Children of the Market Place by Edgar Lee Masters

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"What new arguments could you advance?" asked Reverdy.

"Well," I said, "suppose I wanted to take a definite stand that slavery
is wrong, which these Whigs won't. They only play with the question.
They want to limit it perhaps. But why? Is it wrong? Or is it against
northern interests? What? But suppose I took such a stand and needed a
legal foundation. Couldn't I say that Congress could prohibit slavery in
the territories under the power it has to regulate commerce between
them? I put this question to Mr. Williams and he hadn't thought of it;
but he told me that Judge Marshall held that commerce was traffic. Very
well? Isn't slavery traffic? It's buying and selling. It impresses
things that are bought and sold--cotton. And slaves are the subject of
traffic. Therefore to regulate it--keep the slaves out of the
territories where they might be bought and sold after getting into the
territories, as well as where they might be sold into the
territories--is the regulation of commerce, isn't it? Well now, isn't
that better than calling the territories property and subject to the
arbitrary rule of Congress as merely inert matter? If you can rule the
territories arbitrarily as to slavery, why not as to anything else?
Suppose we annex Cuba; under this doctrine we could rule Cuba
arbitrarily, just as England ruled the Colonies here arbitrarily. Then
take the assumption that Congress has the power to keep slavery out of
the territories; just the power, not the express duty; well, it follows
that Congress has the power to let it in the territories. If it can put
it in or out of the territories it can leave the territories to put it
in or out. And why isn't that best? Right here is the point of my
adherence to Douglas. For I see a growing central power in this country
not acting on its lawful authority, but upon its own will, dictated by
theories of morality or trade or monopoly. If this matter is left to the
territories it is left to the source of sovereign power and to local
interests; if it is controlled by Congress it means an increasing
centralization. What I really mean is that this mere assumption that
Congress can deal with the matter in virtue of some vague sovereignty,
without pointing out some express power in Congress to do so, leads
straight to imperialism. And thus on the whole, having a regard for the
future of America and its liberty, I stand with Douglas. I have read
Webster in his theories that the territories are property, and can
therefore be dealt with under the clause which empowers Congress to make
all needful laws and regulations for the territory and other property of
the United States. Well, why doesn't he go farther and let Congress at
one stroke emancipate the slaves? For a slave is certainly property, and
if needful rules and regulations as to the negro require his
emancipation, why can't he be emancipated under this clause? But if
territory is property, so is a slave. And if territory is property, who
owns the property? Why, all the states of course. And if they own the
land and own the slaves too, why can't they take into their own land,
unless they are forbidden to do so by a majority of the states,
representatives legislating under some clause of the Constitution which
gives them the right to do so?"

"Oh, yes," said Reverdy, "I have heard most of this before. But I'll
tell you: the first man of account who rises up to say that slavery is
wrong will be remembered, even if he is not honored. I am not talking
about all these agitators and fellows; nor even of Seward or of
Hale--they're too sharp and smart. I mean some man who puts the right
feeling into the thing like Mrs. Stowe did in her book. You see, I was
raised in Tennessee, and I don't care how you apologize for it, or make
it look like labor of other kinds, or prove that all labor is slavery,
just the same this negro slavery is vile. You can find good reasons for
anything you want to do. I don't know where we get our right and
wrong--it comes up from something deep in us. But when we get it, all
this argument that Douglas is so skillful in simply melts away. I really
wonder that so many women in the South favor slavery and that my mother
was so wedded to it, and Dorothy now."

We were passing now the house I had built. "Who lives there now?" I
asked. Reverdy gave me the name. It was not the man to whom I had sold
the farm. I thought of Fortescue. "Where is Fortescue?" "Oh, he lit out
from here," said Reverdy. "Do you know," I said, "I have thought it
possible that Zoe might not be dead." "How could that be?" "I don't
know. I feel that I went through that transaction dazed and without
verifying things, as I should have done." "Oh, no, if Zoe were living
you would know of it long before now."

After our drive we came back to Sarah and the meal that she had prepared
for us. Women reflect the politics of the hour in nerves and anxiety, in
anticipated sorrows. Sarah wished all agitations to stop. She longed for
peace. She was in dread of war. Perhaps Dorothy's health had been
affected by the growing turbulence of the country.

