WIZARD LEWIS, bending his brows to the situation, now counsels an
extreme step.
“Then you will make Van Buren Minister to England, and give Major Eaton
the governorship of Florida. Little Peg should look well in the palace
at St. Augustine.”
“By the Eternal!” cries the General, as he hurls his clay pipe into
the fireplace where hundreds of its brittle predecessors have gone
crashing--“by the Eternal, we'll do it! The last vestige of a Calhoun
cabinet influence shall be wiped out!”
It comes to pass as Wizard Lewis programmes. Cabineteer Van Buren
resigns, and Cabineteers Eaton and Barry hasten to follow his lead. The
three other cabineteers sit dazed; the suddenness of the thing takes
away their cabinet breaths. They sit dazed so long that the General
loses patience and asks for their portfolios. One by one they hand them
in, as it were at the White House door--Cabineteer Ingham being last and
most reluctant of all.
There be tears and mournful wailings now among the society Red Sticks.
Mrs. Ingham, Mrs. Branch, and Mrs. Berrien are shaken in their social
souls, never for one moment having foreseen this movement in disastrous
flank. However, there is no help for it. The deposed three wash off
their social war paint, and go their divers ways lamenting; while the
General and Wizard Lewis grin sourly over their fireside pipes. As for
Statesman Calhoun, his schemes experience a chill; for in thus sending
Cabineteers Ingham, Branch, and Berrien into political exile, the
General drives a knife to the very heart of his selfish diplomacy.
Cabinet wiped out, the General constructs another, with his old-time
friend and comrade Livingston as Secretary of State. Also, the agreeable
Van Buren departs for the Court of St. James as the General's envoy to
England, while Major Eaton and the villified yet victorious Peg wend
southward among the flowers to rule over Florida.
Before he leaves Washington, the ill-used Eaton makes praiseworthy
attempts to fasten a duel upon ex-Cabineteer Ingham, who hires a whole
stage coach and gallops off to Baltimore--the fear of death upon him--to
avoid being sacrificed. The flight of ex-Cabineteer Ingham is a shock to
the General.
“I knew he was a bad, designing man,” says the General with a sigh;
“but, upon my soul, Major, I didn't think him a coward!”
Statesman Calhoun, weaker by virtue of that Cabinet lopping off, is
still too narrowly set in his White House ambitions to give up the war.
In this he is much sustained by the Senate, which jealous body pretends
to possess its own causes of complaint. Chief among these is the obvious
manner in which the General promotes the importance of that old
fox, Colonel Burr. The General shows that he cares more for the
appointment-indorsement of Colonel Burr than for the recommendations of
half the Senate. This does not set well on the proud senatorial stomachs
of the togaed ones; and, with Statesman Calhoun to lead them, they are
willing to obstruct and baffle the General in his policies. Moved of
this spirit, and at the instigation of Statesman Calhoun, the Senate
refuses to confirm the appointment of Minister Van Buren--a Burrite--who
thereupon makes his farewell unruffled bow to the great ones at St.
James and returns amiably home.
That Thomas Benton, who was so fortunate as to fall into a receptive
cellar on a certain Nashville occasion when the muzzle of the General's
saw-handle was at his breast, and who is now in the Senate from
Missouri, gives Statesman Calhoun notice of what he may expect:
“You have broken a minister,” observes the farsighted Benton--“you have
broken a Minister to make a Vice-President.”
While the slander battle against the pretty Peg is raging, a storm
cloud of a different character is gathering over the General. Although
Statesman Clay has no part in that war upon the pretty Peg, he by no
means sits with folded hands in idleness.
[Illustration: 0299]
There is a certain money-creature called the United States Bank. It is
controlled by one Biddle of Philadelphia. Banker Biddle is a glistening,
serpentine personage, oily and avaricious--a polished composite
of assurance, greed, and lies. He is a proven and unscrupulous
corruptionist, and a majority of both Senate and House wait upon his
money-bidding. Under the Biddle influence, the Bank never fails to
consider the mere “name” of a Congressman as perfect collateral for a
loan. Even so incorrigible a bankrupt as the lion-faced Webster is good
at the Biddle Bank for thousands.
Secure in its hold on Congress, and insolent--as Money ever is when it
feels secure--the Biddle Bank thinks to crack a political whip. The main
bank is in Philadelphia. There are twenty-five branch banks scattered
here and there throughout the country. In pursuance of its determination
to dominate politics, the Biddle Bank suddenly refuses loans to the
General's friends. Banker Biddle and the Bank are secretly moved to
these doughty attitudes by Statesman Clay, who, with his party of the
Whigs, has for long been their ally.
Statesman Clay, in possession of the machinery of his party, is resolved
to put his own name forward at the head of the next Whig ticket against
the formidable General. He foresees that Statesman Calhoun--who is of
the General's party of the Democrats--will come to utter grief in his
intrigues to supplant the General and make himself a candidate. And
yet, the blue-grass Machiavelli can use Statesman Calhoun. The latter
is powerful with the Senate. The Senate hates the General as blindly as
does Statesman Calhoun.
Machiavelli Clay resolves to have advantage of this double condition
of hatred. He will beguile the General to attack the Biddle Bank. The
attack can only be made by message to Congress. That should be the
opportunity of Machiavelli Clay. He will have the Senate for the battle
ground; and it shall go hard if he do not emerge with the General
defeated and the Bank and Banker Biddle at his back. With such friends
in the campaign to come later he should have the General and his party
of democracy at his mercy. Thus dreams Machiavelli Clay.
It is a beautiful dream--this long-drawn chicane of Machiavelli Clay. As
a move toward its realization he suggests the policy of a loan hostility
toward the General's friends; for the General will fight almost as
quickly for a friend as for a woman.
Banker Biddle adopts it, and the Bank develops it in Portsmouth. The
paper of one of the General's friends--a Mr. Isaac Hill--is dishonored,
and the General's friendship is understood to be the reason. The thing
is managed like a challenge, and has the instant effect of bringing
the General--ever ready for such a war--to the field. In its invidious
attitude toward his friends, the Bank throws down the glove; and the
General promptly picks it up. In a message to Congress, he assails the
Bank; and the fight is on.
Money is always a coward, and commonly a fool. Also its instinct is the
weak instinct of corruption. Its attitude toward a public is ever that
of the threatening, bullying, bragging terrorist, who will either rule
or ruin. It works by fear, and resorts to every quack device. It will
gnash its jaws, lash its tail, spout fire and smoke in the face of
a quailing world. And yet all this tail-lashing and jaw-gnashing and
fire-spouting is a sham. Money, for all its appearance of ferocity,
is no more perilous to folk who face it than is the fire-spouting,
jaw-gnashing, tail-lashing papier-maché dragon of grand opera. Attack
it, and what follows? A couple of rueful supernumeraries crawl abjectly,
if grumblingly, from its papier-maché stomach--the complete yet harmless
reason of the jaw-gnashing, fire-spouting, tail-lashing from which a
frightened world shrunk back.
