Children of the Market Place

I was now more lonely than I had ever been in my life, more lonely than I was on the farm. Then I had youth and expectation of wonderful things. I had ebullient spirits which were excited by simple things, the new country, the prospect of growing rich. Now my spirits were on the level of the prairie itself and I could look over the whole of life. I had nothing in particular with which to employ my energies except taking care of the riches that I had acquired. Riches had no meaning to me now. They brought nothing that moderate means would not buy. What I needed was some one in my life. I had lost Dorothy. My boy was away at school. Isabel was denied me. If she had only rejected me so that my will had been raised against her. Then I should have had passion for my thought and action. But it was with gentleness and understanding that she bade me adieu.

Douglas was left to me, but what could he do for me or I for him? He had been my friend with that loyalty which characterized him from the time that he had taken me from the clutches of the law for killing Lamborn. We had seen much of each other along the way. Did loneliness ever come over him? He had married again, but was he happy? He was living a life of much social brilliancy with the new Mrs. Douglas in Washington. But was he happy? Or was he drowning disappointment, the tragic sense of life's inadequacy, in abandoned diversions?

Like myself, he had wished for riches and attained them. He had lost his riches. I still possessed mine. But I was no happier for that. He had married a woman who was a slave owner. On my part, I had been made kindred to the slave blood by the marriage of my father. He wished for land, for wealth, and had taken a purse to marry an octoroon. Douglas had wished for land for his country and had paralleled the course of the slavocracy to get it. I had killed a man because of Zoe; then Zoe had disappeared and a part of the accursed land which had come to me through my father had passed to the unknown Fortescue, who had appeared and disappeared from my life like a thief. I had married Dorothy because my will drove me to it in overcoming her opposition to the fact of Zoe. I had loved Isabel and lost her. Douglas had loved the North and the Great West. Was he to lose them?

Thus Douglas and I seemed to have arrived at the same place in life. He was broken in fortune and without a party. I was burdened with what more and more seemed to me a tainted fortune. And I was as isolated as he was. I could not help but think of him constantly, of his long years of labor, his great struggles, his heroic fight, his undaunted courage. Could anything lift him out of his complication to honor and freedom? He was the most talked of man for the Presidency. If he could only win that now and stand as a master man for nationalism, union, progress, peace, popular sovereignty, all the great liberties for which he had battled. He had already failed twice to be nominated. If now he could not win the prize, what would be his future as against the growing power of the Republican party?

As my heart was set upon Douglas' ambition I set off for Charleston, South Carolina, in April. Anything to alleviate my regret over Isabel.

When I arrived there I sought Douglas and found him deep in consultation with his advisers. He was unmistakably confronted with the severest contest of his life. He was delighted to see me and got me admission to the convention hall. I had tried to come as a delegate; but Illinois had split in a fight over her own son, and there were two delegations, one for and one against Douglas. And I could be on neither.

Douglas' birthday, April the 23d, saw the opening of the fateful deliberations. He was destined to have no peace and no rest. Others might find shelter from the storm. He was compelled after his great labors in the years before to walk through the lightning and have it gather about his head. His doctrines on slavery had alienated the whole South from him. But he had the West, save California and Oregon, which acted with the South. Yet he was their son too. He had strength all through the North, because of the West. That West which he had done so much to create, which he had prophesied would stand as a balance between the North and the South, was for its son and its prophet—save California and Oregon.

But of the whole thirty-three states, seventeen were against him. The West fought the South and fought for Douglas. The South made a common cause of opposition to the North and the West. But the new Giant put through the Douglas principles in the platform.

Then Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas seceded from the convention. The West had won but it had lost the South. And now in the balloting Douglas could not be nominated. He needed 202 votes, he could only poll 152-1/2. The heat grew intense. The delegates, trying to accommodate their interests, wandered about the old city talking seriously and not excitedly. There was little drinking. The local clergy offered up prayers for the success of the convention, for peaceful solutions. Balloting and balloting! No choice! The twenty-third of May arrived and the convention, exhausted and half disgusted, adjourned to meet in Baltimore, June 18th. Douglas had not been nominated. His party had split just as the Republicans had anticipated when they were congratulating themselves on Douglas' success in the Senatorial contest with Lincoln.

