Marse Henry Part 9

A few years later Mrs. Houston applied for a divorce, which in those days had to be granted by the state legislature. Inevitably reports derogatory to her had got abroad. Almost the first tidings of Governor Houston's whereabouts were contained in a letter he wrote from somewhere in the Indian country to my father, a member of the legislature to whom Mrs. Houston had applied, in which he said that these reports had come to his ears. "They are," he wrote, "as false as h.e.l.l. If they be not stopped I will return to Tennessee and have the heart's blood of him who repeats them. A n.o.bler, purer woman never lived. She should be promptly given the divorce she asks. I alone am to blame."

She married again, though not the lover she had discarded. I knew her in her old age--a gentle, placid lady, in whose face I used to fancy I could read lines of sorrow and regret. He, to close this chapter, likewise married again a wise and womanly woman who bore him many children and with whom he lived happy ever after. Meanwhile, however, he had dwelt with the Indians and had become an Indian chief. "Big Drunk, they called me," he said to his familiars. His enemies averred that he brought into the world a whole tribe of half-breeds.

II

Houston was a rare performer before a popular audience. His speech abounded with argumentative appeal and bristled with ill.u.s.trative anecdote, and, when occasion required, with apt repartee.

Once an Irishman in the crowd bawled out, "ye were goin' to sell Texas to England."

Houston paused long enough to center attention upon the quibble and then said: "My friend, I first tried, unsuccessfully, to have the United States take Texas as a gift. Not until I threatened to turn Texas over to England did I finally succeed. There may be within the sound of my voice some who have knowledge of sheep culture. They have doubtless seen a motherless lamb put to the breast of a cross old ewe who refused it suck. Then the wise shepherd calls his dog and there is no further trouble. My friend, England was my dog."

He was inveighing against the New York Tribune. Having described Horace Greeley as the sum of all villainy--"whose hair is white, whose skin is white, whose eyes are white, whose clothes are white, and whose liver is in my opinion of the same color"--he continued: "The a.s.sistant editor of the Try-bune is Robinson--Solon Robinson. He is an Irishman, an Orange Irishman, a redhaired Irishman!" Casting his eye over the audience and seeing quite a sprinkling of redheads, and realizing that he had perpetrated a slip of tongue, he added: "Fellow citizens, when I say that Robinson is a red-haired Irishman I mean no disrespect to persons whose hair is of that color. I have been a close observer of men and women for thirty years, and I never knew a red-haired man who was not an honest man, nor a red-headed woman who was not a virtuous woman; and I give it you as my candid opinion that had it not been for Robinson's red hair he would have been hanged long ago."

His pathos was not far behind his humor--though he used it sparingly.

At a certain town in Texas there lived a desperado who had threatened to kill him on sight. The town was not on the route of his speaking dates but he went out of his way to include it. A great concourse a.s.sembled to hear him. He spoke in the open air and, as he began, observed his man leaning against a tree armed to the teeth and waiting for him to finish.

After a few opening remarks, he dropped into the reminiscential. He talked of the old times in Texas. He told in thrilling terms of the Alamo and of Goliad. There was not a dry eye in earshot. Then he grew personal.

"I see Tom Gilligan over yonder. A braver man never lived than Tom Gilligan. He fought by my side at San Jacinto. Together we buried poor Bill Holman. But for his skill and courage I should not be here to-day.

He--"

There was a stir in front. Gilligan had thrown away his knife and gun and was rushing unarmed through the crowd, tears streaming down his face.

"For G.o.d's sake, Houston," he cried, "don't say another word and forgive me my cowardly intention."

From that time to his death Tom Gilligan was Houston's devoted friend.

General Houston voted against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and as a consequence lost his seat in the Senate. It was thought, and freely said, that for good and all he was down and out. He went home and announced himself a candidate for governor of Texas.

The campaign that followed was of unexampled bitterness. The secession wave was already mounting high. Houston was an uncompromising Unionist.

