THE PERSONAL EQUATION
Vast changes had passed over Illinois since Douglas set foot on its
soil, a penniless boy with his fortune to make. The frontier had been
pushed back far beyond the northern boundary of the State; the Indians
had disappeared; and the great military tract had been occupied by a
thrifty, enterprising people of the same stock from which Douglas
sprang. In 1833, the center of political gravity lay far south of the
geographical center of the State; by 1856, the northern counties had
already established a political equipoise. The great city on Lake
Michigan, a lusty young giant, was yearly becoming more conscious of
its commercial and political possibilities. Douglas had natural
affinities with Chicago. It was thoroughly American, thoroughly
typical of that restless, aggressive spirit which had sent him, and
many another New Englander, into the great interior basin of the
continent. There was no other city which appealed so strongly to his
native instincts. From the first he had been impressed by its
commercial potentialities. He had staked his own fortunes upon its
invincible prosperity by investing in real estate, and within a few
years he had reaped the reward of his faith in unseen values. His
holdings both in the city and in Cook County advanced in value by
leaps and bounds, so that in the year 1856, he sold approximately one
hundred acres for $90,000. With his wonted prodigality, born of superb
confidence in future gains, he also deeded ten acres of his valuable
"Grove Property" to the trustees of Chicago University.[592] Yet with
a far keener sense of honor than many of his contemporaries exhibited,
he refused to speculate in land in the new States and Territories,
with whose political beginnings he would be associated as chairman of
the Committee on Territories. He was resolved early in his career "to
avoid public suspicion of private interest in his political
conduct."[593]
The gift to Chicago University was no doubt inspired in part at least
by local pride; yet it was not the first nor the only instance of the
donor's interest in educational matters. No one had taken greater
interest in the bequest of James Smithson to the United States. At
first, no doubt, Douglas labored under a common misapprehension
regarding this foundation, fancying that it would contribute directly
to the advancement and diffusion of the applied sciences; but his
support was not less hearty when he grasped the policy formulated by
the first secretary of the institution. He was the author of that
provision in the act establishing the Smithsonian Institution, which
called for the presentation of one copy of every copyrighted book,
map, and musical composition, to the Institution and to the
Congressional Library.[594] He became a member of the board of regents
and retained the office until his death.
With his New England training Douglas believed profoundly in the
dignity of labor; not even his Southern associations lessened his
genuine admiration for the magnificent industrial achievements of the
Northern mechanic and craftsman. He shared, too, the conviction of his
Northern constituents, that the inventiveness, resourcefulness, and
bold initiative of the American workman was the outcome of free
institutions, which permitted and encouraged free and bold thinking.
The American laborer was not brought up to believe it "a crime to
think in opposition to the consecrated errors of olden times."[595] It
was impossible for a man so thinking to look with favor upon the
slave-labor system of the South. He might tolerate the presence of
slavery in the South; but in his heart of hearts he could not desire
its indefinite extension.
Douglas belonged to his section, too, in his attitude toward the
disposition of the public domain. He was one of the first to advocate
free grants of the public lands to homesteaders. His bill to grant one
hundred and sixty acres to actual settlers who should cultivate them
for four years, was the first of many similar projects in the early
fifties.[596] Southern statesmen thought this the best "bid" yet made
for votes: it was further evidence of Northern demagogism. The South,
indeed, had little direct interest in the peopling of the Western
prairies by independent yeomen, native or foreign. Just here Douglas
parted company with his Southern associates. He believed that the
future of the great West depended upon this wise and beneficial use of
the national domain. Neither could he agree with Eastern statesmen who
deplored the gratuitous distribution of lands, which by sale would
yield large revenues. His often-repeated reply was the quintessence
of Western statesmanship. The pioneer who went into the wilderness, to
wrestle with all manner of hardships, was a true wealth-producer. As
he cleared his land and tilled the soil, he not only himself became a
tax-payer, but he increased the value of adjoining lands and added to
the sum total of the national resources.[597]
Douglas gave his ungrudging support to grants of land in aid of
railroads and canals. He would not regard such grants, however, as
mere donations, but rather as wise provisions for increasing the value
of government lands. "The government of the United States is a great
land owner; she has vast bodies of land which she has had in market
for thirty or forty years; and experience proves that she cannot sell
them.... The difficulty in the way of the sale does not arise from the
fact that the lands are not fertile and susceptible to cultivation,
but that they are distant from market, and in many cases destitute of
timber."[598] Therefore he gave his voice and vote for nearly all land
grant bills, designed to aid the construction of railroads and canals
that would bring these public lands into the market; but he insisted
that everything should be done by individual enterprise if possible.