Besides these furious matters, Money does another lying thing. It seeks
to teach the public to regard it as the palpitant heart of the country
itself.
“I am the seat of life!” cries Money. “Touch me, and you die!”
The advantage of this lie is clear; that is, if the lie win credit.
Being the heart, however corrupt, no law surgery may reach it. If Money
were the hand of a people, or the fingers on that hand, then it might be
dealt with. It could be statute-lanced or poulticed or even amputated,
and no threat to life ensue. Money foresees this; and, with that lying
cunning which is ever the scoundrel sword and shield of cowards, it
declares itself to be the heart. Thus is it safeguarded against the
honest least correction of communal saw and knife. Being the heart, its
vileness may be deplored but cannot be mended. For who is the mediciner
that shall handle the heart to any result save death?
And yet while Money thus proclaims itself the nation's heart it lies. It
is not even so reputable a member as the hand. At the most it comes to
be no more than just a thumb, or a forefinger, and the farthest possible
remove from any source of life. Folk who would aid their money-throttled
hour must remember these things.
Banker Biddle and the Bank, now when the General advances upon them,
go through that furious charlatanry of jaw-gnashing, tail-lashing, and
fire-spouting. The General is unconvinced, unterrified. His hawk eyes
pierce the miserable masquerade. He knows the Bank for a dragon of paper
and pretense, and does not hesitate.
Failing to arouse his personal-political fear, Banker Biddle and the
Bank attempt to stay the General by proclaiming a peril to the country
at large.
“We are the throbbing heart of all prosperity!” they cry.
The General recognizes the lie. He knows that prosperity comes from the
rain and the sun and the soil, and not from banks or bankers. As well
might the two-bushel sacks declare themselves to be the harvest reason
of a nation's wheat. The General continues his advance. There shall be
no evasion, no hiding, no safety by lies; masks are not to avail nor
pretenses protect.
The General in his attack on Banker Biddle and the Bank displays a
genius even with that which he employed against the English at New
Orleans. Banker Biddle and the Bank are the petted custodians of all the
millions of Government. The General “removes” those millions--a yellow
mountain of gold! Incidentally, he dismisses a weak-kneed Secretary of
the Treasury as a preliminary.
“Remove the deposits!” says the General.
“I dare not!” whines the weak-kneed one.
“I will take the responsibility!” urges the General.
Still the weak-kneed one falters. At that the General sets him aside.
The “removal” of those Government millions, which is as the drawing off
of half their life blood, leaves the Bank and Banker Biddle exceeding
pale in the face. They look appealingly at Statesman Clay, who, the
better to manage his side of the conflict, has taken a Kentucky seat
in the Senate. Statesman Clay encourages the Bank and Banker Biddle. It
will all come right, he says; there is a Senate bomb preparing.
To bring the General squarely before the public as the Bank's destroyer,
Statesman Clay anticipates the years and offers a measure renewing the
charter of that money temple. Statesman Calhoun, with every Senate foe
of the General, is for it. The measure gallops through both Senate and
House. It is sent whirling to the White House.
“Will he sign it?” wonders Statesman Clay, in consultation with his own
thoughts.
For an anxious moment Statesman Clay fears the coming of that signature;
he cannot conceive of courage greater than his own. His anxiety is
misplaced. The General will not sign. When the Clay-constructed measure
renewing the charter of the Bank is laid before him, with about what ado
might attend the killing of a garter snake he breaks its back with his
veto.
Statesman Clay rubs his satisfied hands.
“Now,” says he to Banker Biddle, who is becoming a bit weak, “we have
him helpless! That veto is his death warrant! The campaign is at hand;
I shall be the candidate of my party, he of his. That veto shall be the
issue! Money, you know, is all powerful. Being so, who shall doubt the
result when now the public is driven to choose between the Bank and the
White House--Prosperity and Andrew Jackson?”
CHAPTER XII--THE DOWNFALL OF MACHIAVELLI CLAY
MACHIAVELLI CLAY is one who looks seldom from the window and often in
the glass. No man carries himself more upon the back of his own regard
than does Machiavelli Clay. He believes in the wisdom of the classes,
the ignorance of the masses, and thinks that government should be of
people, by statesmen, for statesmen. Also he has a profound respect for
Money, and little for perishing flesh and blood. As to each of these
thought-conditions he lives in head-on collision with the General, who
in all things is his precise contradiction.
As a guide by which the popular view may direct itself, Machiavelli Clay
asks the Senate to pass a vote of censure upon the General. With
the help of Statesman Calhoun, he puts it through. The Clay-invoked
“censure” strikes these sparks from the General:
“Major,” he cries, thinking on his saw-handles as he and Wizard Lewis
sit with their evening pipes, “if I live to get these robes of office
off, I may yet bring that rascal to a dear account.”
Banker Biddle, now when his precious Bank for its life or death will be
made the campaign issue, is not without those pale misgivings which
ever shake the livid heart of Money on the eve of war. Observing
this knee-knocking trepidation, Machiavelli Clay attempts to give him
courage. This is no difficult task for Machiavelli Clay to undertake;
since, in his native ignorance of the popular, he harbors no doubt of
the General's downfall. Also he extends cheering word the more readily
to the quaking Banker Biddle, because the latter and his jeopardized
Bank are to furnish those golden sinews of war, which will be required
for the Whig campaign.
Machiavelli Clay uplifts the confidence of Banker Biddle to a point
where the latter, from his money lair in Philadelphia, writes him the
following:
“_He (the General) has all the fury of a chained panther biting the bars
of its cage--a condition which I think should contribute to relieve
the country of the tyranny of this miserable man. You, my dear sir, are
destined to be the instrument of that deliverance, and at no period of
your life has the public had a deeper stake in you._”
In so writing to Machiavelli Clay, Banker Biddle permits his hopes
to overrun his intelligence. Machiavelli Clay is not to become “the
deliverer” of his hour, nor shall the “chained panther” in the White
House be cast out. Machiavelli Clay, however, is no Elijah gifted of
prophecy; but, on the wooden-witted other hand, proves quite as besotted
touching the future as does Banker Biddle. He replies to that financier
in these words:
“_Fear not; there shall come a cleansing of the Augean stables! Our
cause cannot fail! That veto of the Bank charter is a broad confession
of the incompetency of the Administration, and shows him (the General)
unfit to carry on the business of government. I think we are authorized
to confidently anticipate his defeat_.”
