Stephen Arnold Douglas was the Charles James Fox of American politics.
He was not a gambler as Fox was. But he went the other gaits and was
possessed of a sweetness of disposition which made him, like Fox, loved
where he was personally known. No one could resist the _bonhomie_ of
Douglas.
They are not all Puritans in New England. Catch a Yankee off his base,
quite away from home, and he can be as gay as anybody. Boston and
Charleston were in high party times nearest alike of any two American
cities.
Douglas was a Green Mountain boy. He was born in Vermont. As Seargent
Prentiss had done he migrated beyond the Alleghanies before he came of
age, settling in Illinois as Prentiss had settled in Mississippi, to
grow into a typical Westerner as Prentiss into a typical Southerner.
There was never a more absurd theory than that, begot of sectional aims
and the sectional spirit, which proposed a geographic alignment of
Cavalier and Puritan. When sectionalism had brought a kindred people to
blows over the institution of African slavery there were Puritans who
fought on the Southern side and Cavaliers who fought on the Northern
side. What was Stonewall Jackson but a Puritan? What were Custer,
Stoneman and Kearny but Cavaliers? Wadsworth was as absolute an
aristocrat as Hampton.
In the old days before the war of sections the South was full of
typical Southerners of Northern birth. John A. Quitman, who went from
New York, and Robert J. Walker, who went from Pennsylvania to
Mississippi; James H. Hammond, whose father, a teacher, went from
Massachusetts to South Carolina. John Slidell, born and bred in New
York, was thirty years old when he went to Louisiana. Albert Sidney
Johnston, the rose and expectancy of the young Confederacy—the most
typical of rebel soldiers—had not a drop of Southern blood in his
veins, born in Kentucky a few months after his father and mother had
arrived there from Connecticut. The list might be extended
indefinitely.
Climate, which has something to do with temperament, has not so much to
do with character as is often imagined. All of us are more or less the
creatures of environment. In the South after a fashion the duello
flourished. Because it had not flourished in the North there rose a
notion that the Northerners would not fight. It proved to those who
thought it a costly mistake.
Down to the actual secession of 1860-61 the issue of issues—the issue
behind all issues—was the preservation of the Union. Between 1820 and
1850, by a series of compromises, largely the work of Mr. Clay, its
threatened disruption had been averted. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill put a
sore strain upon conservative elements North and South. The Whig Party
went to pieces. Mr. Clay passed from the scene. Had he lived until the
presidential election of 1852 he would have given his support to
Franklin Pierce, as Daniel Webster did. Mr. Buchanan was not a General
Jackson. Judge Douglas, who sought to play the rôle of Mr. Clay, was
too late. The secession leaders held the whip hand in the Gulf States.
South Carolina was to have her will at last. Crash came the shot in
Charleston Harbor and the fall of Sumter. Curiously enough two persons
of Kentucky birth—Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis—led the rival
hosts of war into which an untenable and indefensible system of slave
labor, for which the two sections were equally responsible, had
precipitated an unwilling people.
Had Judge Douglas lived he would have been Mr. Lincoln’s main reliance
in Congress. As a debater his resources and prowess were rarely equaled
and never surpassed. His personality, whether in debate or private
conversation, was attractive in the highest degree. He possessed a
full, melodious voice, convincing fervor and ready wit.
He had married for his second wife the reigning belle of the National
Capital, a great-niece of Mrs. Madison, whose very natural ambitions
quickened and spurred his own.
It was fated otherwise. Like Clay, Webster, Calhoun and Blaine he was
to be denied the Presidency. The White House was barred to him. He was
not yet fifty when he died.
Tidings of his death took the country by surprise. But already the
sectional battle was on and it produced only a momentary impression, to
be soon forgotten amid the overwhelming tumult of events. He has lain
in his grave now nearly sixty years. Upon the legislation of his time
his name was writ first in water and then in blood. He received less
than his desert in life and the historic record has scarcely done
justice to his merit. He was as great a party leader as Clay. He could
hold his own in debate with Webster and Calhoun. He died a very poor
man, though his opportunity for enrichment by perfectly legitimate
means were many. It is enough to say that he lacked the business
instinct and set no value upon money; scrupulously upright in his
official dealing; holding his senatorial duties above all price and
beyond the suspicion of dirt.
Touching a matter which involved a certain outlay in the winter of
1861, he laughingly said to me: “I haven’t the wherewithal to pay for a
bottle of whisky and shall have to borrow of Arnold Harris the
wherewithal to take me home.”
His wife was a glorious creature. Early one morning calling at their
home to see Judge Douglas I was ushered into the library, where she was
engaged setting things to rights. My entrance took her by surprise. I
had often seen her in full ballroom regalia and in becoming out-of-door
costume, but as, in gingham gown and white apron, she turned, a little
startled by my sudden appearance, smiles and blushes in spite of
herself, I thought I had never seen any woman so beautiful before. She
married again—the lover whom gossip said she had thrown over to marry
Judge Douglas—and the story went that her second marriage was not very
happy.