He shared the hostility of the West toward large grants of land to
private corporations.[599] What could not be done by individual
enterprise, should be done by the States; and only that should be
undertaken by the Federal government which could be done in no other
way.
As the representative of a constituency which was profoundly
interested in the navigation of the great interior waterways of the
continent, Douglas was a vigorous advocate of internal improvements,
so far as his Democratic conscience would allow him to construe the
Constitution in favor of such undertakings by the Federal government.
Like his constituents, he was not always logical in his deductions
from constitutional provisions. The Constitution, he believed, would
not permit an appropriation of government money for the construction
of the ship canal around the Falls of the St. Mary's; but as
landowner, the Federal government might donate lands for that
purpose.[600] He was also constrained to vote for appropriations for
the improvement of river channels and of harbors on the lakes and on
the ocean, because these were works of a distinctly national
character; but he deplored the mode by which these appropriations were
made.[601]
Just when the Nebraska issue came to the fore, he was maturing a
scheme by which a fair, consistent, and continuous policy of internal
improvements could be initiated, in place of the political bargaining
which had hitherto determined the location of government operations.
Two days before he presented his famous Nebraska report, Douglas
addressed a letter to Governor Matteson of Illinois in which he
developed this new policy.[602] He believed that the whole question
would be thoroughly aired in the session just begun.[603] Instead of
making internal improvements a matter of politics, and of wasteful
jobbery, he would take advantage of the constitutional provision
which permits a State to lay tonnage duties by the consent of
Congress. If Congress would pass a law permitting the imposition of
tonnage duties according to a uniform rule, then each town and city
might be authorized to undertake the improvement of its own harbor,
and to tax its own commerce for the prosecution of the work. Under
such a system the dangers of misuse and improper diversion of funds
would be reduced to a minimum. The system would be self-regulative.
Negligence, or extravagance, with the necessary imposition of higher
duties, would punish a port by driving shipping elsewhere.
But for the interposition of the slavery issue, which no one would
have more gladly banished from Congress, Douglas would have
unquestionably pushed some such reform into the foreground. His heart
was bound up in the material progress of the country. He could never
understand why men should allow an issue like slavery to stand in the
way of prudential and provident legislation for the expansion of the
Republic. He laid claim to no expert knowledge in other matters: he
frankly confessed his ignorance of the mysteries of tariff schedules.
"I have learned enough about the tariff," said he with a sly thrust at
his colleagues, who prided themselves on their wisdom, "to know that I
know scarcely anything about it at all; and a man makes considerable
progress on a question of this kind when he ascertains that
fact."[604] Still, he grasped an elementary principle that had escaped
many a protectionist, that "a tariff involves two conflicting
principles which are eternally at war with each other. Every tariff
involves the principles of protection and of oppression, the
principles of benefits and of burdens.... The great difficulty is, so
to adjust these conflicting principles of benefits and burdens as to
make one compensate for the other in the end, and give equal benefits
and equal burdens to every class of the community."[605]
Douglas was wiser, too, than the children of light, when he insisted
that works of art should be admitted free of duty. "I wish we could
get a model of every work of art, a cast of every piece of ancient
statuary, a copy of every valuable painting and rare book, so that our
artists might pursue their studies and exercise their skill at home,
and that our literary men might not be exiled in the pursuits which
bless mankind."[606]
Still, the prime interests of this hardy son of the West were
political. How could they have been otherwise in his environment?