Meantime, the seceders went to another hall, adopted a platform that suited them on the slavery matter, and nominated John C. Breckenridge.

I did not go up to Baltimore to see the end of this melancholy business. I followed the proceedings in the press. Delegates from the state delegations which had seceded appeared there on the scene to gain admission. They were admitted where pledged to Douglas; upon this decision a second secession took place. Then they nominated Douglas; but he was now like a runner who has been tripped along the way, and who stumbles spent and breathless over the goal. He had conjured the West. It was strong enough to adopt his principles, but it could not prevent the convention from dividing. It could nominate him, but could not hold to him the states he needed in this, his greatest trial. And among his bitterest enemies was that Jefferson Davis whom I had seen in the Mexican War and who was now Senator from Mississippi. My hatred of the South nearly reached self-contempt for the way in which my life had been united to its feeling. All my thinking of the country and the terrible events which followed the monumental folly of not giving Douglas a united nomination dates from these days.

On my way west I read in the press of the verbal clash between this Jefferson Davis and Douglas in the Senate. With an insulting inflection Davis had said: "I have a declining respect for platforms. I would sooner have an honest man on any sort of a rickety platform you could construct than to have a man I did not trust, on the best platform which could be made."

Douglas had retorted with telling effect: "If the platform is not a matter of much consequence, why press that question to the disruption of the party?"

Why? But the South had done it. And Davis had done it.

Who should call upon me the next morning after my arrival in Chicago but Yarnell? I had not seen him now for several years. And he was a delegate to the Republican convention.

"How is this?" I asked him. "I remember yet what you said to me about slavery when we came to America more than twenty-five years ago." "Oh," he replied, "that makes no difference. The Republican party is not going to disturb slavery where it is. It only proposes to keep it out from what it isn't. The platform will refer to the Declaration of Independence, and all that. But it will also have a tariff plank. The Democrats have beaten the Morrill tariff bill; and we want a tariff—Pennsylvania wants a tariff for iron. And we will nominate Seward and elect him."

"What if the Southern States secede?"

"That suits us. That will give the Republican party complete control. With the Southern States out, we will have the Senate and the House as well as the President, and we can dominate everything, and gather in all the offices—postmasters, marshals, Federal judges, everything. The northern Democrats will have nothing to say. Your friend Douglas will have nothing to say. He is already a played-out horse. He won't be able to even whinny in the Senate. And the world and the fullness thereof will be ours."

"How about Seward being too radical?"

"No, he isn't. Look at what it comes to. Kansas will come in as a free state. The work is already done for that. California came in as a free state. Minnesota, Oregon, Wisconsin, have all come in as free states under the Democratic party and with Douglas on top as Senator. There won't be any more slave states no matter who is elected."

"That's what I think."

"I only say this to show that this talk of the radicalism of Seward is nonsense. He spoke of the higher law, to be sure, but Douglas has been talking of nature and nature's God. What's the difference?"

"No difference except that Douglas' law of nature means something and the higher law means nothing. We can see what the law of nature is; we don't know what the higher law is, unless you can fathom the mind of the fanatic; of Thoreau, of John Brown, and Garrison. I will tell you something: Lincoln of this state is not so far apart from Douglas. He has rejected the higher law of Seward in a recent letter. He is for the irrepressible conflict, because it is the same thing as the house divided against itself. He must stand by his own doctrine—and the Bible. He is as practical as Douglas."

"That's the point," said Yarnell. "The Abolitionists don't like Lincoln. He said right here in the debates that he was not in favor of giving the nigger a vote or making him a citizen. He isn't for the Declaration of Independence when it comes to things like that. But he is of no moment. He's not known. He's only a local man. He's a country jake, isn't he?"

"Rather so."

"That's what I hear. He's had no experience. Seward, you know, has been Governor of New York, and Senator. He's a famous man. The political machine is back of him, and lots of money in New York City."