Young Amos and Jonas came in and ate with us. We turned to the talk of
railroads and the growth of Chicago. Sarah took a hand now and said:
"These things are all right. You won't get any war out of railroads and
telegraphs. You men can reason and argue as much as you please about
this slavery matter; but I have two sons, and I didn't bring them into
the world to be killed in a war; and I won't have it if I can help
it--not for all the niggers in the world."

CHAPTER XLVIII

If I were recording the life of an artist I should be dealing with
different causes acting upon his development, or with different effects
produced by the same times in which Douglas lived. Instead I am trying
to set forth the soul of a great man who extracted from his environment
other things than beauty; or rather the beauty of national progress. The
question was, after all, whether Douglas was helping to give America a
soul. What was he accomplishing for the real greatness of his country by
giving it territory and railroads? What kind of a soul was he giving it?
Who in this time was giving America a soul? Abigail had often hinted at
these questions. And I had to confess that they occupied my thoughts.

I run over now with as much brevity as possible the events which led to
the crisis of Douglas' life. With the Compromises of 1850 the Whig party
began its rapid decline. The South did not like the Whig tariff. The
Whig attitude on the slavery question was too ambiguous to appeal to the
North. With its dissolution other organizations began to feed on its
remains. The Know-nothings arose and disappeared, without accomplishing
anything. Greeley said of them that they were "as devoid of the elements
of persistence as an anti-cholera or anti-potatobug party would be."

In early 1854 the Whigs, Free Soilers and Anti-Slavery Democrats met at
Ripon, Wisconsin, and proposed to form a new party, to be called the
Republican party. They took part of the name which Jefferson had coined,
dropping the word "national" out. Douglas, enraged by this blasphemy
against Jefferson, suggested that the word "black" be put in where
"national" had been left out, making the name Black Republican party.

A year later Douglas put through his bill for the organization of Kansas
and Nebraska, which provided that they could come into the Union with or
without slavery as they chose. He had long before voted against slavery
prohibition in Texas; for the extension of the Missouri Compromise to
the Pacific; for the Compromises of 1850, which made California free and
left Utah and New Mexico to come in free or slave, according to their
own wish. I had to confess that he had no clear constitutional theory
himself. He was only growing more emphatic in favor of popular
sovereignty as a name for territorial independence on the subject. He
compared this popular sovereignty to the rights which the Colonies
asserted against England to manage their own affairs, and for the
violation of which the Revolution ensued. The principle had appeared in
most of the bills that he had sponsored or supported. Now it was the
real doctrine. He was like an inventor who, after making many
experiments, hits upon a working device. He was like a philosopher, who
conceives the theory, then clears it, shears away its accidents or even
abandons it. He had long been distrusted in the South. The
Kansas-Nebraska bill still further alienated the South. The South wanted
slavery carried into the territories by the Constitution, even against
the will of the people of the territories. What had Douglas to gain with
popular sovereignty? He really overestimated its appeal. He knew that
the South did not like it, but he believed that it was sound, and that
it would win the majority of the people. He advanced it not only as a
solution of a vexed condition, but in the name of Liberty.

He misconceived the case, and here his tragedy began to flourish. I was
sorry to witness his discomfiture and his first forensic defeat.
Clergymen denounced him; and thinking no doubt that they were the
spokesmen of the back-hall radicalism and ignorant morality which he
despised, he fought them back bitterly: "You who desecrate the pulpit to
the miserable influence of party politics! Is slavery the only wrong in
the country? If so, why not recognize the great principles of
self-government and state equality as curatives?"

He was burned in effigy and branded a traitor, a Judas, a Benedict
Arnold. The whole mob power was used against him. But he was Hercules
furious. He was against the wall, but unrepentant. He came to Chicago
and announced that he would speak in front of the North Market Hall. It
was September, and still lovely summer weather. I could not induce
Dorothy to go, so Mr. Williams, Abigail, Aldington, and I went to hear
Douglas defend himself. All the afternoon before this evening bells were
tolled, flags were hung at half-mast. I got to Douglas, telling him that
I feared violence to his person. He waved me off. His brow was heavy
with scowls, his eyes deep with emotion. He was like a man ready to
fight and die. Finally the hour arrived, and he mounted the platform
intrepidly, amid hisses and howls. He paused to let the tumult die. He
began again. He was hooted. He stepped forward undaunted, and let forth
the full power of his voice:

"I come to tell you that an alliance has been made of abolitionism,
Maine liquor-lawism, and what there was left of northern Whiggism, and
then the Protestant feeling against the Catholic, and the native feeling
against the foreigner. All these elements were melted down in one
crucible, and the result is Black Republicanism."

