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Children of the Market Place by Edgar Lee Masters

E >> Edgar Lee Masters >> Children of the Market Place




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.




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 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:

"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 glasses. 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 skyscraper wanted it to
complete its necessary ground space. 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 skyscrapers 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 passed 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 God will
be loudly praised when the end comes.

Rhodes is using his great wealth to assist 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 Japan, the ultimate recovery of
the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire."

A large lust 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-lust that Douglas had, he has paid. Will Rhodes pay
for his lust? 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 shores 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.
It is a clear sky with racing clouds that the statue stands against, and
I almost imagine it swaying and moving, such is the illusory effect of
the clouds. I enter the park and rest on a settee looking toward the
lake.

Chicago has now a population of a million and a half--you will observe
that this passion for figures remains with me. To the south I can see
the smoke of the steel mills; to the north the towers of granite, tile,
and brick of the city, and all between populous quarters. Twenty miles
of city north and south; ten miles of city east and west. I am on
Douglas' ninety acres, ten of which he deeded to the University of
Chicago. Its three-story college building stands to the west of me about
one half a mile; abandoned now. The acres themselves have passed to an
insurance company on a mortgage. And in the general decay of Douglas'
memory and influences this seems fitting enough.

Of course, the Civil War was waged to free the negro; and to do it it
was necessary to have a protective tariff, which came into being soon
after Lincoln was elected, and has been the policy of the country ever
since. Also for this emancipation it was necessary to revive the bank,
and this was done during the war. Not long after the war was over--about
two years--the trust known as the Standard Oil Company was organized.
Its moving spirit endowed the Douglas university and moved it to the
Midway Plaisance. It has continued its uninterrupted graduating years
from Douglas' time till now. It is still Douglas' university--at least
as much so as this United States was Douglas' these United States. It is
a university built out of tariff privileges and railroad rebates; while
Douglas' university was built from land, which Douglas was foresighted
enough to buy in anticipation of Chicago's growth, and the increment in
values produced by the Illinois Central railroad. Douglas was hotly
denounced for crookedness and money grabbing in those days of 1858 by
the Abolitionists and Free Soilers. Indeed much is said now in criticism
of Mr. Rockefeller; but I believe it will pass. Besides he is not
running for office, or trying to found an ocean to ocean republic; and
hence criticism does not hurt him so much.

Below me and down behind a wall the tracks of the Illinois Central roar
to the wheels of numerous trains, long trains of ten and twelve cars,
sleepers, diners, parlor cars, bound straight for New Orleans and New
York, either place reached in twenty-four hours from Chicago. I wish
Douglas could see this. Still, would he like to know that the public
have no access to the lake at any place where the tracks lie between the
shore and this wall? Perhaps he would see that this occupancy correctly
exemplifies the fate that the free-soil doctrine has met with throughout
the country.

There are sounds of trowels, voices of workmen behind me. A group of
masons and laborers is repairing Douglas' tomb; for it is not
scrupulously cared for these days. Postprandial orators are frequently
remarking amidst great acclaim that the hand on the dial of time points
to Hamilton; and if government is as corrupt as the newspapers say it
is, and if Hamilton stood for corruption in government, the hand on the
dial undoubtedly points to him. At this moment a young man and woman
come to a settee near me. The young woman asks her companion: "Who is
that monument to?" "Douglas," he answers in staccato. "Who was Douglas?"
"A Senator or something from Illinois. But why change the subject? You
have kept putting this off, and I have six hundred dollars saved now,
and prospects are good. I would like to be ..." the rest is borne away
by the wind. But I know it is the old theme. Soon his arm encircles her
shoulders over the back of the settee. She looks at him and smiles. It
is April! The men are repairing the mortar between the stones of
Douglas' tomb. Two are masons, two are negro helpers. The negroes are as
free as the whites; the whites are no freer than the negroes. They are
all wanderers, looking for jobs without settled places, paying board as
I do, or living in rented places. One of them may own his house. Some
laborers do, not many. They are like the factory workers, the whole
breed of workers throughout the land. The Civil War did not make them
prosperous, or change their real status. It seems that the God of
nature still rules, and that Darwin is his best prophet. These men are
free to work or to starve. Some things have changed. It is no longer
against the law to send abolition literature through the mail. But it is
against the law to incite laborers to strike, whether they are white or
black, and it is against the law for laborers, white or black, to
organize themselves into unions. The slave owners were pretty well
organized once, both financially and politically, but now the
corporations are much better organized than the slave owners were. The
negro did not dare to rebel against his master. And now the law prevents
the laborer from organizing against the corporation. We have freedom
now, but of a different quality. It has changed its base, but is there
more of it?

A freight train goes by nearly a mile long. It is laden with coal, oil,
iron. I can't believe that the soil is free. Coal and oil and iron have
too much of it. I think of the banners borne in the campaign of 1860,
when Baron Renfrew stood that night on the balcony of his hotel. He will
soon be king of England and emperor of India. And some one--either the
men who carried those banners or their sons--some one now has a complete
overlordship of this United States.

Why did not these banners make free men and a free soil? I suspect that
the banner of protection to American industries was as influential at
least as the free soil banner. It was easy after the war to force the
XIV Amendment on the country, to give citizenship to the negro so far as
his color had kept him out of it. It remained for the courts to call the
corporations citizens and to fit to their backs the coat of equal
protection of the laws, which they told us was cut and sewed for the
negro. Hence this long freight train with coal, oil, and iron--all very
well, but where are the free men and the free soil that Reverdy's son
died for?