Then Yarnell went on to tell me that he himself was connected with the street railways in New York, and that the railways were backing Seward. Wall Street, however, was a little nervous. It didn't want any man elected President who would drive the South into secession. No use to let iron drive out cotton. Let us have both cotton and iron.

We went out to walk through the city. Yarnell was amazed at the growth of Chicago. We wandered over to the Wigwam where the convention was to be held. It was a huge frame structure, seating ten thousand people. The city was swarming with delegates and visitors. All the hotels were filled; the saloons roared with drinking crowds. How many thousand cigars were lighted every minute! Stubs decorated the floors, the spittoons, the sidewalks. The houses of ill fame were riotous with men let loose upon a holiday.

At the Richmond House there was much champagne, for that was the headquarters of the New York crowd. Yarnell took me here and introduced me about to his friends. He was well known. He had money for the occasion, and was esteemed in that light. It was a different crowd here from that I had seen in St. Louis years before, but its spirit was the same. "If you don't nominate Seward, where will you get your money?" Yarnell was saying this here and there. Some one at our side says: "This railsplitter Lincoln, who carries the purse for him?" "The tariff carries it," is the answer. "There's more money in the tariff than all that Seward can rake together." "Very well, Seward is for the tariff. Give us the tariff and Seward, then we will have the tariff money and Seward's money too."

Yarnell and I left the Richmond House on our way to look again at the crowds. Bands of music were playing everywhere. Men were marching. Tom Hyer, the great prize fighter, was leading a club of rough and handy men. They were preceded by a noisy band. They shouted. The staring crowd shouted. Hyer had come for the purpose of lifting a lusty voice for Seward at the critical moment. He and his men had good fists too to use in a case of doubt on a question of votes or of a right of entrance to the hall. They pass, the band dies away; other marchers follow. Some paraders are carrying rails bearing the banner with the words "Honest Old Abe" That reminds me of something. We go over to the office of the Chicago Times to see in the windows some rails which Lincoln split when he was working on the bottoms of the Sangamon River, thirty years before.

"I should think Greeley would be for Lincoln," I said to Yarnell. "I saw the Tribune yesterday and it slants toward Edward Bates of Missouri."

"That old slicker," sneered Yarnell. "Why who can depend on him? He's been for every one and everything, and then against them. He hates Seward. We kept him off the New York delegation. Now he's got on the delegation from Oregon, got some one's proxy, and he's here to make trouble. But it won't do him any good. We will put Seward over on the first ballot."

We came to the Times' window and looked at the rails. "Well," I said, "if they nominate Lincoln, we'll have another log-cabin campaign."

"Yes, that's what it will come to. What's all this talk anyway about Honest Old Abe? Every man is honest enough, and no man in politics much more honest than another. We don't need that kind of dramatics to elect Seward. There is enough to the man to elect him. We mean to have a clean-cut, high-toned campaign with a great man to lead us, who is known to the whole country. The day is past for this log-cabin business. It's now a stone front and champagne."

I went back with Yarnell to the Richmond House, then turned my own way to study the crowds. Chicago was a carnival of unlicensed spirits. What thousands of blue flies already swarmed upon the fresh carcass of this new political party! A few years before and it was poor, but of flesh that was fresh. Now it was beginning to stink. Tariffs, railroads, all powerful moneyed interests, special privileges, were settling upon it, blowing it full of eggs. All the old Whigs now long hungry, the old Federalists in disguise, the old plotters and schemers long defeated, were here. The motley elements that Douglas had derided as anti-Masonics, Know-nothings, Abolitionists, Spiritualists, where were they? Sunk in silence, out shouted, out talked, outnumbered by office seekers and monopolists. Tom Hyer was bawling, Garrison could not be heard. The New England manufacturers were here. Whittier was singing their songs and did not know it. I began to think of Rabelais, and of life as gluttony, eating and drinking, digestion and evacuation. I had a vision of all these hordes of men dead at last, their buttocks exposed to driving rains, upturned to a dark sky which breathed futility and contempt upon ended plots and hungers!