A voice called out: "You're drunk!" Bedlam broke loose. In a silence
Douglas retorted: "Let a sober man say that." There were cheers. He went
on:

"How do you dare to yell for negro freedom and then deny me the freedom
of speech? I claim to be a man of practical judgment. I do not seek the
unattainable. I am not for Utopias."

"Topers!" said a voice, and there were yells.

"Nor for topers," resumed Douglas.

"I want results. What have you done with prohibition of slavery in the
North by Federal law? You who want negro equality, why don't you repeal
the laws of Illinois that forbid the intermarriage of white and blacks,
that forbid a negro from testifying against a white man, that allow
indentures of apprenticeship, and that require registration of negroes
brought into the state, the same as you license a dog? The Federal
government does not prevent you. The Ordinance of 1787 gave you the
start that you want for Kansas and Nebraska. Yet you have these things;
and you don't have slavery. Why? Not because the Federal government says
you can't have it, but because you yourself do not want it. I say that
this northern country is dedicated by God to freedom, law or no law; if
it hadn't been, General Harrison, who introduced slavery into Indiana
against the Ordinance of 1787 would have introduced something that would
be there now. So much for you Whigs who voted for Harrison in 1840."

A voice:

"How about Kansas and Nebraska?" There were more yells. "I am telling
you, if you will hear me. You old Whigs who followed Henry Clay to the
end, why do you denounce me when the Kansas-Nebraska bill is the same in
principle as Clay's Compromises of 1850 ..."

"How about California?"

"It was a compromise. And as I have said before if the people of
California had wanted a slave state they would have had it, any law to
the ..."

Voices crying: "Benedict Arnold! Judas!" Douglas' voice rose to its
fullest power. He was fulminating Black Republicans, Know-nothings,
Anti-Catholics, humbug Whigs. I felt sure that he would be attacked. For
two hours he fought with this wild and wicked audience. He appealed to
their sense of fairness. If he was wrong, what harm to hear him through,
the better to see the wrong? If he was right, why condemn him unheard? I
could only make out a few sentences from time to time. He grew weary at
last. He drew out his watch. The audience quieted to hear what he would
say. "It is now Sunday morning. I will go to church and you may go to
hell."

He stepped from the platform, walked boldly through the angry mob, ready
to assault him. Without a tremor, fearlessly he edged his way along to
his carriage, got into it, and was driven away, the mob hooting, bolder
rowdies running after him, and covering him with vile epithets.

We walked away slowly without speaking to each other. We were too
shamed, too sympathetic with Douglas to tolerate this exhibition of
lawlessness. We were disgraced by an American audience which had tried
to disgrace an American Senator, who asked for nothing except for the
privilege of being heard.

When we arrived at Clark and Randolph streets Aldington and Abigail
paused for a moment before turning in a direction different from mine.
They said good night and went on. I walked with Mr. Williams until I
arrived at my house. Then I went in, to lie awake and to think of the
spectacle of the evening.

CHAPTER XLIX

The next day I went out to look at the ten acres which Douglas had given
for the founding of the University of Chicago. I walked over the ground,
came to the lake. I was thinking that if Douglas' life were ending in
failure how futile was my own life! I was rich to be sure, but what had
I done? I had inherited money. Douglas had started in poverty and
accumulated a fortune. I had done nothing but increase my wealth.
Douglas' activities had covered many fields, and now if he was to fall!
What was American liberty? How could their devotion to a liberty, bring
liberty to him? Douglas' wife was dead; Dorothy was an invalid.

In a few days I went around to see Abigail. That terrible evening
remained a subject that must sometime be discussed between us.