His defeat was generally expected. But there was no beating such a man in a fair and square contest before the people. When the votes were counted he led his compet.i.tor by a big majority. As governor he refused two years later to sign the ordinance of secession and was deposed from office by force. He died before the end of the war which so signally vindicated his wisdom and verified his forecast.

III

Stephen Arnold Douglas was the Charles James Fox of American politics.

He was not a gambler as Fox was. But he went the other gaits and was possessed of a sweetness of disposition which made him, like Fox, loved where he was personally known. No one could resist the _bonhomie_ of Douglas.

They are not all Puritans in New England. Catch a Yankee off his base, quite away from home, and he can be as gay as anybody. Boston and Charleston were in high party times nearest alike of any two American cities.

Douglas was a Green Mountain boy. He was born in Vermont. As Seargent Prentiss had done he migrated beyond the Alleghanies before he came of age, settling in Illinois as Prentiss had settled in Mississippi, to grow into a typical Westerner as Prentiss into a typical Southerner.

There was never a more absurd theory than that, begot of sectional aims and the sectional spirit, which proposed a geographic alignment of Cavalier and Puritan. When sectionalism had brought a kindred people to blows over the inst.i.tution of African slavery there were Puritans who fought on the Southern side and Cavaliers who fought on the Northern side. What was Stonewall Jackson but a Puritan? What were Custer, Stoneman and Kearny but Cavaliers? Wadsworth was as absolute an aristocrat as Hampton.

In the old days before the war of sections the South was full of typical Southerners of Northern birth. John A. Quitman, who went from New York, and Robert J. Walker, who went from Pennsylvania to Mississippi; James H. Hammond, whose father, a teacher, went from Ma.s.sachusetts to South Carolina. John Slidell, born and bred in New York, was thirty years old when he went to Louisiana. Albert Sidney Johnston, the rose and expectancy of the young Confederacy--the most typical of rebel soldiers--had not a drop of Southern blood in his veins, born in Kentucky a few months after his father and mother had arrived there from Connecticut. The list might be extended indefinitely.

Climate, which has something to do with temperament, has not so much to do with character as is often imagined. All of us are more or less the creatures of environment. In the South after a fashion the duello flourished. Because it had not flourished in the North there rose a notion that the Northerners would not fight. It proved to those who thought it a costly mistake.

Down to the actual secession of 1860-61 the issue of issues--the issue behind all issues--was the preservation of the Union. Between 1820 and 1850, by a series of compromises, largely the work of Mr. Clay, its threatened disruption had been averted. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill put a sore strain upon conservative elements North and South. The Whig Party went to pieces. Mr. Clay pa.s.sed from the scene. Had he lived until the presidential election of 1852 he would have given his support to Franklin Pierce, as Daniel Webster did. Mr. Buchanan was not a General Jackson. Judge Douglas, who sought to play the role of Mr. Clay, was too late. The secession leaders held the whip hand in the Gulf States. South Carolina was to have her will at last. Crash came the shot in Charleston Harbor and the fall of Sumter. Curiously enough two persons of Kentucky birth--Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis--led the rival hosts of war into which an untenable and indefensible system of slave labor, for which the two sections were equally responsible, had precipitated an unwilling people.

Had Judge Douglas lived he would have been Mr. Lincoln's main reliance in Congress. As a debater his resources and prowess were rarely equaled and never surpa.s.sed. His personality, whether in debate or private conversation, was attractive in the highest degree. He possessed a full, melodious voice, convincing fervor and ready wit.

He had married for his second wife the reigning belle of the National Capital, a great-niece of Mrs. Madison, whose very natural ambitions quickened and spurred his own.

It was fated otherwise. Like Clay, Webster, Calhoun and Blaine he was to be denied the Presidency. The White House was barred to him. He was not yet fifty when he died.