That night I started out again with Abigail and Aldington. There had not been anything like the same amount of drinking at Charleston. Harlots staggered through the streets, their arms interlocked with those of howling men. Tom Hyer passed, leading his gang of toughs, the gayly liveried band swelling the air with great horns and drums. Again the rails and banners for "Honest Old Abe." Rumors caught us as we passed: the Germans were for Lincoln; Greeley wanted Douglas elected President and was scheming to defeat Seward for the nomination. We went to the Richmond House. I wanted Abigail and Aldington to see the smoking, drinking, gabbling delegates from New York. We ran into Yarnell. He was preoccupied, and was a little in drink. He stood with us for a moment, and then was buttonholed and taken away. We returned to the streets to watch the marchers.

Yarnell was good enough to get tickets for Abigail, Aldington, and me, asking us with a half smile not to cheer for any one unless we cheered for Seward.

It was in the air that Seward would be nominated. Greeley said so, but he was really fighting Seward. We spied the bald head and bespectacled eyes of the great editor moving about the Oregon delegates. The tumult and the passion of the Charleston convention were not as dramatic as this. These men were here to destroy the Democratic party, to take control of the government. The air was of concentrated passion and will. There was a declaration of principles to be formulated out of sagacity and dramaturgy. Principles were to be observed but baits to be dangled; factions were to be conciliated, relative claims adjusted; the higher thought of the nation respected; radicalism tickled but not embraced; wrong censured, but needless offense avoided. Hence state rights got a sop; the tariff was advocated and the Pacific railroad; the harmless Declaration of Independence was quoted at large. Everybody had used it for more than eighty years—why not this platform?

The balloting begins. The expectation is intense. All of us have caught the crowd spirit, the infection of the mob. New England is polled first. What is the matter? She does not give Seward the fully expected vote. Very well! New York is reached. William M. Everetts, hook-nosed and dished of mouth, plumps New York seventy votes for Seward. The convention recovers from its fear. All is going well for Seward after all. What of Pennsylvania and her tariff? She has fifty-seven votes; fifty and one half of these go to a favorite son, Simon Cameron. This is a mere compliment; Pennsylvania will come to Seward now that her favorite son has been honored. Illinois is reached and votes for Lincoln. There are cheers. But he is the favorite son of Illinois. These are his people. The next ballot they will go to Seward. Indiana is reached. All of her vote goes to Lincoln. There are great cheers. But Lincoln split rails once in Indiana. This is a complimentary vote too. Ohio is reached. She has two favorite sons, Chase and McLean. Missouri is reached. Edward Bates is her son and gets the vote. What is this vote of Virginia,—fourteen votes out of her twenty-three for Lincoln? Some one near us whispers: "The South hates Seward worse than any one."

At last the whole vote is announced: Seward has 173-1/2; Lincoln 102. The Illinois River breaks loose; the great shouter for Lincoln, hired for the occasion, storms and bawls above the hubbub of the convention. Where is Hyer the prize fighter? He has been out with his gang. Drinking? We do not know. At any rate he is late, has missed one of the psychologies of the convention. After the noise is subsided, we hear that Bates, Greeley's favorite, has forty-eight votes. "Call the roll!" "Call the roll!" shout hundreds of delegates. Men are going mad with anxiety. Arms are waved frantically, delegates rise from their seats and bawl undistinguishable words. Curses and hisses fill the air. The second ballot begins. Why does Pennsylvania deliberate, why does she retire so often to consult her wishes? There is laughter over it. She changes her vote now. Her favorite son, Cameron, gets two; forty-eight go to Lincoln. What is the matter with Seward? We had heard there was plenty of Seward money in Pennsylvania. Yarnell had told me so. Why doesn't the machinery work? Ohio falls off seven votes for Chase; Bates loses thirteen of his Missouri votes. Vermont throws her whole vote to Lincoln, and the Stentor from the Illinois River bottoms raises a thunder of applause. But Tom Hyer has now arrived and the Seward chorus is working.