Abigail was never more gracious than on this occasion, and seemed to
understand that I needed to be lifted out of my reflections. She knew
what Dorothy's invalidism meant to me, and she was sympathetic with my
devotion to Douglas, in so far as it was an expression of human
friendship. She had a point of view about everything, which had been
developed and clarified by reading and travel. It came over me that I
had been nowhere in Europe, that I had been wandering up and down
America. My life in England was by now almost obliterated from my
consciousness. We were not long in the talk before she said that a man
should have more than one interest, that music or some form of art, or a
hobby in literature should be taken up as a relaxation from business.
What were politics but the interpretation of business? She showed me
some pictures she had been painting. A teacher had opened a studio in
Lake Street. Why did I not try my hand? I would find it a diversion from
other things. I had always loved etchings. I wished I could do that.
Well, this artist taught etching too. She inspired me at once to see
him. His name was Stoddard, and she gave me the number. I conceived an
enthusiasm for this new activity, thinking that it would take me out of
myself and away from the America that was closing around me with such
depressing effect.

Then Abigail and Aldington in supplement of each other began to recall
the names of men then living whom they characterized as light-bearers.
"Really," said Abigail, "there are only a few men of real importance in
America to-day. These politicians and orators--Seward, Sumner, even the
late Webster--amount to very little after all. They are even less than
Lowell, whom Margaret Fuller recently characterized as shallow and
doomed to oblivion. Longfellow is an adapter, a translator, a
simple-hearted man. Whittier--well, all of them have fallen more or
less under the moralistic influence of the country."

"That is what I like about Douglas," I said. "He is not a humbug. I like
his ironical voice against all these silly movements, like liquor laws;
these ideas like God in the little affairs of men; all this barbarism
which breaks into religious manias; all these half-baked reformations.
They carry me with him into an opposition to negro equality--all this
stuff of Horace Greeley, Emerson, and in which men like Seward and
Sumner, and American writers and poets, big and little, share."

"Oh, yes," said Abigail, "but after all you can say Douglas is just a
politician. You do not need to grieve about him. He is tough enough to
stand anything. He was put down by that mob. But I dare say he was not
as much disturbed about it as you were. If he should die to-day what
would the world lose? He has no great unfinished books, no half-painted
pictures, no musical scores without the final touches. Look over the
world, my friend. Do you realize who is living in it to-day? In Russia,
Tolstoi and Turgenieff; in Germany, Schopenhauer, Freytag, Liszt,
Wagner--Wagner is just Douglas' age too. In France, Hugo, George Sand,
Renan, Berlioz, Bizet. In England, Tennyson, Macaulay. These are only a
few. What has Douglas written or said that will live? What has he done
that will carry an influence to a future day? I want to see you lift
yourself out of this. Frankly, you seem to me like a man who has never
come to himself. You have lived here in Illinois since you were a boy.
You found work to do, and you did it. You wanted to be rich, you have
had your wish. But the material you have handled has become you. It has
entered the pores of your being, and become assimilated with its flesh.
You have gone on oblivious of this greater world. There is another
thing, and I have never known this to fail: you were a soldier in the
Mexican War, and the causes for which it was fought have burned
themselves into your nature. You are like a piece of clay molded and
lettered and shoved into the hot oven of war. You came forth with Young
America, Expansion burned into you. Douglas, being your close friend,
and being for these things, gave interpretations to these words. Your
glaze took the reflection of his face; and these words became other
words of like import, or imaginatively enlarged by the lights which his
winning art cast upon them. Give Douglas wit, humor, and he would carry
the whole country. For it runs after greatness of territory, railroads,
the equality of man, the superiority of the white race. As dull as the
mob is it knows that Douglas does not stand for its morality and its
God. If he had wit he could make them laugh and forget the distance that
divides him from them. We all understand why he has enemies; why the
revolutionaries from Germany, Hungary, Austria, divide in doubt over
him. But what has he to carry against them that will be a loss to the
world, if he fails?" I felt a little apologetic for my devotion to
Douglas as Abigail talked. Had I made a god of a poor piece of clay?
No, it was not true. I knew him, I believed in him. He was the clearest
voice in all this rising absurdity of American life. But Abigail had
given me one idea that I wished to act upon.

