What was the result? General Taylor had 1,360,099 votes and 163
electoral votes; Cass had 1,220,544 votes and 127 electoral votes. The
Abolitionists polled 300,000 votes in the country. The Free Soilers had
polled 291,263 votes in the country. Illinois was lost to General
Taylor. The Free Soilers had swept the northeastern counties. There had
been great Democratic desertions. Voltaire and Rousseau were still at
work. These fermentations of Europe had bubbled and exploded around
Chicago. The concrete thing known as negro slavery heard the rumble of
the ground. The tariff, the bank, imperial power in Congress unwittingly
renewed their strength--unwittingly on the part of the Free Soilers.
A slave owner had become President; a man of the fresh blood of the
northwest of Michigan had been defeated. A New Yorker, wedded to the
tariff, had been put in place to be President by the death of General
Taylor. And Douglas found the forces that were to embattle him drawing
up in line.
The state was saved to the local offices. The legislature was
Democratic, but it proceeded soon to instruct Douglas as Senator to
procure the enactment of laws for the territories for the exclusion of
slavery from them. The members from Egypt, however, sustained Douglas in
his position against the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to keep slavery
from Texas. The state was thus disrupted. The opposition to the
extension of slavery dated from 1787, from the work of Jefferson in
1800. However, let the people of the territories decide the matter.
Local self-government was a popular cry. Between saying that Congress
could keep slavery out of the territories, thereby treating the
territories as property, not as subordinate sovereignties, and Congress
sending slavery into the territories, because the Constitution was over
them, what juster pragmatism were possible than to let the people of the
territories decide the matter for themselves? If the general government
was one of granted powers, where did it get the right to prohibit
slavery in the territories? No such power could be indicated.
Oh, well, there was opportunity for infinite speculation. At the same
time, here were the territories and here was slavery. The powerful North
was assuming a definite opposition to a weaker South. Iron and coal were
stronger than cotton. What was to be done by a man who had the burdens
of leadership? How should the whole people be at peace? Since slavery
could not be removed from the states, why not let its tendrils creep
into the territories and there flourish or wither according to the soil?
Since it was practical, not radical policy to confine it to the states,
and not to abolish it in the states, it was practical and not radical
policy to let the territories decide the matter for themselves. If the
first course aroused the fury of the Abolitionists, the second course
found no favor with the Free Soilers, and ambitious Whigs, drawing upon
abolitionism and free soilism for food, for northern mercantilism and
for a larger slavery of both blacks and whites.
I had now lived so long in America, seen so much of the country, read so
extensively of politics and history, that I was able to follow the
questions involved in this crisis. All the while I had the benefit of
Douglas' association, who talked to me intimately of his own plans and
of persons and issues, as they arose. There were calls upon him now to
resign the Senatorship; but he had no intention of doing so. His
fighting blood was aroused. He was hardened to contests and to
misunderstanding and abuse. He had been berated for coarseness and
charged with the half-culture of the West. His sagacity had been
caricatured as cunning; his presence of mind taken for vulgar audacity;
he was held up as a half-educated debater, filled with a miserable
self-sufficiency. He was attacked as a demagogue. The East held itself
aloof from him in unctuous self-righteousness, because of his stand in
the Mexican War. His fight for Oregon had aligned against him the
friends of England in America. Yet men were in power because of him. A
Whig had been elected President upon a war record of a fight for Texas.
Who wished to part with Texas, New Mexico, California, or Oregon?
If Douglas had the slavocracy back of him and catered to it, he did not
have plutocracy back of him. If he had been a demagogue he would have
done the bidding of some faction. He did the bidding of no faction. His
mind was budding with railroads now, for the Far West. What he was now
doing made for a money control of the country in the future; but that
was not apparent to him. What one of us saw that we could not make an
ocean-bound republic without a supremacy of wealth, even if it was
brought about by a plebiscite? This did not make it democratic.
It was at this time that Mother Clayton's health began to be frail, and
Dorothy was by no means strong. The winters in Chicago had been very
trying upon both of them. Just now I had so many interests that I could
not leave the city. But Mother Clayton wished to return to Nashville for
a few months, and Dorothy decided to go with her. Our boy was not as
robust as we should have wished. Mammy, by no means to be left out of
our consideration, was aging and longed for the old scenes of Nashville.