The vote is announced: Seward has 184-1/2; Lincoln 181; necessary to a choice, 233. Seward is ruined. Tom Hyer is down. The band, the banners are for nothing. All the Seward money is for nothing. To be Governor, Senator, the leading man of the party for years, the great debater of the Senate, the author of the irrepressible conflict, the most dreaded enemy of the South—all this goes up and out in a second like a poor sulphur match in a gale. Seward is ruined. A country lawyer from Springfield, Illinois, once a state legislator, once a Congressman, has killed him in two blows. What has done it? The irrepressible conflict. It has crushed him before it crushed many more, old and young throughout the land. He is too famous. His words are too well known. The house divided against itself is not so well known. Lincoln is obscure. He is a trim new champion of fifty-one years of age, ready after some fifteen or more years of resting and training, for a great fight.

Yet may not Greeley's Bates still come in? A horse not so swiftly running before now has a chance. Where would Seward's strength be thrown now that he cannot use it for himself? Can he throw it to any one? No! For the third ballot gives Seward 180 and Lincoln 231-1/2. But Seward is still holding on. Ohio has been sticking to Chase. The vote is not announced by the chair. But hundreds of pencils have kept the score. And just about as it is to be announced, Ohio throws four votes from Chase to Lincoln. Lincoln is nominated! The West of Douglas has won.

The convention goes mad. The Illinois River roars like waters over a thousand dams. Lake Michigan shouters make the rafters tremble. A cannon is fired from the roof. But no one inside hears it. We go forth to the street. Masses are yelling and crying with delight. Old Abe from Illinois is nominated. Chicago is delirious with joy. From the Tremont House a hundred guns are fired. Processions start; everywhere men are bearing rails. Bands play. Drink flows like sudden freshets. Yarnell passes at a distance. He is staring straight ahead, hurrying somewhere. What is left for Seward, for his supporters? Virginia had been bought, why didn't she deliver? Ohio was fingered for Seward. Why didn't Ohio yield? Pennsylvania had taken quantities of Seward money. Why this ingratitude? What nominated Lincoln? The Seward men have an answer.

The madness of the crowd for railsplitting! The log-cabin tradition! Genius and statesmanship have been set aside for a popular symbol, railsplitting. A party of moral ideas has reverted to claptrap. These are the bitter comments of Seward's beaten army. Then there are curses for Greeley. Greeley has avenged Seward's lifetime enmity. He has slaughtered the great man of the party. Why? The old traitor wants Douglas elected.

The press comments of the country on Lincoln's nomination were exceedingly conflicting. He was written of as the man whom Douglas had beaten two years before, and without other distinction; as lacking in culture, in every way inferior to Seward; as a whangdoodle stump speaker of the second class, and without any known principle. What is this talk of Old Abe Lincoln, Old Uncle Abe, Honest Abe Lincoln? Was he not a log roller in the Illinois legislature of 1836? Had he not been driven from position to position by Douglas in the debates? What is honest about him above other men? Why a nomination on the strength of a deceiving nickname? Is he not for the tariff and loose construction? Has he not been a Whig with all the humbuggery of that party, of log cabins and imperial practices?

The Republican press was more favorable. He was hailed as a man of the people, sprung from the people. On a hurried visit with Douglas, he told me that Lincoln was as able as any man the Republicans had, abler far than Seward; and of great integrity, though he loathed Lincoln's political faith. "I'll carry nearly every northern state against him," said Douglas. "The Union must be saved. I know the South. They will secede if Lincoln is elected. It's utter madness of them to think of this; but mad they are. We must handle them accordingly. Wall Street, New York, is afraid of Lincoln. They don't want their business disturbed by secession or even by a hostile South. Cotton is that strong."

Douglas was full of fight and energy. He intended to canvass the entire country. He was going into the South to point out the dangers of a divided country. "They are terribly mad at me down there. But I have never feared an audience yet. I intend to face them—and win them."

No Presidential nominee had ever made a speaking tour before. Lincoln stayed quietly in Springfield. Seward made a speaking campaign, traveling on a special train. At Springfield he stayed in his car and did not show Lincoln the courtesy of calling upon him. Lincoln, without standing on any pride, went to see Seward, edging his way through the crowd to the car.