I went the next day to see Stoddard and started to learn etching. If I
could only transfer to the copper plate what I had seen of sand hills,
pines, pools of water, the gulls over the lake, the picturesque shacks
of early Chicago of 1833 and 1840; the old wooden drawbridge, which was
over the river in 1834, with the ships beyond it toward the lake and the
lighthouse, and in the forefront canoes on the shore, covered with
rushes and sand grass. After a few days I saw Douglas. He came on an
evening when I was just about to go to him. I had been thinking of him
day by day, but waiting for the effect of his rough experience in front
of the North Market to wear away from his thoughts and mine. He was now
himself again, his eye keen, his voice melodious, his figure pervaded by
animation. I noticed perhaps for the first time how small and graceful
were his hands. The greatness and shapeliness of his head could not be
overlooked. From beneath shaggy and questioning brows his penetrating
eyes looked straight through me. Had his pride been wounded, his spirits
dampened? Not at all. He was willing to face any audience anywhere. He
had told the South unpleasant truths. He had satirized the groups that
went to the making of the Republican party. "I have a creed," he said,
"as broad as the continent. I can preach it boldly, and without apology
North or South, East or West. I can face Toombs or Davis, if they preach
sectional strife, or advocate disunion. I can continue to point out the
narrow faith of Sumner and Seward. I shall not abate my contempt for the
ragged insurrectionists who are going about the country for lack of
better business, scattering dissension. Am I to be President? There is
trouble now in Kansas and Nebraska. Can I help that? I have stood for
the right of the people there to have slavery or not as they chose. But
if any trick is played on either of them, whether in favor of slavery or
against it, they will find me on the spot ready to fight for an honest
deal."

Seeing Douglas in all his strength and self-confidence again I was
happy. We talked of the old days and drank from the old bottle. I took
him to the door, followed his retreating figure down the street, so
short but so massive. Then I went to Dorothy, to find her sleepless and
unhappy.

CHAPTER L

No way to mark time quicker than by Presidentials. Four years pass in
the space of two or less; for no sooner is a President installed than
committees meet for reformations and plans. Six months between the
election and the installation of a President! When he has served a year
the election is nearly two years passed. Thus, as it seemed, the
election of 1856 was upon the country before we had time to appreciate
what Mr. Pierce had done. Had he had a fair chance in such a brief
period to do anything? I was at work attending to my business, trying to
etch too, but I could not keep my mind off the game of politics. Among
the tens of thousands of men in Illinois who were devoted to Douglas no
one was more loyal to his ambition than I, and perhaps no one was less
conspicuous. I followed the _New York Tribune_, the _Springfield
Republican_, the _North American Review_, the _Independent, Harper's
Weekly_, and the southern press, as well as the papers of Illinois. I
had made a large book of clippings, which expressed the journalistic
thought of the country. All these things put together kept me fully
occupied. Our son Reverdy was coming to an age when his schooling would
need attention. I wished to send him to England. But that was difficult
to do, because, while Dorothy was urging a trip abroad she wished to go
to Italy, on account of the climate.

In truth Dorothy was growing more distressed every day over American
affairs. She found harshness in Chicago. She did not find sympathy with
the ideas with which she had grown up. Her failure to make close friends
interfered with her social delights. Mrs. Douglas had perhaps been her
greatest intimate. With her death she had seemed to lose interest in
other cordial associations. Her nervous organization was badly
devitalized. I, too, hoped to see the continent, and particularly Italy.
But I did not wish to leave until the campaign was over, owing to my
interest in Douglas. I wanted to watch affairs now, but also I wished to
help Douglas, if I could.

For the first time the Republicans entered the field. They adopted a
platform which incorporated the Declaration of Independence. It was
against popular sovereignty, lest the people vote in slavery, or be
tricked into doing so. It stood for Congressional control of slavery
extension, and implicit in this was the constitutional power of Congress
to do so. It had, with the Declaration of Independence, with the
invocation of God, and appeals to the Bible, gathered a working force in
the country. The press, the platform, had been busy to this end. Seward
with his higher law was a contributor. Chase, who was termed by Douglas
a debater, where Seward and Sumner were only essayists, was one of the
big figures in the new movement. Beecher and Greeley were spokesmen of
the new organization. The convention nominated Fremont who had explored
Oregon in 1842.

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