We closed our house, and I went to the hotel. Then Abigail and Aldington
were married. They went abroad to study European conditions. Thus the
most of my associations were interrupted. All but those I had with
Douglas.
To go to Nashville was an inconvenient trip, but I made it on several
occasions. Once on a mission of deep sorrow. Mother Clayton died in
June just as she and Dorothy were preparing to join me in Chicago. I was
thinking of going to California on account of the gold discoveries. So I
brought Dorothy and Mammy back, although Mammy was very old and could
not be of much service.
Thousands were turning their faces to the West. How to get there, how to
equip oneself, were the questions. Some went by Cape Horn, some by the
Isthmus of Panama, some by the overland route. Thousands joined
companies. Others bought ships or chartered them. The wildest of rumors
spread of the richness of the discoveries. Fabulous reports of fabulous
prices and wages in California were scattered broadcast. I wanted to go.
But why, after all? I could get richer, but why get richer? Besides,
there were my interests and Dorothy. I felt the adventurer stir within
me, and talked with Douglas about going. He did not wish me to leave
Chicago. What soil could be richer than that south of Madison Street?
Besides, he was working on the Illinois Central railroad project, and
that would mean all the money that I would care for, if I would take
advantage of the opportunities which the railroad would create. Then
there were the transcontinental lines to be built. A convention was soon
to be held in St. Louis, and Douglas wished me to go along with him.
It was held in October and I went with Douglas to attend it. The
proposition was the construction of a railroad from the Mississippi to
the Pacific. The delegates were mostly from the Mississippi valley,
more than 800 in number, and Douglas made me a delegate from Illinois.
He was promptly elected to preside over the convention. The first thing
proposed was the construction of an emigrant route on the line of the
proposed railroad. This was in the interest of the gold seekers. A
delegate who said he had constructed more than 7000 miles of telegraph
offered to string a wire to California if Congress would lend its aid.
There should be stations along the way, with troopers to defend the
emigrants against Indians. The troopers could carry the mails, thus
insuring the delivery of a letter from St. Louis to San Francisco in
twelve days. Another delegate advised the convention that Charleston and
New Orleans would soon be joined by telegraph. As a means of
communication, he proposed that for the sending of messages from
Washington to Oregon, it could be done in fifteen days by transmitting a
telegram by boat from New Orleans to Laredo, and thence by telegraph to
some point on the Gulf of California; thence to San Francisco and to
Washington or Oregon again by boat.
It was a vital, noisy assemblage of men; and Douglas was a perfect
talent as a presiding officer. His great voice could easily be heard
over the entire hall and it seemed altogether fitting, since he had so
long been interested in binding the country together with railroads and
telegraphs, that he should be the spokesman of this body of men, who
were inaugurating this magical transformation of America.
The lobby of the hotel was full of faces of all descriptions. The
millionaire was there, the countryman, the slave dealer, the man with
the goatee. The barrooms and corridors were noisy with excitement, loud
talk of politics, of railroads, of trade, of slavery; denunciation of
the Whigs, curses for the defeat of Cass. I saw bloodshot eyes, reeling
steps, coarseness, cruelty, wastefulness in drink. Yankees and Dutch
were denounced as trash and as cowards and traitors. They had defeated
the Democratic party the previous fall. Plans were made on the moment
among various excited groups to go to California. A transcontinental
line must be put through at once.
Amid this motley throng stood Douglas. He glowed in the admiration he
received. He was acclaimed, cheered; his hand was taken in a rough and
hearty manner by scores, wherever he stood or walked. One moment he was
talking with a group of men from Tennessee; again he was exchanging
salutations with Captain Grant, who was here now without prospects,
drinking too much, quite a sorry figure, lounging about waiting for
something to turn up. Not so with the dignified Major Sherman. He had
been to California, on field duty in the Mexican War. Now well groomed
and of fine bearing, he stood about the lobby interested in the
projected railroad. Douglas, Grant, Sherman,--all had a definite
relation to the Mexican War, and the new territory. Douglas seemed to be
taking renewed life from this interesting experience. I was his
companion all the time, loitering near as he talked to various
notables. I looked over this mass of humanity and thought of America as
a whole, and wondered what it would do with its rich possessions, and
its problems. Its fate seemed hopelessly entangled, in spite of the
material prosperity--perhaps because of it.