We found Washington much as Dickens had described it seven years before.
The avenues were broad. They began in great open spaces and faded into
commons equally unbounded. They seemed to lead nowhere. There were
numerous streets without houses. There were public buildings without a
public. There were thoroughfares that had no markings but ornaments. The
residences had green blinds and red and white curtains at the windows
almost without an exception. Grass grew in the avenues. The distances
were great, separating the new public buildings from easy access.
Brickyards were in the center of the city, from which all the bricks had
been taken, leaving only dust, which was stirred by gusts of wind
filling the air at times to suffocation. Pennsylvania Avenue was
grotesque with its big and little buildings, its small and impoverished
shops set between the more splendid windows of jewelry and fabrics. It
was in such sharp contrast with Chicago. No noise here. No smell.
Instead of lumbering drays, many carriages; instead of bustle, leisure;
instead of commercial haste, languid strolling along Pennsylvania
Avenue. And there at its head stood the unfinished Capitol; and at its
other end the executive mansion now occupied by President Polk, and
soon to be the residence of the hero of the Mexican War, Zachary Taylor;
and soon of Millard Fillmore.
Dorothy and I and Mother Clayton visited the places of interest at once.
We went to the Patent Office and saw the model of the Morse telegraph.
We looked at the Declaration of Independence displayed in a glass case
at the Department of State. We stood before Trumbull's pictures of the
celebrated men of an earlier day. We went to the room of the Spring
Court, saw the judges in their black robes, the thin intellectual Chief
Justice Taney at the center. We went to the slave market, where the
capital of the republic trafficked in human flesh for itself and the
surrounding country. Lottery tickets were openly sold. Negroes thronged
the streets. They were the domestic servants, the laborers, the hackmen.
A raggedness, a poverty, a shiftlessness, characterized external
Washington. Washington was not Chicago.
We found that Douglas had settled himself handsomely with his young and
charming wife. He entertained a great deal, and was entertained in turn.
We dined back and forth with each other. And because of Mrs. Douglas'
friendship Dorothy found her social pleasures assured and advanced.
Washington like other cities in America was struggling out of the earth.
The whole country was in a similar throe. Everywhere were great dreams
partly realized. One could not help but imagine what the nation would
become, just as one could not look at the unfinished Capitol at the end
of Pennsylvania Avenue without completing its lines in imagination.
We had come to New York City by boat, as I had gone to Chicago by boat
in 1833; but in New York we had taken a train to Philadelphia, claimed
our baggage at the station, transferred to another station, and taken
another train through Baltimore to Washington. The cities of the East
were now in telegraphic communication with each other: Washington with
Baltimore and New York; Philadelphia and Newark were joined. Polk's
election had been flashed by the telegraph. And news now came to
Washington on every subject: markets, fires, catastrophes, elections.
The public press was very active. The country was in a ferment. The
great West agitated the more sensitive, the listening East. From beyond
the Atlantic news of thrilling import poured upon us. In truth the whole
world was trembling at the threshold of a new era. Douglas was keenly
conscious of these world changes. They occupied my own thoughts.
In France Louis Philippe had been dethroned, a republic had been
established with Louis Napoleon as President. The ideas of the
revolution had worked a democratic triumph as to the suffrage and the
form of the government. This was February, 1848, the same month that
Douglas made his first speech in the Senate.
This February revolution in France had lighted the fires of liberty
throughout Europe. In England there was agitation and violence. The
people there were demanding the right to vote. In Italy there was a cry
for reform and free constitutions. Mazzini was proclaiming the fact that
the people in Spain, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Russia, were oppressed.
He called the cause of all peoples a common cause. The French Revolution
had announced the liberty, equality and fraternity of individual men;
the new revolution should proclaim the liberty, equality and fraternity
of nations. Cavour and Garibaldi were getting ready to bring about the
unification of Italy. The Germans had gained some liberties in 1830. But
when Paris broke into shouts for freedom in 1848, the news went across
the Rhine and the German liberals arose and demanded a constitutional
government. Metternich was obliged to flee the country. The Emperor
Ferdinand abdicated in favor of his nephew, and the people's
constitution was granted. There were rioting and bloodshed in the
streets of Berlin.
As a result of all this, thousands of Europeans were fleeing to America,
the land of the free. Yet there were the slave markets in Washington,
New Orleans, all through the South. And Congress was about to consider
the new territory which had come as a result of the Mexican War and the
Oregon settlement. How would Douglas react to these world movements? How
would he interpret them? Who could stand against this world-wide
avalanche? With the North now greatly the superior of the South in
wealth, in railroads, mines, in agricultural productiveness, what could
the South do for her slaves and her cotton? What would the Titans--iron,
coal, gold, copper, wheat, corn--do to the Giant of cotton?
I heard Douglas' first speech in the Senate and interpreted it against
this background. He had already been made chairman of the committee on
territories, and thus placed in the very midst of the fight touching the
annexations. The great Webster was here. He had opposed the annexation
of Texas and the Mexican War, and was the spokesman of the Whig party.
He had split metaphysical hairs with Calhoun, also here. Calhoun
declared that the Constitution was over the territory and by that fact
carried slavery into it; no imperialism in America. To this Webster
rejoined that the territory was the property of the United States and
not a part of it. Hence the Constitution was not over it and slavery
could be kept out of it. This was implied powers in favor of liberty.
Calhoun's doctrine was: Constitutional government in the interests of
slavery. To such dialectics had the matter come. Mazzini might contend
for liberty, equality, and fraternity for individuals and nations. Here
in America the questions were more subtle. Clay was not here but soon to
be here. Hale of New Hampshire was here, an astringent personality,
eager to challenge young Douglas from Illinois.
The question was the Mexican treaty. Senator Hale injected abolitionism
into Douglas' speech. Calhoun characterized Douglas' retort to Hale as
equal in offensiveness to Hale's remark, which elicited the retort. The
battle was on. We now had occasion to be proud of our friend. He stood
forth with such self-possession, such dignity. With great emphasis he
announced that he had no sympathy with abolitionism; but neither did he
look with favor upon the extreme view of the South. "We protest," said
Douglas, in his great musical voice, facing the southern Senators,
"against being made puppets in this slavery excitement, which can
operate only against your interests and the building up of those who
wish to put you down. In the North it is not expected that we should
take the position that slavery is a positive good, a positive blessing.
If we did assume such a position it would be a very pertinent inquiry,
why do you not adopt this institution? We have moulded our institutions
in the North as we have thought proper; and now we say to you of the
South, if slavery be a blessing, it is your blessing; if it be a curse,
it is your curse; enjoy it--on you rests all the responsibility. We are
prepared to aid you in the maintenance of all your constitutional
rights; and I apprehend that no man, South or North, has shown more
constantly than I a disposition to do so. But I claim the privilege of
pointing out to you how you give strength and encouragement to the
Abolitionists of the North."
Mother Clayton had been long schooled in the questions which vexed the
matter of slavery. She thought Douglas showed great courage in these
words, but she was not satisfied with them. She felt that the South had
not been protected in its rights and that Douglas owed it to the South
to stand with the southern Senators. His position was not definite
enough to suit her. He should say that slavery went into the territories
by law, or was kept out by law. Douglas' thesis might be judicial but it
laid him open to doubts.
This was our talk as we walked away from the Capitol. Dorothy was
fatigued by the experience. She was interested, but the debate exhausted
her. What she wished more than anything was peace for the whole country.