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.