Now when the candidates of the Democratic party are about to be
named, Statesman Calhoun foresees that he himself will be ignored, and
ex-Cabineteer Van Buren supplant him, nominationally, for the place of
Vice-President.
To save his chagrin, and on the principle that when one is about to be
thrown out it is wise to go out, he resigns from his vice-presidential
perch, lays down the Senate gavel, and returns to his home-state
of South Carolina. Once there, following the Kentucky example of
Machiavelli Clay, he sees to it that his own Legislature returns him to
Washington as a Senator.
Statesman Calhoun abandons hope of making his appearance as a White
House candidate in the campaign at hand. What then? He is of middle
years, and can wait. He will lie back and watch the struggle between
the General and Machiavelli Clay. Let victory fall where it may, he,
Statesman Calhoun, will prepare himself for his own sure triumph in the
conflict four years away. Which demonstrates that, while his judgment
is crippled, his ambition stands as tall and as straight as a mountain
pine.
The tickets are brought to the field--the General against Machiavelli
Clay, with ex-Cabineteer Van Buren, and a Whig obscurity named Sargent
running for second place. The issue presents the alternative--the
General or the Bank, humanity in a death-hug with Money.
Machiavelli Clay and Banker Biddle have no fears; for they are
gold-blind and can see nothing beyond themselves. They are given a rude
awakening. The people speak; and when the sound of that speaking dies
out, the General has overwhelmed Machiavelli Clay with two hundred and
nineteen electoral votes against the latter's sixty-nine. Machiavelli
Clay and Banker Biddle and the Bank go down, while the General--ever the
conqueror and never once the conquered--sweeps back to the presidency.
Also ex-Cabineteer Van Buren is made Vice-President, as aforetime
resolved upon by the General and Wizard Lewis, and from that Senate
eminence, so lately vacated by Statesman Calhoun, will wield the gavel
over togaed discussion.
The General, President the second time, picks up the reins, settles
himself upon the box, and proceeds to drive his governmental times after
this wise. He kills out what few sparks of life still animate the Biddle
Bank. He removes the Creeks and Cherokees from Florida and Georgia, and
thereby guarantees the scalp on many an innocent head. He throws open
the public lands for settlement at nominal figures. He fosters a gold
currency and discourages paper.
He pays off the last splinter of the national debt, and offers to the
wondering eyes of history the spectacle of a country that doesn't owe
a dollar. He makes commercial treaties with every tribe of Europe.
Finally, he compels France to pay five millions in gold for outrages
long ago committed upon the sailors of America.
The last is not brought about without some show of force. France, at the
General's demand, falls into a white heat of rage and froths for instant
war. The General takes France at her warlike word, notifies Congress,
and orders his fleet into the Mediterranean, the flagship _Constitution_
in the van.
The cool vigor of the move sets France gasping. She consults England
across the Channel, and is privily assured that whipping a Yankee
eighty-gun ship is a feat so difficult of marine accomplishment that,
like the blossoming of the century plant, it would be foolish to
look for it oftener than once in one hundred years. It is England's
impression, whispered in the Frankish ear, that it will be cheaper to
pay the five millions. Whereupon, France breaks into diplomatic smiles,
assures the General that her late war-rage was mere humor and her froth
a jest. And pays.
By way of a little junket, the General visits New England, and at
the genial sight of him that chill region thaws like icicles in July.
Indeed, the New England temperature rises to a height where Harvard
College confers upon the General the degree of Doctor of Laws. At which
Statesman Adams nurses his wrath with this entry in his sour diary:
“Seminaries of learning have been timeservers and sycophants in every
age.”
The General has done his people many a service. He has defended them
from savage Red Stick Creeks, and savage Red-coat English with their war
cry of “Beauty and Booty!” Now he will do his foremost work of all, and
buckler them against the javelins of treason, save them from between the
jaws of a conspiracy--wolfish and widespread for national destruction.
The conspiracy has its birth in the ambition-crazed bosom of Statesman
Calhoun; its shiboleth is “Nullification!”
“I would sooner,” said Caesar, when his courtiers were laughing at the
pompous mayor of a little mud town in Spain--“I would sooner be first
here than second in Rome!” And, centuries after, the sentiment wakes a
responsive echo in the jealous breast of Statesman Calhoun.
Statesman Calhoun aims to follow the General in the headship of American
affairs. Defeated of that, he is resolved to sever those constitutional
links which bind his home-state of South Carolina to her sister States
in Federal Union, and declare her a nation by and of herself.
In his new rôle of “seceder,” Statesman Calhoun makes this impression
on the English Harriet Martineau. After speaking of him as involving
himself tighter and tighter in spinnings of political mysticism and
fantastic speculation, she calls him a “cast-iron man” and says:
“_He (Calhoun) is eager, absorbed, overspeculative. I know of no one who
lives in such intellectual solitude. He meets men and harangues them by
the fireside as in the Senate. He is wrought like a piece of machinery,
set going vehemently by a weight, and stops while you answer. He either
passes by what you say, or twists it into suitability with what is
in his head, and begins to lecture again. He is full of his
'Nullification,' and those who know the force that is in him and his
utter incapacity for modification by other minds, will no more expect
repose and self-retention from him than from a volcano in full force.
Relaxation is no longer in the power of his will. I never saw anyone who
gave me so completely the idea of 'possession._'”
By which the English woman would say that she thinks Statesman Calhoun
insane. She overstates, however, his “incapacity for modification” and
“self-retention.” There will come a day when he does not pause, nor
close his eyes in sleep, between Washington and his home in South
Carolina, such is his fear-spurred eagerness--with the shadow of the
gibbet all across him!--to stamp out what fires of treason he has been
at pains to kindle, and avoid that halter which the General promises as
their reward.
It is in Senate debate that Statesman Calhoun removes the mask from his
intended treason, and gives the world a glimpse of its blackness. He
threatens, unless the tariff be changed to match his pleasure, that
South Carolina will prevent its enforcement within her borders. He
declares South Carolina superior to the nation in her powers, and
proclaims for her the right to “nullify” what Federal laws she deems
inimical to her peculiar interest. He shows how South Carolina will,
as against the tariff contemplated, invoke that inherent right to
“nullify,” and says, should the Washington government attempt to coerce
her, she will take herself out of the Union.
To this exposition of States rights, the General in the White House
listens with gathering scorn. He turns to Wizard Lewis:
“Why, sir,” he cries, addressing that Merlin of politics, “if one is to
believe Calhoun, the Union is like a bag of meal open at both ends. No
matter how you pick it up, the meal all runs out. I shall tie the bag
and save the country!”