Douglas fought everywhere to the last. If in his Senatorial days and before he had been complaisant to the slavocracy, the Charleston convention would not have seceded from him. His course now in the campaign silenced men like Hale and Seward who had nagged him for years with their depreciations and suspicions. He went into Virginia and there while speaking he was heckled by a Breckenridge follower. He was asked if the Southern States would be justified in seceding if Lincoln should be elected President. "No," thundered Douglas. "The election of a man to the Presidency of the American people, in conformity to the Constitution of the United States, would not justify any attempt at dissolving this glorious confederacy."

"But if the Southern States secede upon the inauguration of Lincoln, before he commits an overt act against their rights, would you advise or vindicate resistance by force to their secession?" If Douglas had ever prostituted his mind to the South, now was the time to do it again. But this was his answer:

"I answer that it is the duty of the President of the United States and all others in authority under him to enforce the laws of the United States as passed by Congress and as the court expounds them. And I, as in duty bound by my oath of fidelity to the Constitution, would do all in my power to aid the government of the United States in maintaining the supremacy of the laws against all resistance to them, come from what quarter it might. The President should meet all attempts to break up the Union as Old Hickory treated the nullifiers in 1832."

What of the right of revolution? Douglas conceded that, but insisted that the election of Lincoln would not be "such a grievance as would justify revolution, or secession."

I believed this too. Upon large ground if the South had the right to hold the negroes in slavery, the North would have the right to hold the South in the Union. If the South wanted to stuff fate into a small pocket of logic and allow their narrow bigotry to get the better of their reason, I was in favor of licking them in the name of sport and in justification of Darwin's law of the survival of the fittest.

Douglas, in spite of threats against his life, went into the Far South appealing to them to consider the dangers ahead. The Democratic party was hopelessly divided. Some partisan newspapers were carrying two tickets on the editorial page. Others were fighting Douglas bitterly; others supporting with fierce energy Breckenridge of Kentucky. Many were scheming with a view to the contingency that the election would be a tie and that the House of Representatives, in making the choice, would select Douglas.

Chicago was a whirlpool of excitement. In the middle summer Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, traveling in America as Baron Renfrew, came to Chicago on his way hunting in Illinois. The fate of the nation was a passing play to him. While he was here he was a greater object of interest than either Douglas or Lincoln. We heard that he was to stand on the balcony of his hotel to watch the political parades of the evening. Mr. Williams and I went forth to see the future King of England.

The city was thronged with people. Bands were playing everywhere. The Wide-awakes, a Republican organization, were out in force marching as soldiers, dressed in glazed caps and capes, carrying torches. Mottoes and transparencies were borne aloft by hundreds. "Free soil for free men." "No more slave territories." "We do care whether slavery is voted up or down." "Abraham Lincoln cares"—these were the banners. And everywhere the banner "Protection to American Industries." Men carried rails. The crowds cheered and roared. And Baron Renfrew looked on, surrounded by his entourage and a few of the élite of Chicago. We stared up into his face. Did he smile, approve? Was he greatly interested? If America should divide it would be better for England. We saw him turn and smile as he evidently spoke to one of his party.

Then a parade of Douglas men passed. They too carried banners. "Little Giant." "Ever Readies." "Cuba Must Be Ours." "We want none but white men at the helm." "We want a statesman, not a railsplitter for President." "Free Trade"—these were the Douglas mottoes. We turned at last and made our way through the crowd. Hawkers were selling railsplitter pins, Honest Abe pins. The streets were a medley of noise, confusion; the sidewalks were blocked. Drunken men, eager men pushed their way through. Bands played. Far off a stump speaker's voice could be heard. All this waste of sand and scrub oak which I had seen in 1833 was now covered with buildings big and little. It was the battleground between two sons of Illinois.

October came. I grew more and more apprehensive for Douglas' fate. I had had a letter from Isabel gently foreshadowing her marriage. My boy was not advancing in his work at school. Inexorable loneliness was descending upon me.

Douglas came to Chicago on a speaking trip. He had been in Indianapolis where his voice was so hoarse that he could scarcely be heard. Chicago gave him a magnificent ovation. They saw the man now in all his clearness of mind and strength of heart. He repudiated the schemes of fusion.

