Dorothy and I lingered in Havana until we were sure that spring had come
to Chicago. Then we took a boat to New Orleans; and once again I
ascended the Mississippi to St. Louis, and thence to Chicago by the
Illinois River and the canal.
It was still cool in Chicago, the air fresh and vital. Great spaces of
deep blue stood far back, cool and thrillingly serene; against these
spaces the white clouds coming over from the far west and disappearing
into havens over the lake and into Michigan. The lake was roaring to the
stiff breezes of the blustering spring.
Chicago was a thrilling spectacle. The Illinois Central railroad was
being built. The railroad mileage in the country had now risen to more
than ten thousand miles. The short roads with steamboat connections were
giving way to the trunk lines. Boston was now connected by rail with
Montreal. There were nine hundred miles of railroad in Ohio; six hundred
in Indiana; about four hundred in Illinois. The Michigan Central
connected Chicago with Detroit. The Michigan Southern was opened, and
the first train from the East had entered Chicago. A train had started
west from St. Louis on the first five miles of the Pacific railroad.
Telegraph lines stuck forth everywhere into the great spaces of the
country, like the new shoots of a tree.
The breech-loading gun had been invented. The fire-alarm telegram system
had come into use.
Thackeray had come over from England to smile upon us genially, to
lecture at the rate "of a pound a minute," as he had expressed it. Young
America was putting old America behind her.
Calhoun was gone. Clay, defeated in his life's ambition to be President,
had crept to his grave. Webster was a dying man. The slavery question
had vexed and shadowed his dying years. He had supported the Compromises
of 1850 and had been bitterly denounced for it. Whittier had expunged
his name from the list of the great and the good. He had wanted to be
President too. Men like General Harrison had secured the prize over his
head. He was reduced to the rejection of the proffered Vice Presidency.
He had been Secretary of State under Harrison, Tyler, and Fillmore. He
had supported the bank, the tariff, implied powers, and Hamiltonism. He
had followed Clay's leadership. Still he had risen to great heights of
oratory and legalistic reason. Carlyle had called him a logic machine in
pants. His debate with Hayne, however, was to furnish the material for
one of the greatest of state papers, to be written less than a decade
from this day. From the hills of Massachusetts he failed to see the
West. Young Douglas had fronted him and told him of the power of the new
and growing country along the Mississippi River. Old America was
passing. The West was asking for the highest recognition. Douglas was
thirty-nine and seemed to be the man for President.
I did not pretend to be a politician, but only an observer and Douglas'
friend. I read everything that was written about the questions of the
day, the newspapers, the _Congressional Record_. It was clear to me that
the Democrats had been split in 1848 by their attitude toward the Wilmot
Proviso, which was intended to keep slavery from the Texan territory.
Then came the Compromises under a Whig administration. The Compromises
were hated by the South and cursed by the Abolitionists in the North.
The Democrats were united by an acquiescence in the Compromises. And now
the Whigs were divided because of them. They had played foxy in '48 by a
no-platform. They were unable to have one, because they had no united
voice. The Free Soil party had collapsed in Illinois. Altogether hopes
ran high for the Democrats. But who should be the candidate?
Douglas! He seemed to me the ideal man, as Webster seemed the ideal man
to admiring Whigs. But Douglas, like Webster, was doomed to fail, at
least in this convention. The prize was captured by Franklin Pierce,
whom no one knew, but it was not until the forty-ninth ballot. On the
forty-eighth ballot Douglas had thirty-three votes to Pierce's
fifty-five. Then there was a stampede to Pierce. The West had lost.
Young America was put aside for a fair-sized man from New Hampshire.
The Whigs met the same month in Baltimore. Webster, soon to die, was
again a candidate. The platform was made and submitted to him. He
approved of it. It indorsed the Compromises. But again there was an old
soldier in the field, in the person of General Scott. He had fought the
British in 1812. He had made treaties with the Sauk, Fox, Winnebago, and
Sioux tribes after the Black Hawk War. Yes, he had made a brilliant
record in the Mexican War. In mental stature he was up to the knees of
Webster, and no more. But Webster had no imaginative appeal. He could
only pull twenty-nine votes on the first ballot, as against Scott's one
hundred and thirty-one votes. Webster never had more than thirty-two
votes. On the fifty-third ballot Scott was nominated. And in a few
months Webster died, and left the tangles of statecraft to other hands.
Who was Franklin Pierce? Pretty soon Hawthorne, whose romances I had
enjoyed so much, put forth a life of his long-time friend. "When a
friend dear to him almost from boyhood days stands up before his
country, misrepresented by indiscriminate abuse on the one hand, and by
aimless praise on the other, it is quite proper that he should be
sketched by one who has had opportunities of knowing him well and who is
certainly inclined to tell the truth." These were Hawthorne's words.
Pierce was a gentleman of truth and honor, devoted to his family and to
his country, accomplished, of fine appearance, and always Democratic.
But how could this man win against an old soldier? Webster and Douglas
had lost the nomination, how could a gentleman win the election?
I returned to Chicago and to my business. But Douglas' term for Senator
was about to expire, and he necessarily entered the campaign with vigor.
He traveled from Virginia to Arkansas, from New York to Illinois and all
over his own state. He mocked Scott's letter of acceptance, attributing
its composition to Seward. His physical endurance seemed exhaustless.
All the while he was living and confraternizing and drinking. Pierce was
elected. Douglas won the legislature for another Senatorial term. In the
midst of these excitements Mrs. Douglas died.
She had been to our house but recently. If I had prophesied between her
and Dorothy I should have believed the end would come to Dorothy first.
Dorothy was so frail, so incapable of effort. Already I was beginning to
think of a milder climate for her for the winter.
Douglas now seemed to lose heart. His temper became bitter. His dress
was slovenly, his manners familiar, his associations indifferent. He was
drinking too much. In his public utterances he was more emphatic, more
caustic of tongue. If the loss of the nomination had disappointed him,
the death of Mrs. Douglas had overwhelmed him. He was not interested in
his Illinois Central. He was doing nothing with his large tract of land
three miles south of Madison Street. He was very well off. But he had
no heart to enjoy his prosperity. He was doing nothing about founding
his university. He was a giant sorely smitten, ready to rouse from
irritability into fury against his enemies. He was in a poor way to
master his own spirit and future.
I suggested to him a trip to Europe to forget his sorrows, to recuperate
his spirits. He liked the idea. But first he had to return to the
Senate. There he spoke of Cuba and its annexation, almost in the same
words he had used when talking to me that midnight on the roof of the
hotel in Havana. Bitterly he denounced the Clayton-Bulwer treaty.
Audaciously he excoriated England. Almost immediately he was off to
visit England, but not to see Queen Victoria, although invited to her
presence. He went to Russia, saw the Czar. He visited the Crimea and
Syria. From New Orleans I followed his travels. I had taken Dorothy
there to escape the Chicago winter.