Treason, however base, will have its friends, and Statesman Calhoun goes
not without “Nullification” followers. In his own mischievous State
the doctrine is received with open arms. The Governor issues his
proclamation; a convention of the people is authorized by the
Legislature. They are to meet at Columbia and settle the details of
“Nullification” in its practical workings out. They do meet; and adopt
unanimously an “Ordinance of Nullification” which declares the tariff
just made in Washington “Null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this
State, its officers or citizens.” They decree that no duties, enjoined
by such tariff, shall be paid or permitted to be paid in any port of
South Carolina. The closing assertion of the “Ordinance” runs that,
should the Government of the United States try by force to collect
the tariff duties, “The people of South Carolina will thenceforth hold
themselves absolved from all further obligation to maintain or preserve
their political connection with the people of the other States, and will
proceed to organize a separate government, and do all other acts and
things which sovereign and independent States may of right do.”
[Illustration: 0321]
Following this doughty setting-out of what one might call the
Palmetto-rattlesnake position, the Governor suggests military
associations on the model of the Minute Men of the Revolution, and makes
ready for what blood-letting shall be required to sustain Statesman
Calhoun in his new preachment. Altogether it is a South Carolina day of
bombast and blue cockades, with Statesman Calhoun already chosen as the
president of a coming “Southern Confederacy.” While these dour matters
are in process of Palmetto transaction, Statesman Hayne encounters
the lion-faced Webster on the floor of the Senate, and the latter
establishes forever the rightful supremacy of the Federal Union, and
demonstrates that the “Nullification” set up by Statesman Calhoun is but
the chimera of a jaundiced, ambition-bitten mind. Thus canters the hour
in the Senate and in South Carolina; while up in the White House the
General sits reading a book.
CHAPTER XXIII--THE FEDERAL UNION: IT MUST BE PRESERVED
THE General is reading his book, when in walks Wizard Lewis. The latter
necromancer casually alludes to Statesman Calhoun, and his pet infamy of
“Nullification.” At this the General's honest rage begins to mount.
“You bear witness, Major,” he cries--“you bear witness how Calhoun
is trying me! But by the living heavens, I'll uphold the law!” Then,
shaking the ponderous tome at Wizard Lewis, his finger marking the
place--“Here! I've been reading what old John Marshall said in the
case of Aaron Burr. He makes treason in its definition as plain as a
pikestaff. A man can't _think_ treason; he can't _talk_ treason; he can
only _act_ treason. It requires an act--an overt act! Calhoun is safe
while he only talks or conspires. But let one of his followers perform
one act of opposition to the law, even if it be no more than hand on
sword hilt or just the snapping of a fireless flint against an empty
rifle-pan, and I have him. There would be the overt act demanded by
old Marshall; and he goes on to say that the overt act, once committed,
attaches to all of the conspirators and becomes the act of each. I
shall keep my ear as well as my eye, Major, on Calhoun's State of South
Carolina; and, at the first crackling of a treasonable twig beneath a
traitorous foot, into a felon's cell goes he. Then we shall see what a
hempen noose will do for him and his 'Nullification.'”
The General, the better to deliver this long oration, gets up and walks
the floor. Having concluded, down he drops into his chair again, and to
grubbing at old John Marshall.
The General and Wizard Lewis decide that a perfect White House silence
concerning “Nullification” is the proper course. The General will sit
mute, and never by so much as the arching of a bushy brow intimate
what he will do, should Statesman Calhoun push his treason to that
last extreme--that overt act of opposition to the Federal law and its
enforcement, demanded by the great Chief Justice. And so, while arises
all this turmoil of treason in the Senate and South Carolina, the White
House is as voiceless as a tomb.
While the General is silent, he is in no sort idle. He makes secret
preparations to bruise the head of the serpent of secession with a heel
of steel. He sends General Scott to South Carolina. Into Castle Pinckney
he conveys thousands of rifles. One by one his warships drop into
Charleston harbor, until, with broadsides trained upon the town, scores
of them ride at ominous anchor.
The General gets word to his ever-reliable Coffee. In those well-nigh
twenty years which have come and gone since the English were swept up in
fire at New Orleans, the hunting-shirt men in the General's country of
Tennessee have increased and multiplied. Their numbers are such that
at the end of twenty days the energetic Coffee stands ready to cataract
twenty-five thousand of them into South Carolina at the lifting of the
General's bony finger, and follow these in forty days with twenty-five
thousand more. Not content with his fifty thousand hunting-shirt men
from Tennessee, the General arranges for an equal force from North
Carolina and Georgia.
If ever a people stood within the shadow of doom it is our
treason-forging ones of South Carolina in these days of Nullification,
Columbia Conventions, Minute Men, and Blue Cockades.
Some of them are not so dim of eye but what they perceive as much, and
begin to catch their breath. Still a wrong, once it be set rolling like
a stone down hill, is difficult to overtake and stop. So, while the
heart of would-be Treason beats a little faster, and its cheek turns a
little whiter, as inklings of what the wordless General is doing begin
to creep about among Palmetto-rattlesnake coteries, the work of making
ready for black revolt proceeds.
In Washington, that grim silence of the White House grows oppressive.
There be prudent ones, among the nullifying adherents of Statesman
Calhoun, who are willing to play the part of traitor if no peril attend
the rôle. They are highly averse to the character if it promise
to thrust their sensitive necks into gallows danger. The questions
everywhere on the whispering lips of these timid treason mongers are:
“What is the Jackson intention? What will the President do? Will he look
upon Nullification as merely some minor sin of politics? Or, will he
treat it as stark treason, and fall back on courts and hangman's ropes?”
No one answers, for no one knows. As for the General himself, his lips
are as dumb as a statue's. Traitors may go wrong, or go right; he will
light no lamp for their guidance. The awful suspense is carrying many
of the treason mongers to the brink of hysteria. Even Statesman Calhoun,
morbid and ambition-mad, is made to pause. He himself begins to wonder
if it would not be as well and as wise to measure in advance those
iron-bound anti-treason lengths to which the General stands ready to go.
To help them in their perplexity, Statesman
Calhoun and his Nullifying followers evolve a cunning scheme. In its
amiable execution, it should lay bare, they think, the purposes of the
General. Statesman Calhoun and his coconspirators have long ago laid
claim to the dead Jefferson as their patron saint of “Nullification,”
asserting that precious tenet to be his invention. They decide to give
a dinner in honor of the departed publicist. The dinner shall take place
on the dead Jefferson's birthday at the Indian Queen. The General shall
come as a guest. Statesman Calhoun and his co-conspirators will be
there. Statesman Calhoun will offer a toast, declaratory of those
superior rights over the Federal government which he asserts in favor of
the separate States. It shall be a Nullification toast, one redolent of
a State's right to secede from the Federal Union.