Tidings of his death took the country by surprise. But already the sectional battle was on and it produced only a momentary impression, to be soon forgotten amid the overwhelming tumult of events. He has lain in his grave now nearly sixty years. Upon the legislation of his time his name was writ first in water and then in blood. He received less than his desert in life and the historic record has scarcely done justice to his merit. He was as great a party leader as Clay. He could hold his own in debate with Webster and Calhoun. He died a very poor man, though his opportunity for enrichment by perfectly legitimate means were many. It is enough to say that he lacked the business instinct and set no value upon money; scrupulously upright in his official dealing; holding his senatorial duties above all price and beyond the suspicion of dirt.

Touching a matter which involved a certain outlay in the winter of 1861, he laughingly said to me: "I haven't the wherewithal to pay for a bottle of whisky and shall have to borrow of Arnold Harris the wherewithal to take me home."

His wife was a glorious creature. Early one morning calling at their home to see Judge Douglas I was ushered into the library, where she was engaged setting things to rights. My entrance took her by surprise. I had often seen her in full ballroom regalia and in becoming out-of-door costume, but as, in gingham gown and white ap.r.o.n, she turned, a little startled by my sudden appearance, smiles and blushes in spite of herself, I thought I had never seen any woman so beautiful before. She married again--the lover whom gossip said she had thrown over to marry Judge Douglas--and the story went that her second marriage was not very happy.

IV

In the midsummer of 1859 the burning question among the newsmen of Washington was the Central American Mission. England and France had displayed activity in that quarter and it was deemed important that the United States should sit up and take notice. An Isthmian ca.n.a.l was being considered.

Speculation was rife whom Mr. Buchanan would send to represent us. The press gang of the National Capital was all at sea. There was scarcely a Democratic leader of national prominence whose name was not mentioned in that connection, though speculation from day to day eddied round Mr.

James S. Rollins, of Missouri, an especial friend of the President and a most accomplished public man.

At the height of excitement I happened to be in the library of the State Department. I was on a step-ladder in quest of a book when I heard a messenger say to the librarian: "The President is in the Secretary's room and wants to have Mr. Dimitry come there right away." An inspiration shot through me like a flash. They had chosen Alexander Dimitry for the Central American Mission.

He was the official translator of the Department of State. Though an able and learned man he was not in the line of preferment. He was without political standing or backing of any sort. At first blush a more unlikely, impossible appointment could hardly be suggested. But--so on the instant I reasoned--he was peculiarly fitted in his own person for the post in question. Though of Greek origin he looked like a Spaniard.

He spoke the Spanish language fluently. He had the procedure of the State Department at his finger's ends. He was the head of a charming domestic fabric--his daughters the prettiest girls in Washington. Why not?

I climbed down from my stepladder and made tracks for the office of the afternoon newspaper for which I was doing all-round work. I was barely on time, the last forms being locked when I got there. I had the editorial page opened and inserted at the top of the leading column a double-leaded paragraph announcing that the agony was over--that the Gordian knot was cut--that Alexander Dimitry had been selected as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Central American States.

It proved a veritable sensation as well as a notable scoop. To increase my glory the correspondents of the New York dailies scouted it. But in a day or two it was officially confirmed. General Ca.s.s, the Secretary of State, sent for me, having learned that I had been in the department about the time of the consultation between the President, himself and Mr. Dimitry.

"How did you get this?" he asked rather sharply.

"Out of my inner consciousness," I answered with flippant familiarity.

"Didn't you know that I have what they call second sight?"

The old gentleman laughed amiably. "It would seem so," he said, and sent me about my business without further inquiry.

V

In the National Capital the winter of 1860-61 was both stormy and nebulous. Parties were at sea. The Northerners in Congress had learned the trick of bullying from the Southerners. In the Senate, Chandler was a match for Toombs; and in the House, Thaddeus Stevens for Keitt and Lamar. All of them, more or less, were playing a game. If sectional war, which was incessantly threatened by the two extremes, had been keenly realized and seriously considered it might have been averted. Very few believed that it would come to actual war.