I took a house in Madison Street, some two blocks from the lake. There
was first the business of having Mammy and Jenny registered, something
similar to a dog license. But Mr. Williams helped me about that.
I had not seen Abigail yet, but of course she knew that I was married. A
vague faithlessness accused me. And yet I had never spoken a word of
love to her. It was my admiration for her and hers for me, rising up to
ask me why I had married Dorothy. Did I really know myself?
Dorothy was entranced with Chicago. She thrived under its more bracing
air. She loved the bustle, the stir. We were now in the midst of the
presidential campaign, and Mammy and Jenny saw political enthusiasm in a
new phase. Marching men passed through the street. There were shouts,
torches, many speeches on America's greatness.
Mrs. Clayton came to Chicago before the election and was all delight
over the new life which had come to her. The pulsations of great
vitality in the rapidly growing nation were well exemplified in
Chicago's development. The country was bursting with commercial
expansion; it was lusty with the infusion of strong blood from Europe.
Nearly a million Irishmen and Germans had been added to the population
since 1840. Illinois, as a garden spot, had received her share of these
virile stocks.
The iron production, which was in a primitive stage when I arrived in
America, had now grown to be a great industry. There was anthracite
coal, which was first mined in Pennsylvania in 1814 on a very
inconsiderable scale; and now the output was more than five million tons
a year. It was supplanting wood in the making of steam. The Chippewas
had ceded their copper lands on the south shore of Lake Superior, and
the mining and manufacture of copper had become an extensive industry.
Gold was taken in large quantities from the Appalachians. There were
about five thousand miles of railroad in the country as compared with
the something more than one thousand miles which it had in 1833. The
telegraph was following the railroads. For in this very year, under the
administration of President Tyler, $30,000 had been appropriated by
Congress for the building of a telegraph line from Baltimore to
Washington. But above all, the country thrilled with the prospect of
acquiring Texas and settling the territory of Oregon. Douglas was at
once one of the creators and one of the most conspicuous products of
this great drama.
He had been reelected to Congress by a plurality of over 1700 votes over
his Whig opponent. The Whigs opposed the annexation of Texas. Clay was
against it. New England preached and sang against it. But Tyler had
tried to negotiate a treaty for it. It had failed. He devoted much of
his last annual message to Congress to the Texas subject, soliciting
"prompt and immediate action on the subject of annexation." Douglas,
during the campaign in Illinois and in Tennessee, had denounced those
weaklings who feared that the extension of the national domain would
corrupt the institutions of the country. As to war with Mexico because
of Texas, let it come. The Federal system was adapted to expansion, to
the absorption of the whole continent. Great Britain should be driven,
with all the vestiges of royal authority, from North America. "I would
make," he said, "an ocean-bound republic, and have no more disputes
about boundaries or red lines upon the maps."
These words sent a thrill through the country. What had Clay to offer as
a counteractant, as an equal inspiration to the pride of this lusty
nation? Surely not the tariff. This imaginative impulse had carried Mr.
Polk to the Presidency; but before Mr. Tyler laid down his office he was
able to send a message to Texas with an offer of annexation. It was
accepted, and in December of that year, 1845, Texas became a state of
the Union.
Mother Clayton had come on to Chicago at last, and we were fully settled
with Mammy and Jenny to run the house. My life was ideal, divided as it
was between money making and participation in Chicago's development. We
had Mr. and Mrs. Williams and Abigail and Aldington as a nucleus for new
friendships. I could see more clearly than ever that Dorothy and Abigail
were as dissimilar as two women could be. Nevertheless, they became
friends. Mrs. Williams and Mother Clayton found much in common. My
business relations with Mr. Williams were altogether agreeable.
I resumed my readings with Abigail and Aldington, although Dorothy was
not greatly interested. Poe's _Raven_ went the rounds this winter and
created an excitement. We read Hawthorne's novels. Emerson's _Essays_,
the second series, appeared. Then the first discordant note came between
Dorothy and Abigail. For Emerson said: "We must get rid of slavery, or
get rid of freedom." Abigail exclaimed over this epigrammatic truth.
Dorothy looked at Abigail disapprovingly, apparently seeing in her face
evidence of a different spirit than she had hitherto suspected.