Statesman Calhoun having launched his fireship of sentiment, the General
will be requested to give a toast. Should he comply, it is believed
by Statesman Calhoun and his co-conspirators that he will in partial
measure at least unlock his plans. If he refuse--why then, under the
circumstances, his refusal will be pregnant of meaning. In either event,
he will be beneath the batteries of five hundred eyes, and much should
be read in his face.
That Jefferson dinner is an admirable device, one adapted to draw the
General's fire. Its authors go about felicitating themselves upon their
sagacity in evolving it.
“What say you, Major?” asks the General, when he receives the invitation
upon which so much of national good or ill may pend; “what say you?
Shall we humor them? You know what these Calhoun traitors are after.”
“True!” responds Wizard Lewis; “they want to count us, and measure us,
in that business of their proposed treason.”
“I'll tell you what I think,” says the General, after a pause. “I'll
fail to attend; but you shall go, and be counted in my stead. Also,
since they'll expect a toast from me, I'll send them one in your care.
I hope they may find it to their villain liking--they and their
archtraitor Calhoun!”
The Indian Queen is a crowded hostelry that Jefferson night. The halls
and waiting rooms are thronged of eminent folk. Some are there to attend
the dinner; others for gossip and to hear the news. As Wizard Lewis
climbs the stairs to the banquet room on the second floor, he encounters
the lion-faced Webster coming down.
“There's too much secession in the air for me,” says the lion-faced one,
shrugging his heavy shoulders.
“If that be so,” returns Wizard Lewis, “it's a reason for remaining.”
Wizard Lewis mingles with the groups in the corridors and parlors,
for the banquet hall is not yet thrown open. Among these, he nods his
recognition of Colonel Johnson, of Kentucky, tall of form, grave of
brow, he who slew Tecumseh; Senator Benton, once of that safe receptive
cellar; the lean Rufus Choate, eaten of Federalism and the worship of
caste; Tom Corwin, round, humorous, with a face of ruddy fun; Isaac
Hill, gray and lame, the General's Senate friend from New Hampshire
whose insulted credit started the war on Banker Biddle's bank; Editor
Noah, of New York, as Hebraic and as red of head as Absalom; the
quick-eyed Amos Kendall; Editor Blair, who conducts the _Globe_, the
General's mouthpiece in Washington; the reckless Marcy, who declares
that he sees “no harm in the aphorism that 'to the victor belong the
spoils of the enemy.'”
The dinner is spread. The decorations are studied in their democracy.
Hundreds of candles in many-armed iron branches blaze and gutter about
the great room. The high ceilings and the walls are festooned of flags.
The stars and stripes are draped over a portrait of the dead Jefferson.
Here and there are hung the flags of the several States. With peculiar
ostentation, and as though for challenge, next to the national colors
flows the Palmetto-rattlesnake flag of South Carolina--Statesman
Calhoun's emblem.
The dinner is profuse, and folk of appetite and fineness declare it
elegant. There is none of your long-drawn courses, so dear to Whigs and
Federalists. Black servants come and go, to shift plates and knives,
and carve at the call of a guest. At hopeful intervals along the tables
repose huge sirloins, and steaming rounds of beef. There are quail pies;
chickens fried and turkeys roasted; pies of venison and rabbits, and
pot pies of squirrels; soups and fishes and vegetables; boiled hams, and
giant dishes of earthenware holding baked beans; roast suckling pigs,
each with a crab-apple in his jaws; corn breads and flour breads, and
pancakes rolled with jellies; puddings--Indian, rice, and plum; mammoth
quaking custards. Everywhere bristle ranks and double ranks of bottles
and decanters; a widest range of drinks, from whisky to wine of the
Cape, is at everybody's elbow. Also on side tables stand wooden bowls
of salads, supported by weighty cheeses; and, to close in the flanks,
pies--mince, pumpkin, and apple; with final coffee and slim, long pipes
of clay in which to smoke tobacco of Trinidad.
As the guests seat themselves, Chairman Lee proposes:
“The memory of Thomas Jefferson.”
The toast is drunk in silence. Then, with clatter of knife and fork,
clink of glasses, and hum of conversation, the feast begins.
The General's absence is a daunting surprise to many who do not know
how to construe it. Wizard Lewis, through Chairman Lee, presents
the General's regrets. He expected to be present, but is unavoidably
detained at the White House. The “regrets” are received uneasily; the
General's absence plainly gives concern to more than one.
As the dinner marches forward, “Nullification” and secession are much
and loudly talked. They become so openly the burden of conversation and
are withal so loosely in the common air, that sundry gentlemen--more
timorous than loyal perhaps--make pointless excuses, and withdraw.
Statesman Calhoun sits on the right hand of Chairman Lee. The festival
approaches the glass and bottle stage, and toasts are offered. There are
a round score of these; each smells of secession and State's rights.
The speeches which follow are even more malodorous of treason than the
toasts.
The hour is hurrying toward the late. Statesman Calhoun whispers a word
to Chairman Lee; evidently the urgent moment is at hand.
Statesman Calhoun hands a slip of paper to Chairman Lee. There falls a
stillness; laughter dies and talk is hushed.
Chairman Lee rises to his feet. He pays Statesman Calhoun many flowery
compliments.
“The distinguished statesman from South Carolina,” says Chairman Lee in
conclusion, “begs to propose this sentiment.” He reads from the slip:
“'The Federal Union! Next to our liberty, the most dear! May we all
remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the
States, and distributing equally the burdens and the benefits of that
Union!'”
The stillness of death continues--marked and profound; for, as Chairman
Lee resumes his seat, Wizard Lewis rises. All know his relations with
the General; every eye is on him with a look of interrogation. Now when
the Calhoun toast has been read, they scan the face of Wizard Lewis,
representative of the absent General, to note the effect of the shot.
Wizard Lewis is admirable, and notably steady.
“The President,” says Wizard Lewis, “when he sent his regrets, sent also
a sentiment.”
Wizard Lewis passes a folded paper to Chairman Lee, who opens it and
reads:
“'The Federal Union! It must be preserved!”'
The words fall clear as a bell--for some, perhaps, a bell of warning.
Statesman Calhoun's face is high and insolent. But only for a moment.
Then his glance falls; his brow becomes pallid, and breaks into a
pin-point sprinkle of sweat. He seems to shrink and sear and wither,
as though given some fleeting picture of the future, and the gallows
prophecy thereof. In the end he sits as though in a kind of blackness
of despair. The General is not there, but his words are there, and
Statesman Calhoun is not wanting of an impression of the terrible
meaning, personal to himself, which underlies them.
It is a moment ominous and mighty--a moment when a plot to stampede
history is foiled by a sentiment, and Treason's heart and Treason's
hand are palsied by a toast of seven words. And while Statesman Calhoun,
white and frightened and broken, is helpless in the midst of his
followers, the General sits alone and thoughtful with his quiet White
House pipe.
For all the plain sureness of that toast, the would-be rebellionists now
crave a surer sign. A member of Congress from South Carolina, polite and
insinuating, calls on the General.
“Mr. President,” says the insinuating signseeking one, suavely
deferential, “to-morrow I go back to my home. Have you any message for
the good folk of South Carolina?”
“Yes,” returns the General grimly, his hard blue eyes upon the
insinuating one, while his heavy brows are lowered in that falcon-trick
of menace--“yes; I have a message for the 'good folk of South Carolina.'
You may say to the 'good folk of South Carolina' that if one of them so
much as lift finger in defiance of the laws of this government, I shall
come down there. And I'll hang the first man I lay hands on, to the
first tree I can reach.”
CHAPTER XXIV--THE ROUT OF TREASON
DEMOCRACY goes not without its defects, and there be times when that
very freedom wherewith it invests the citizen spreads a snare to his
feet. For a chief fault, Democracy is apt to mislead ambitious ones,
dominated of ego and a want of patriotism in even parts. Such are prone
to run liberty into license in following forth the appetites of their
own selfishness, and forget where the frontiers of loyalty leave off and
those of black treason begin.
In a democracy, for your clambering narrowist to turn traitor is never
a far-fetched task. Being free to speak as he politically will and, per
incident, think as he politically will, he finds it no mighty journey to
the perilous assumption that he may act as he politically will. Knowing
his duty to guard the temple, he argues therefrom his right to deface
it. Treason fades into a mere abstraction--a crime curious in this, that
it is impossible of concrete commission.
Statesman Calhoun is among these ill-guided ones of topsy-turvy
patriotism. Blurred by ambition, soured of disappointment, license and
liberty have grown with him to be unconscious synonyms. The laws against
treason carry only a remonstrance, never a warning, and--as he reads
them--but deplore that civic villainy, while threatening nothing of
grief for what dark souls shall be guilty of it. In this frame the
General's stark sentiment, “The Federal Union! It must be preserved!”
and that subsequent hanging promise which, by the mouth of the suave
insinuating one, he sends to “the good folk of South Carolina,” go
beyond surprise with Statesman Calhoun, and provide a shock. It is as
though, walking in a trance of treason, he knocks his head against the
White House wall; his awakening is rudely, painfully complete. That
dream of a separate nation, with himself at its head, gives way to
hangman visions of rope and gallows tree; and, from bending his energies
to methods by which he may take South Carolina out of the Union, he
gives himself wholly to the more tremulous enterprise of keeping himself
out of jail.
Some hint of that recent literature, which the General found so
interesting, gets abroad, and many go reading the lucid dictum of
old Marshall. Treason as a crime becomes better understood; and--by
Statesman Calhoun at least--better feared. Moved of these fears,
Statesman Calhoun sends message after message into his restless
Palmetto-rattlesnake State of South Carolina commanding, nay imploring,
a present suspension of “Nullification.” His Palmetto-rattlesnake
adherents, while not understanding the danger which fringes them about,
have already found enough that is alarming in the very air; and, for
their own safety as much as his, are heedful to regard that prayer for
a “Nullification” passivity. The South Carolina shouting ceases; the
Minute Men rest on their traitorous arms; the manufacture of blue
cockades is abandoned; while the Columbia convention devotes itself to
innocuous adjournments from innocent day to day.
While Palmetto-rattlesnake affairs are thus timidly quiescent, the
Senate itself--having read old Marshall, and being, moreover, somewhat
instructed by the watchful attitude of the General, who sits in
the White House a figure of frowning menace, both relentless and
fateful--devotes itself to the scaffold extrication of Statesman
Calhoun. Machiavelli Clay leads the rescue party. His is of an opposite
political church to that of Statesman Calhoun; but the pair meet on
the warm, common ground of a deathless hatred of the General. Under
the mollifying guidance of Machiavelli Clay, Senator after Senator
surrenders those pet schedules of tariff desired of his own people,
and puts the surrender on the expressive basis of “saving the neck of
Calhoun.”
When every possible tariff cut has been arranged, and Congress adjourns,
Statesman Calhoun makes his memorable homeward flight. Horse after horse
he rides down, night becomes as day; for Death crouches on his crupper,
and he must stay the Nullifying hand of South Carolina to save his own
neck. He succeeds beyond his deserts, and comes powdering into Columbia,
worn and wan and anxious, yet none the less ahead of that “overt act”
whereof old Marshall spoke, and for which the somber General waits.
Once among his own treason-hatching coterie, Statesman Calhoun loses no
moments, but breaks up the “Nullification” nest. Secession dies in
the shell, and the Columbia convention, with more speed even than it
displayed in passing it, repeals that “Ordinance of Nullification.”
Thereupon Statesman Calhoun draws his breath more freely, as one who has
been grazed by the sinister fangs of Fate; while the inveterate General
heaves a sigh of regret.
Wizard Lewis overhears the sigh, and questions it. At this the General
explains his disappointment.
“It would have been better,” says he, “had we shed a little blood.
This is not the end, Major; the serpent of treason is only bruised,
not slain. Had Calhoun run his course, a handful of hundreds might have
died. As affairs stand, however, the country must one day wade knee-deep
in blood to save itself. These men are not honest. Their true purpose is
the downfall of the Union. Their present pretext is tariff; next time it
will be slavery.”
By way of bringing the iniquity of “Nullification” before the people,
together with his views concerning it, the General seizes his big iron
pen, and scratches off a proclamation.
“I consider,” says he, “the power to annul a law of the United States,
assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union,
contradicted expressly by the Constitution, unauthorized by either its
letter or its spirit, inconsistent with every principle upon which
it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was
formed.”
The country, reading the General's exposition of the Union and its
Gibraltar-like character, breaks into bonfires, oratory, dinners,
barbecues, parades, and what other schemes of jubilation are practiced
by a free people. That is to say the country breaks into these sundry
jubilant things, if one except the truant State of South Carolina. In
that Palmetto-rattlesnake-ridden commonwealth there prevails a sulky
silence. No bonfires blaze, no barbecues scorch, no dinners smoke, no
parades march. Baffled in its would-be treasons, afraid to stretch forth
its nullifying hand lest the sword of retribution strike it off at the
wrist, it comports itself like a spoiled child thwarted, and upholds
its little dignity with a pout. No one heeds, however; and, beyond an
occasional baleful glance from the General, the rest of the world leaves
it to recover from that pout in its own time and way.
When Congress reconvenes, Statesman Calhoun creeps back to his Senate
place. But the perils through which he has passed have left their
furrowing traces, and now he offers nothing, says nothing, does nothing.
His heart is water; his evil potentialities have oozed away. Haunted of
that hangman fear which still hag-rides him, he abides mute, motionless,
impotent, like some Satan in chains.
To further wound Statesman Calhoun, and in the mean, protesting teeth
of Machiavelli Clay, the Senate expunges from its record the vote of
censure it once passed upon the General. The resolution to expunge is
offered by Senator Benton who, as against a far-off Nashville hour
when only a generous cellar saved him from the General's saw-handle, is
to-day the latter's partisan and friend. The General is hugely pleased
by the censure-expunging resolution, and has what Senate ones supported
it--being fairly the whole Senate, when one forgets Machiavelli Clay,
and our chained, embittered Satan, Statesman Calhoun--to a grand dinner
in the East Room.
And now the official times wag prosperously with the General. His
friends are everywhere dominant, his enemies everywhere in retreat. Also
his hair, from iron gray, fades to milk-white.
Since nothing peculiar presses upon him in the way of opposition, the
General falls ill. He makes little of this, however; and cures himself
with tobacco, coffee, calomel, and lancets, while outraged doctors
groan. Likewise, he burns midnight oil in planning with Wizard Lewis the
elevation of Vice-President Van Buren, who he is resolved shall have the
presidency after him.
While thus the General lays his Van Buren plans, misguided admirers
bombard him with such marks of their regard as a phaëton built of
unbarked hickory, and a cheese weighing fourteen hundred pounds. The
latter sturdy confection is trundled into the White House kitchen, from
which coign of vantage it sends on high a perfume so utterly urgent
that none may stay in the White House until it is removed. Following
its going, the executive windows are thrown open throughout a wind-swept
afternoon, to the end that the last suffocating reminder of that cheese
shall be eliminated.
The General's hours as President are drawing to a close. His hopes
touching a successor carry through triumphantly, and Vice-President Van
Buren is selected to follow him. Neither Machiavelli Clay for the Whigs,
nor Statesman Calhoun among the Democrats, has the courage to offer his
own name to the people.
[Illustration: 0353]
Statesman Calhoun, aiming to subtract as much as he may from the
fortunes of nominee Van Buren, produces a bolting ticket, headed by one
Mangum; and, for Mangum, Palmetto-rattlesnake South Carolina--still in
a tearful pout--wastes its lonely arrow in the air. It was, it will be,
ever thus with South Carolina, who might do herself a good, and come to
some true notion of her own peevish inconsequence, if she would but take
a long, hard look in the glass. She is as one who attends the fairs, but
so over-esteems herself as to defeat every bargain she might make. Her
best chances are cast away, a cheap sacrifice to vanity, since no one
will either buy her or sell her at the figure she sets on herself. Thus,
too, will it continue. Her frayed prospects, already behind a fashion,
are to wax more shopworn and more threadbare as the years unfold.
Nominee Van Buren is elected to succeed the General in the White House,
and every friend of the latter votes for the little polite man of
Kinderhook. The General is delighted, since the elevation of nominee Van
Buren provides for a continuation of his darling policies.
Wizard Lewis is delighted, because the new situation permits the return
of himself and his beloved General to their homes by the Cumberland.
Nor does it detract from the satisfaction of either that, with the
presidential coming of the Kinderhook one, the final door of political
hope is barred fast in the faces of Machiavelli Clay and Statesman
Calhoun; for both the General and Wizard Lewis hate these two as though
that hatred were a religious rite.
At last dawns President Van Buren's inauguration morning, and the
General stands for the last time before a people whose good and whose
honor he has so jealously guarded. Of this farewell appearance, poet
Willis writes:
“_The air was elastic; the day bright and still. More than twenty
thousand people had assembled. The procession, the General and Mr. Van
Buren riding uncovered, arrived a little after noon. Their carriage,
drawn by four grays, paused. Descending from it at the foot of the
steps, a passage was made through the crowd, and the tall white head of
the old chieftain went steadily up. The crowd of diplomats and senators
to the rear gave way. A murmur of feeling rose up from the moving mass
below, as the infirm old General, coming as he had from a sick chamber
which his physicians had thought it impossible he should leave, stood
bowed before the people_.”
In his address the General touches many things. He closes by saying: “My
own race is nearly run. Advanced age and failing health warn me that I
must soon pass beyond the reach of human events. I thank God my life has
been spent in a land of liberty, and that He gave me a heart wherewith
to love my country. Filled with gratitude, I bid you farewell.”
CHAPTER XXV--THE GRAVE AT THE GARDEN'S FOOT
THE General wends his slow way homeward, and is two months about the
journey. His progress, broken by many stops, is like both a triumph
and a funeral; for double ranks of worshipers line the route and sob or
cheer as he passes. The harsh horse-face is seamed of care and worn by
sickness; but the slim form is still erect and lance-like, and the blue
eyes gleam as hawkishly dangerous as when, behind his low mud walls with
the faithful Coffee and his hunting-shirt men, he broke down England's
pride at New Orleans. Everywhere the people press about him; for
republics are not ungrateful, and for once in a way of politics it is
the setting, not the rising sun upon which all eyes are centered. In
the end he reaches home, and his country of the Cumberland, as on many a
former day, opens its arms to receive him.
And now the General, for all his sickness and his well-nigh threescore
years and ten, must bend himself to his labors as a planter; for he has
come back very poor. He has his acres and his slaves; but debts have
piled themselves high, and the tooth of decay can do a devastating deal
in eight years.
The General goes to work as though life is just begun. The fences are
renewed, the buildings repaired, while the plow breaks fresh furrows in
fields that have lain fallow too long. To finance his plans, he borrows
ten thousand dollars from Editor Blair. Later, by a huddle of months,
Congress repays him that one-thousand-dollar fine, of which a quarter
of a century before he was mulcted in New Orleans. This latter, interest
swollen, is twenty-seven hundred dollars--a sum not treated lightly in
this hour of his narrowed fortunes!
All goes prosperously. The generous soil, as though for welcome to the
General, grants such crops of cotton that the wondering Cumberland folk,
as once they did aforetime, come miles to view his fields. When not
busy with his planting, the General is immersed in politics. Each day he
rides down to Wizard Lewis four miles below; or Wizard Lewis rides those
four miles up to the Hermitage. Being together, the pair, over pipe and
moderate glass, sagely consider the state of the nation.
Down by the General's gate is a large-stomached mail box. Each morning
finds it stuffed to suffocation with sheaves of letters and papers
tied in bundles. Also there are shoals and shoals of visitors. For the
General's home is a Mecca of politics, to which pilgrims of party turn
their steps by ones and twos and tens. Some come to do the stark old
General honor; some are one-time comrades, or friends who rose up around
him on fields of party war. For the most, however, and because humanity
is selfish before it is either just or generous, the visitors are
office-seeking folk, who ask the magic of the General's signature to
their appeals.
These selfish ones become, in their vermin number and persistency, a
very plague. They wring from the suffering General the following:
“The good book, Major,” says he to Wizard Lewis, “tells us that at the
beginning there were in Eden a man, a woman, and an office seeker who
had been kicked out of heaven for preaching 'Nullification' I To judge
of the visiting procession, as it streams in and out of my front gate,
I should say that the latter in his descendants has increased and
multiplied far beyond the other two.”
The French king forgets and forgives those grievous five millions, and
dispatches an artist of celebration to paint the General's portrait. The
artist finds the latter of a mind to humor the French king. The portrait
is painted--a striking likeness!--and the gratified artist carries it
victoriously across seas to his royal master.
[Illustration: 0365]
The General becomes concerned in keeping England from stealing Oregon,
and writes letters to the Government at Washington in protest against
it.
“Oregon or war!” is his counsel.
Just as deeply does he involve himself for the admission of Texas into
the Union, declaring that of right the nation's boundary should be, and,
save for the criminal carelessness of Statesman Adams on the occasion
of the last treaty with Spain--made in a Monroe hour--would be, the
Rio Grande. Statesman Adams, now in his icy old age, makes a speech in
Boston and denies this; whereat the General retorts in an open letter
that Statesman Adams is “a monarchist in disguise,” a “traitor,” a
“falsifier,” and his “entire address full of statements at war with
truth, and sentiments hostile to every dictate of patriotism.”
Machiavelli Clay foolishly invades the Cumberland country on a broad
mission of personal politics, and he like Statesman Adams makes a
speech. Machiavelli Clay, however, does not talk of Oregon, or Texas, or
what shall be the nation's foreign policy, whether timid or warlike.
His is wholly and solely a party oration, and in it he pays left-handed
tribute to Aaron Burr, dead a decade. Machiavelli Clay escapes no better
with his offensive eloquence than does Statesman Adams. The perilous old
General from his Hermitage is instantly out upon him with another open
letter, of which the closing paragraph says:
“_How contemptible does this lying demagogue appear, when he descends
from his high place in the Senate, and roams over the country retailing
slanders against the dead_.”
The General is much refreshed by these outbursts, and, in that
contentment of soul which follows, resolves to join the church. Long ago
he promised the blooming Rachel, fast asleep at the foot of the garden,
that once he be free from the muddy yoke of politics he will accept
religion, and now he keeps his word. He unites himself with the
congregation which worships in that little chapel, aforetime built for
the blooming Rachel, and, upon his coming into the fold, there arises
vast rejoicing throughout the ardent length and breadth of Cumberland
Presbyterianism.
The pastor, Dominie Edgar, calls often at the Hermitage; for he feels
that the General may require some special spiritual grooming. One day he
observes that convert's saw-handles, oiled and neat and ready for blood,
on a mantel, prayerfully crossed beneath a portrait of the blooming
Rachel. The good dominie is shocked, but does not show it. He picks up
one of the saw-handles.
“This has seen service, doubtless,” he remarks tentatively.
“Ay!” responds the General grimly; “it has seen good service.”
Dominie Edgar puts the saw-handle back in place, and his curiosity
pushes no farther afield. He rightly conjectures it to be the weapon
which cut down the slanderous Dickinson, and mentally holds that it will
more advantage the soul of his convert to touch as scantily as may be
upon topics so ferocious. Shifting his ground, Dominie Edgar asks:
“General, do you forgive your enemies?”
“Parson,” says the convert, “I forgive _my_ enemies, and welcome. But I
shall never”--here he points up at the portrait of the blooming Rachel,
which seems to lovingly follow his every motion with its painted patient
eyes--“I shall never forgive _her_ enemies. My feud shall follow them,
and the memory of them, to the end of time.”
Dominie Edgar sits down with his convert to show him the error of his
obdurate ways. He lectures cogently. It is to be feared, however, that
his doctrinal seed of forgiveness falls upon hard, intractable ground;
for, while the convert says never a word, the lecture serves but to
light again in those blue eyes what lamps of hateful battle burned there
on a certain fierce May morning in that popular Kentucky wood.
The long days come and go, and the General lives on in fortune,
peace, and honor. Then the end draws down; for the General has run his
threescore years and ten, and well-nigh ten years more. Wizard Lewis
sits by his bedside, and never leaves him.
“I want to go, Major,” murmurs the General to Wizard Lewis; “for she is
over there.” He raises his eyes to the portrait of the blooming Rachel,
and looks upon it long and lovingly. “Major!”--Wizard Lewis presses
the thin hand--“see that they make my grave by her side at the garden's
foot!”
The General drifts into a stupor, Wizard Lewis holding fast his hand.
The good dominie Edgar is on his knees at prayer. From the porch outside
the sick room are heard the sobs and moans of the mourning blacks.
Wizard Lewis attempts to recall the dying General.
“What would you have done with Calhoun,” he asks, “had he persisted in
his 'Nullification' designs?”
The blue eyes rouse, and sparkle and glance with old-time fire.
“What would I have done with Calhoun?” repeats the General, his voice
renewed and strong; “Hanged him, sir!--hanged him as high as Haman! He
should have been a warning to traitors for all time!”
The sparkle subsides; the blue eyes close again in the dullness of
coming death. Wizard Lewis holds the poor thin hand, while Dominie Edgar
prays on to the accompaniment of the sobbing and the moaning of the
sorrowing blacks.
The prayer ends; the good dominie rises to his feet.
“Do you know me, General?” he whispers. The dim eyes are lifted to those
of Dominie Edgar. The latter goes on: “The love of the Lord is infinite!
In it you shall find heaven!”
The General turns with looks of love to the portrait of the blooming
Rachel.
“Parson,” says he, “I must meet her there, or it will be no heaven for
me.”
The General's head droops heavily forward. Dominie Edgar falls upon his
knees, and the voice of his praying goes upward with the moaning and
the sobbing of the slaves. Wizard Lewis places his hand on the General's
breast. He sighs, and shakes his head. That mighty heart, all love, all
iron, is still.
THE END