Cries are now being uttered of capitalistic America. Also they say the
Supreme Court is always the mouthpiece of the dominant influence. That
was what was said when Taney decided that Dred Scott was not a citizen.
"The courts are tools of Satan, the Constitution is a league with Hell,"
said Garrison. He burned a copy of the Constitution on a public bonfire.
That could be done then, for slavocracy only interfered with free speech
in the South. Now it is not so safe to criticize the Supreme Court
anywhere in America. I myself think that coal and iron and oil are more
powerful than cotton ever was, and more permeatingly dominant. It would
not do to burn the Constitution anywhere in this United and Standardized
States. As for mocking the flag, one might be lynched on the spot.

The Filipinos have taken literally the Declaration of Independence,
which is the platform upon which Lincoln was elected; and they are
fighting us in the name of Lincoln. We have an army over there
sustaining the honor of the flag, under William McKinley, President of
the United States and Commander in Chief of its Army and Navy. Mr.
McKinley was a soldier in the war under Lincoln. He, therefore, knows
something about military matters. He has demonstrated that he has
something in his head beyond the theory of protection to American
industries. He is demonstrating that he knows how to lift the United
States out of its isolation, and to carry it beyond its place in the
Western Hemisphere with nothing but satellites like the West Indies and
Hawaii to be trailed by its gravitational movements. Also he learned how
to put down rebellion in the Southern States, and that is the same
thing, of course, as putting down rebellion in the Philippine Islands.
We have bought the islands. They are ours. They are farther away, to be
sure, than Cuba which Douglas wanted for his ocean-bound republic. But
though farther away, civilization, our duty, and the manifest destiny of
old compel us to hold them. When Alcibiades embarked on his Sicilian
expedition, it was said that Athens itself was sailing out of the
Piraeus, never to return. And some think that when Admiral Dewey sailed
into the harbor of Manila with his fleet he took the old America with
him, never to return to these shores; and what was worse, it disappeared
there out of his hands and is lost for good.

There is China, where we have set up a Federal judge. There is the trade
of the Orient; the Philippine Islands themselves are rich in hemp. To
get land for hemp is different from getting it for cotton--for I am
sure hemp makes a better rope with which to strangle liberty.

But though the Constitution has not reached the Islands, while the flag
has, it may in time reach them. Meantime no mocking of that
perambulating and capricious instrument! It contains the power to
acquire islands, or the whole of China, by conquest or treaty; and the
power to govern them as we choose, limited only by our ideas of Justice.
It would not do to let them have popular sovereignty, any more than it
would have done in Douglas' day to let Kansas have popular sovereignty.
The right to prohibit or allow slavery in a territory goes with the
right to extend the Constitution with its XIV Amendment to the
Philippine Islands, or not to extend it--and we have chosen not to
extend it. Thus the extra constitutional foundations of the Republican
party have led to colonialism.

Douglas, in bronze, looks over the lake to the east--to what? Perhaps to
the hills of Vermont and his youth, when no forecasting angel could have
told him what could come to him and his country. Perhaps he knows now
that free souls are better than free soil, since he never had much use
for the kind of free soil that was shouted at him.

This morning's paper has long dispatches about the progress of our
troops in the Philippines. Perhaps that is the reason why Douglas' back
is to the west. Surely he does not mean that he turns his back upon the
domain of Mexico and Oregon. It must be only upon the conquests of the
new capitalism. I am glad, and more than glad, that negro slavery was
abolished. It was nothing but a wooden plow anyway. Our new steel plows
work much better and they have this advantage: they accomplish more,
they are in themselves more of slaves, and they are creators of time and
of greater wealth.

There are strikes over the land. Why? Are not men free? Yes, they are
free to choose their work if they know how to do more than one thing, or
if they are able to move from the place where they have been employed.
But they are not free to organize, to agitate for better wages, or to
strike. What is this matter of freedom after all? It reminds me of the
steps of a stairway. A step consists of a horizontal board and a
vertical board and then another horizontal board. The first horizontal
board is the present condition, and the second horizontal is the liberty
that is desired, the vertical board is the difficulty in the way. One
must overcome resistance to step up. When he does he has achieved the
liberty to which he aspires. But he is standing on the same sort of a
level that he did before. This stairway goes up indefinitely, and at
last becomes lost in the sky of the future, like the beanstalk of Jack
the Giant-killer. All this sounds quite materialistic, and as if I was
without hope, but I am not materialistic, or despairing of the future. I
know that matter cannot be explained without resorting to such concepts
as force, causation, action, and reaction. And these are the ideas of
the mind. And I think of matter and of history in terms of action and
reaction. The mind of man is the most wonderful thing that we know
anything about, and its secret is the secret of the universe. Having
never been happy myself, I am not a disciple of eudemonism; but I see
life as struggle and change; and though I do not know what it means, I
know thought will not be at rest, that hopes will not cease, and that
dreams of liberty will fascinate the minds of future Lincolns and
Douglases.

The masons are eating their luncheon. I arise to go to Douglas' tomb.
The young woman says: "I wonder who that old man is? He has been sitting
right there all morning."

I wonder myself who I am. I take my way feebly up the stone steps to the
grated door of the tomb. I look through. There lies the sarcophagus
which contains the bones of Stephen A. Douglas. There was no truer,
braver man in his time, and no abler.

I put my spectacles on, for I cannot see well into the tomb. Yes, there
are the words: "Tell my children to obey the laws and support the
Constitution." No, I do not subscribe to that. I believe in liberty and
not law. Douglas' popular sovereignty was more liberty than it was law.
These words on his tomb must have been spoken by him with reference to
the preservation of the Union. At any rate I do not believe in these
words. I accept instead Walt Whitman's admonition to the States: "Obey
little, resist much." What shall we obey at all, and where shall we
resist? You must decide that for yourself, or ask those about it who
still have the capacity for living.

I am old. Now I must go to luncheon and then take my afternoon nap.

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