Aldington joined Abigail in praise of Emerson. And for the sake of a
balance, I sided with Dorothy and Mother Clayton against them. Though
none of us had anything to do directly with the matter of slavery, it
thus cast its shadow upon our otherwise happy relationship.
In these readings too I was following with great care the career of
Douglas in Congress, in which Abigail and Aldington were not so warmly
interested. Douglas' early life, his adventure into the West, had put
him through an experience and into the possession of an understanding
which were alien to the eastern statesmen. The West was for the
enterprise of the young. It was a domain of opportunity for youth,
divorced from family influence and the tangles of decaying environment.
Hence Texas must be assimilated, and California taken eventually, and
the Oregon country acquired. An ocean-bound republic!
As for slavery, it did not enter into Douglas' calculations. I knew,
however, that in spite of what any one said, he was not a protagonist of
slavery. He simply subordinated it to the interests of expansion. He was
willing to leave it to the new states to determine for themselves
whether they should have slavery or not. With the impetuosity of his
thirty-two years he slipped into a recognition of the Missouri
Compromise, and was willing that slavery should be prohibited north of
this line. He was generating a plague for himself which would come back
upon him later.
But if Douglas' advocacy of the Texas expansion exposed him to charges
of a slave adherency, nothing could be said against his cry for the
taking of Oregon. The Mormons whom he had befriended without any
dishonor to himself had set forth into the untraveled land of Utah.
Already a band of young men from Peoria had gone into the Far West.
Therefore, when he now spoke for Oregon he had a responsive ear among
his own people in Illinois. If the eastern people, the dwellers in the
old communities, did not kindle to Oregon, it was because they had
neither the flare nor did they see the urge of this emigration and
occupancy. With the rapid extension of railroads, how soon would the
whole vast land be bound together in quick communication!
So it was, Douglas was offering bills in Congress for creating the
territory of Nebraska, for establishing military posts in Oregon, and
for extending settlements across the West under military protection. He
advocated means of communication across the Rocky Mountains. He thought
of his own unprotected youth. He would have the young men from Peoria
and from every place feel confident in the knowledge that as builders of
the nation's greatness they had the friendship and the strong arm of the
government around them.
What was Great Britain doing? Reaching for California, hungering for
Texas, eyeing Cuba. She hated republican institutions. She would gird
them with her own monarchist principles, bodied forth in fortifications
and military posts. It should not be. Douglas had said: "I would blot
out the lines of the map which now mark our national boundaries on this
continent and make the area of liberty as broad as the continent itself.
I would not suffer petty rival republics to grow up here, engendering
jealousy of each other, and interfering with each other's domestic
affairs, and continually endangering their peace. I do not wish to go
beyond the great ocean--beyond those boundaries which the God of nature
has marked out. I would limit myself only by that boundary which is so
clearly defined by nature."
Meanwhile President Polk was saying: "Our title to Oregon is clear and
unquestionable." He was urging the termination of the treaty for joint
occupation with Great Britain of Oregon. War! Yes, but Douglas did not
fear it. At the beginning of the thirties of his years, he was leading
Congress in the formation of an ocean-bound republic.
These were his words: "The great point at issue between us and Great
Britain is for the freedom of the Pacific Ocean, for the trade of China
and Japan, of the East Indies, and for our maritime ascendency on all
these waters."
I watched these proceedings to the end, and until the Oregon territory
was settled by the fixing of the 49th parallel as the boundary between
Great Britain and the United States. Douglas had striven with all his
might to extend the boundary to the 54th parallel. He had failed in
this, and was bitterly disappointed. He had been accused of boyish dash
and temerity in affronting English feeling with a larger demand. It had
come to the point where I could not discuss, particularly in Dorothy's
presence, these questions with Abigail. She saw nothing in these labors
of Douglas but vulgar materialism. That, of course, was the farthest
thing from the minds of Mother Clayton and Dorothy.
But before the Oregon compact was signed, two grave matters disturbed
our peace and brought their influence into our happy household. Congress
had failed to pass the bills to protect the settlers in the Oregon
territory. And we were at war with Mexico.
I felt irresistibly drawn to the war.