"Every disunionist," he said, "is a Breckenridge man. As Democrats, we can never fuse either with northern Abolitionists or southern bolters and secessionists. Yes, my friends, I say to you what I said in North Carolina and in the same words: I would hang every man higher than Haman who would attempt to resist by force the execution of any provision of the Constitution which our fathers made and bequeathed to us. You cannot sever this Union unless you cut the heartstrings that bind father to son, daughter to mother, and brother to sister in all our new states and territories. I love my children, but I do not desire to see them survive this Union."

With these words his tired and broken voice fell back into weakness from the great melody and power of its habitual quality. His weary body had risen into fresh strength for this utterance. His face assumed a great majesty. Men and women alike wept to hear him speak so—wept for the dark days ahead, wept for a great man failing in a struggle in which he was yet holding to cherished ideals, now being blown and scattered by the storm of the new era. They saw him surrounded on all sides by enemies. The South hated him. The northern Democrats with southern ideas hated him. The fanatics hated him. The Republican party which he had stepped upon with giant contempt hated him. In eight years of existence it had gathered to itself the contemptible factions that he had satirized. They had united now in the supreme purpose of defeating him. He was appealing for the same principles to which he had always been devoted. He was defending the Union as he had defended it since the days when I saw Jackson put his arm around him, and look with paternal pride in his eyes. He knew the heart and the will of the South. He was trying to tell it to the North. He felt that his own election would prevent disunion. He asked people to believe that he wished to be elected, not to gratify his personal ambition, but for the sake of the Union.

It was all in vain. The avalanche, loosened years before by stray adventurers building fires for their little kettles, and running thoughtlessly over weakened attachments, was now moving down on Douglas and the Union. The October election showed that he was defeated. Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana were carried by the Republicans in the state elections. Douglas was speaking in the South. His life had been threatened. An attempt was made to wreck his train. In Alabama he was showered with missiles. Not a northern paper published these shameful insults, which if published would have won him many friends in the North. Amid dangers and discouragements he went on to the end.

He was in Mobile when the news of Lincoln's election reached him. Before leaving Alabama he did what he could to prevent that state from seceding.

Undismayed, he went on to New Orleans. There he addressed the business men, pointing out to them that Lincoln would have a hostile Senate on his hands if the South would only remain in the Union; that Lincoln could carry out no abolition or unfriendly policy toward the South without a Senate; that all of Lincoln's appointments would have to be confirmed by the Senate. All of these things he said to dissuade the South from secession. When they would not be persuaded, he tore the mask from their faces and told them directly that Lincoln's election was only a pretext for those who wished to set up a Southern Confederacy.

Lincoln was elected. But Douglas was not dishonored. He had achieved a great personal triumph. He had polled 1,357,157 votes in the country against Lincoln's 1,866,452. In Illinois he had polled 160,215 votes to Lincoln's 172,161—in spite of New England and the Germans. He had received 163,525 votes from the South against Lincoln's 26,430. But he had lost to Breckenridge or Bell fourteen southern states. Protective tariff Pennsylvania had given Lincoln 268,030 and Douglas 16,765. Protective tariff Massachusetts had given Lincoln 106,533 and Douglas 34,372. Douglas had fought the South, he had fought against the disadvantage of a divided party, he had fought the protective tariff, yet Lincoln had polled but a little more than 500,000 votes more than he had. No use to say that the populace does not understand questions of government or that they cannot rise to high justices and rewards. Douglas' personal triumph had been great, but his remarkable popular support shrunk to an insignificant twelve votes in the electoral college. He was vanquished and I was more deeply depressed than I had ever been in my life. Lincoln was elected!

And the South seceded.

It is war! Mars has descended. The irrepressible conflict has taken the sword. The house divided against itself is in the last contest to see whether there shall be two houses or one. The devils are now to be cast out, not by Satan but by the Lord mighty in battle, great in anger. Grapes of wrath are to be treaded now, and a furious wine drawn from the broken flesh of men hitherto growing peacefully on peaceful stems, North and South.

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 Titan 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 canals 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 mass 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 hoarse, 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 pass 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 emancipation 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.

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 Constitution." 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: