When I got back to Chicago I found a letter from Isabel. It read:
"My dear friend: It hurts me to think that you stole off in the
darkness. I can see you in imagination walking the lonely way, carrying
your satchel. Perhaps it made no difference that you did not stay until
morning, but still it hurts me. And what can I say to you now? Are we
like two people who are kept from each other by circumstances that they
do not control, like friends whom a war separates? I hardly know how to
express myself. There seems to be nothing to say; and yet there is so
much for which I wish I had words; or I wish some word of mine could
alter the circumstances. I am loath to lose your friendship, your
association. We have so much in common that can be enjoyed through
letters; and I do wish you to write me. Above all you must not think
that anything of depreciation or disregard has entered my heart. If this
be true, why must you change toward me? Do I speak fantastically when I
ask you to try out a marriage of the mind? The experiences through which
you and I have passed have enabled me to penetrate the reality of my
wishes and so even to have had them. I have known one kind of devotion;
and I can fancy disillusionment coming over something more intensely
emotional. Can we not think that we might grow tired of each other, and
that we are to-day where we would be if we should become disillusioned
but without having the bitterness of such an experience? Our poor human
natures are cursed with fatigue, and with the loss of beauty and vision
consequent upon daily intimacy. Let me say to you then that I love you
and shall always love you, and that I have nothing in my heart that
would not console you if everything in my heart was frankly expressed to
you. If I ever should marry any one you will not lose your place in my
affections. I turn to my life which I left for you. And you must see
that if you have tragedy, so have I. As far as possible lift yourself
out of the disturbing things of politics, and leave lesser personalities
with the gods who are fashioning this world in the image of more
enduring truths. There is solace to me, and I hope there may be to you,
in the fact that we two are in the world together and that I can think
of you as my friend and I trust can write to you as I hope you will
write to me. Let us face the reality and consider that after all we have
the sweetest and best of things that can be between a man and a woman.
If I can ever help you in any way I shall be so glad. I sense somehow
that you may fear me, thinking that you have become indifferent in my
eyes. This is not true. I cannot too often assure you of this. I hope
for good things for you and your Reverdy. Give my love to him from
'Mamma Isabel' and believe me, affectionately, Isabel."
And I wrote to Isabel: "Some of your admonitions came too late to me,
for I am interested in politics again. I have just returned from Alton
where I went to hear Douglas debate against a Mr. Lincoln, a lawyer of
Springfield, who has been nominated for Senator by the Republicans. He
is as much of a backwoodsman as anybody could be, as much so as Harrison
and a good deal more so than Taylor. But he is not to be despised either
in himself or on account of his backers. The Republican party in
Illinois profits by the feeling of the German révolutionnaires; and
Lincoln may be ever so poor and so humble, nevertheless the Republican
party has drawn to itself some of the richest and most powerful
interests in the country; interests which are far-sighted enough to see
that if the Republican party can be put into power the mercantile
ambition of the North to control the South and the whole country will be
realized. No human being could have been a greater orator than Douglas
was at Alton; while Lincoln, in spite of disadvantages of voice and
manner and physique, rose to great heights of eloquence. The climax of
his speech was when he spoke of the world-old struggle between right and
wrong. I was swept off my feet for the moment and seemed to see in his
face something of the genius of Pinturicchio. Now I wonder if I was not
befooled both as to the value of Lincoln's utterance and as to his
kinship with the great Italian artist. After all I do not know what is
right and wrong; and I do not believe any one else does. I see that
people get worked up into furies over what they think is right and
wrong, and kill each other on account of it. Later ages view the matter
as of no importance; and the lives that are lost in the struggle are as
forgotten as the multitudinous leaves which bestrew the ground of an
autumnal forest. I fear I am in a very bad state of mind. It is true, as
you intimate in your letter, that I am passing through a certain
humiliation of spirit; and I am thus inclined to speculate on the value
of all truths and philosophies. I seem to see that material things
control truths and influence our human natures in every way. Our
experience demonstrates this fact. And in the case of Douglas and
Lincoln, Douglas is quick to sense the moralistic hypocrisy with which
the Republicans are draping their trafficking ambitions. But, on the
other hand, I believe that Lincoln is as honest in his desire to keep
slavery out of the territories as Douglas is honest in his plan to let
the territories decide the matter for themselves. Both of these men are
ambitious. Lincoln is of the industrial faith which is backboning the
Republican party, and Douglas is of the vaguer and less materialistic
faith which for so long has appealed to American Democracy in terms and
promises of all kinds of freedoms and independencies.... I would give my
life almost to see you again, but somehow I do not know how to bring it
about, while at the same time I am living in hope that it may be so, and
trusting that you will see me in a different light, and that I can give
you assurances which will justify your vision. I am not very well and
have been consulting a physician, since coming West, who seems to think
that my nerves are in bad condition and that I am worn by striving and
by life. It is curious too that Douglas, though bulky and fat, seems to
me a tired man. Perhaps both of us have lost the way; and it may be true
that later he will have the true vision as I did in you. I wish you
could call me back to you. My mind wavers as I write. Affectionately,
James."
With the exchange of these letters I merged my feelings into other
things. The roar of Illinois and of the country tended to keep my mind
from brooding on Isabel. There was a melancholy resignation in the words
of Lincoln upon his own defeat for the Senatorship, which were in key
with my own grief and helped me to sublimate it. He had written to a
friend who chanced to show me the letter: "It gave me a hearing on the
great and durable questions of the age, which I could have had in no
other way; and though I now sink out of view and shall be forgotten I
believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil
liberty long after I am gone."
The cause of civil liberty! Had not Douglas stood for this too? He had
won against the terrific opposition of the Buchanan administration. He
had fought the slave constitution of Kansas and he had beaten down in
this campaign the enmity which had risen up around him because he had
fought that constitution. The Republicans were exceedingly glad that
Douglas' contest had divided the support of his own party. They had no
thanks for him for what he had done for civil liberty in that regard.
They were glad of his election over Lincoln for the sinister reason that
Douglas' triumph, since Douglas was almost at one with Lincoln as to the
matter of slavery, meant a decline and a division of the Democratic
party as a whole. At the same time there was talk now of Lincoln for the
Presidency. But Lincoln did not think he was worthy of the honor.
Lincoln was writing and saying: "What is the use of talking of me whilst
we have such men as Seward and Chase, and everybody knows them, and
scarcely anybody outside of Illinois knows me; besides, as a matter of
justice, is it not due to them? I admit I am ambitious and would like to
be President.... But there is no such good luck in store for me as the
Presidency of these United States." There was a pathos about this man
Lincoln which won my heart.
I spent some evenings now with Aldington and Abigail. We drove out to
see the Douglas property south of the town. A horse-car line was being
built from Randolph Street to 12th Street, but beyond that was the waste
of sand and of scrub oaks, and the land which Douglas had all but lost
in financing himself in this campaign. I was ready to help Douglas with
money if he would accept it from me; but just now he was not an easy man
to find, and he did not come to me.
The trial and execution of John Brown was another thunderclap. And
Abigail showed me what was being said about it. A certain Henry
Thoreau, a strange, radical soul living in the woods near Concord,
Massachusetts, had compared John Brown to Christ. "Some eighteen hundred
years ago," Thoreau said, "Christ was crucified; this morning perchance
Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of the chain which is not
without its links. He is not old Brown any longer; he is an angel of
light.... I foresee the time when a painter will paint that scene, no
longer going to Rome for a subject. The poet will sing it, the historian
will record it; and with the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers and the
Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future
national gallery when at least the present form of slavery shall be no
more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown."
Could it be possible that this Captain Brown should have his
Pinturicchio? Well, might it not be so since Victor Hugo, living in
exile, had also given Brown an apotheosis? Abigail also had Walt
Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_, who was preaching the doctrine of
brotherhood, democracy, resistance to the law.
"What sort of country is this?" I asked Abigail. "Can every one set
himself up as a judge of the laws and disobey them if he chooses? If you
had heard Douglas' speech you would be convinced that this sort of mania
will cease or there will be war. Even Emerson is among these idealistic
rebels, for he says that it is a lack of health to cry 'madman' at a
hero as he passes. I think the Bible is responsible for much of this
turmoil and foolish rebellion, if not all of it. Lincoln founded his
campaign upon the Bible: a house divided against itself cannot stand.
