American supremacy on the North American continent, the expulsion of Great Britain therefrom, and from all dominance in the Western Hemisphere. It was rather costly to Douglas to take over Texas; and the retention of the old land of the Southern States was the nation's crisis which killed him. For any land-l.u.s.t that Douglas had, he has paid. Will Rhodes pay for his l.u.s.t? No, I think he will be paid for it. For he has been a success. He has seen his hopes for England all but realized. So far as the United States is concerned England has recovered it. She rules us in trade, literature, in thought. We elect our own rulers, to be sure; but England controls them, though we pay their salaries.

However, I shall not go to South Africa. I know that I may die in an instant; and though, if dying at sea, I might sink to the depth, where something of Dorothy remains, I would as soon be reduced to ashes and scattered on the sh.o.r.es of this lake that I have known so long. That would be symbolical of my purposeless and wasted life.

The day being fine, this being Douglas' birthday, I have come from my boarding house to the little park which bears his name, and where stands the column to his memory, crowned with a bronze counterfeit of him, standing forthright and intrepid, as I have often seen him in life.