And just because Christ is taken as divine, every word and act of his is
lived up to by some madman as justification for acts like those of
Brown."
In the meantime Abigail had found among her papers the words of Victor
Hugo: "He is not a New Englander," she said, "nor an American idealist.
And he says--I'll translate it for you: 'In killing Brown the Southern
States have committed a crime which will take its place among the
calamities of history. The rupture of the Union will fatally follow the
assassination of Brown. As to Brown, he was an apostle and a hero. The
gibbet has only increased his glory and made him a martyr.'"
Well, was not Douglas a martyr too? Who had done more for his country?
Was Lincoln any more radical than Douglas? Lincoln was defeated to be
sure, but Douglas was penalized for what he had said in these debates.
No sooner had he returned to Washington than he found himself deposed
from the committee on territories. He was beginning to be a man without
a party. He was paying for his ideas.
A book called _Helpers, the Impending Crisis of the South_ had at this
time woven itself into the clouds of the gathering storm. It had
influenced the election of a Speaker in Congress, for although Lincoln
was defeated in Illinois, the Republicans had 25 Senators to 38
Democrats; and the House had 109 Republicans to 128 Democrats. A crisis
was indeed impending, with Douglas, the greatest man in the country,
dishonored and disarmed by the Southern States. What was growing up, and
from what source, which should be the master of the destiny of the
country? What was giving it strength but some form of materialism? The
phrase "the struggle for existence" crept into our conversation, for
Darwin's _The Origin of Species_ had made its appearance this year. We
discussed its principles as far as we could make them out from the
reports of the book. Every one knew that strength survives. But what is
strength? Did the North have strength, or the South? Did moral ideas
have strength, or did war? All the while, where did God come in? Abigail
said: "He comes in in this very struggle, defeat and devouring. For all
the while there is triumph in the realm of the mind, and mind is God. My
friend, you can think of Douglas and slavery and politics, and impending
war; I know of something that overtops them all and can handle all of
them as playthings. That is chemistry."
"Where do you get all these things?" I asked Abigail. "From Richard,
from books, from publications, everywhere. I am watching this thrilling
thing called life and I can laugh when I see you taking Douglas and
Lincoln so seriously; for really they amount to very little. Douglas has
given some of his land to found a university. What will they teach in
it? Anything of Douglas'? What? No, young minds will read philosophy
there and study mathematics and chemistry by which engines, bridges,
telegraphs, will be constructed. Here is a funny thing. You remember the
Atlantic cable was laid last summer. Poor old Buchanan, the mighty
President of a mighty Republic, is so ignorant that he doubts the verity
of the message which Queen Victoria sent to him. Douglas and Lincoln!
What are their speculations as to whether this ridiculous old document
called the Constitution goes into a territory or not? Give me old Bishop
Berkeley with his inquiries concerning the virtues of tar water. It
takes imagination of some moment to sense, as he did, that tar contains
the purified spirits of the trees, of vegetation which can heal and help
man. These were dreams worth while. Now a German chemist named Kekule,
comes along and develops a theory called the valence of atoms. And who
can tell what will come of that? For that matter, Sir Walter Raleigh did
more for the world than Douglas. He found petroleum in the Trinidad
pitch lake way back in the sixteenth century. And now a well has just
been drilled, not for salt as you saw it in Kentucky as a boy, but for
the oil for which they then had no use except to make ointment for
people who stumble on the pier trying to catch a boat."
I said to Abigail: "I have never pretended that Douglas was a scientist
or an artist or that he had a philosophical mind, but now that you bring
these things to my attention I want to ask you why he is not a
first-class disciple of Darwin, since he has advocated the processes of
nature in the solution of the slavery question."
"Nature! Well, are climate and soil any more nature than thought? Can't
we use our will and our thought to assist climate and soil, about
anything? But after all I get tired of this emphasis of the one slavery,
just as you do. Why not include some other slaveries for condemnation?
There is Emerson for example. He didn't start out with this John Brown
idea. He began with a plea for emancipation intellectually from England;
and for emancipation from the slavery of orthodoxy."
"Yes," said Aldington, "I wish to add my plea too, and against the
slavery of a lot of things: against the slavery of courts and bad laws
and bad thoughts and poverty, and the whole business which we can see
growing up in America, and making laws to stimulate it and protect it."