There is no evidence of literary refinement in his public utterances;
no trace of the culture which comes from intimate association with the
classics; no suggestion of inspiration quaffed in communion with
imaginative and poetic souls. An amusing recognition of these
limitations is vouched for by a friend, who erased a line of poetry
from a manuscript copy of a public address by Douglas. Taken to task
for his presumption, he defended himself by the indisputable
assertion, that Douglas was never known to have quoted a line of
poetry in his life.[607] Yet the unimaginative Douglas anticipated the
era of aërial navigation now just dawning. On one occasion, he urged
upon the Senate a memorial from an aëronaut, who desired the aid of
the government in experiments which he was conducting with dirigible
balloons. When the Senate, in a mirthful mood, proposed to refer the
petition to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Douglas protested that
the subject should be treated seriously.[608]
While Douglas was thus steadily growing into complete accord with the
New England elements in his section--save on one vital point,--he fell
captive to the beauty and grace of one whose associations were with
men and women south of Mason and Dixon's line. Adèle Cutts was the
daughter of Mr. J. Madison Cutts of Washington, who belonged to an old
Maryland family. She was the great-niece of Dolly Madison, whom she
much resembled in charm of manner. When Douglas first made her
acquaintance, she was the belle of Washington society,--in the days
when the capital still boasted of a genuine aristocracy of gentleness,
grace, and talent. There are no conflicting testimonies as to her
beauty. Women spoke of her as "beautiful as a pearl;" to men she
seemed "a most lovely and queenly apparition."[609] Both men and women
found her sunny-tempered, generous, warm-hearted, and sincere. What
could there have been in the serious-minded, dark-visaged "Little
Giant" to win the hand of this mistress of many hearts? Perhaps she
saw "Othello's visage in his mind"; perhaps she yielded to the
imperious will which would accept no refusal; at all events, Adèle
Cutts chose this plain little man of middle-age in preference to men
of wealth and title.[610] It proved to be in every respect a happy
marriage.[611] He cherished her with all the warmth of his manly
affection; she became the devoted partner of all his toils. His two
boys found in her a true mother; and there was not a household in
Washington where home-life was graced with tenderer mutual
affection.[612]
Across this picture of domestic felicity, there fell but a single,
fugitive shadow. Adèle Cutts was an adherent of the Roman Church; and
at a time when Native Americanism was running riot with the sense of
even intelligent men, such ecclesiastical connections were made the
subject of some odious comment. Although Douglas permitted his boys to
be educated in the Catholic faith, and profoundly respected the
religious instincts of his tender-hearted wife, he never entered into
the Roman communion, nor in fact identified himself with any
church.[613] Much of his relentless criticism of Native Americanism
can be traced to his abhorrence of religious intolerance in any form.
This alliance meant much to Douglas. Since the death of his first
wife, he had grown careless in his dress and bearing, too little
regardful of conventionalities. He had sought by preference the
society of men, and had lost those external marks of good-breeding
which companionship with gentlewomen had given him. Insensibly he had
fallen a prey to a certain harshness and bitterness of temper, which
was foreign to his nature; and he had become reckless, so men said,
because of defeated ambition. But now yielding to the warmth of tender
domesticity, the true nature of the man asserted itself.[614] He grew,
perhaps not less ambitious, but more sensible of the obligations which
leadership imposed.
No one could gainsay his leadership. He was indisputably the most
influential man in his party; and this leadership was not bought by
obsequiousness to party opinion, nor by the shadowy arts of the
machine politician alone. True, he was a spoilsman, like all of his
contemporaries. He was not above using the spoils of office to reward
faithful followers. Reprehensible as the system was, and is, there is
perhaps a redeeming feature in this aspect of American politics. The
ignorant foreigner was reconciled to government because it was made to
appear to him as a personal benefactor. Due credit must be given to
those leaders like Douglas, who fired the hearts of Irishmen and
Germans with loyalty to the Union through the medium of party.[615]
The hold of Douglas upon his following, however, cannot be explained
by sordid appeals to their self-interest. He commanded the unbought
service of thousands. In the early days of his career, he had found
loyal friends, who labored unremittingly for his advancement, without
hope of pecuniary reward or of any return but personal gratitude; and
throughout his career he drew upon this vast fund of personal loyalty.
His capacity for warm friendships was unlimited. He made men,
particularly young men, feel that it was an inestimable boon to be
permitted to labor with him "for the cause." Far away in Asia Minor,
with his mind teeming with a thousand strange sensations, he can yet
think of a friend at the antipodes who nurses a grievance against him;
and forthwith he sits down and writes five pages of generous,
affectionate remonstrance.[616] In the thick of an important campaign,
when countless demands are made upon his time, he finds a moment to
lay his hand upon the shoulder of a young German ward-politician with
the hearty word, "I count very much on your help in this
election."[617] If this was the art of a politician, it was art
reduced to artlessness.
Not least among the qualities which made Douglas a great, persuasive,
popular leader, was his quite extraordinary memory for names and
faces, and his unaffected interest in the personal life of those whom
he called his friends. "He gave to every one of those humble and
practically nameless followers the impression, the feeling, that he
was the frank, personal friend of each one of them."[618] Doubtless he
was well aware that there is no subtler form of flattery, than to call
individuals by name who believe themselves to be forgotten pawns in a
great game; and he may well have cultivated the profitable habit.
Still, the fact remains, that it was an innate temperamental quality
which made him frank and ingenuous in his intercourse with all sorts
and conditions of men.
Those who judged the man by the senator, often failed to understand
his temperament. He was known as a hard hitter in parliamentary
encounters. He never failed to give a Roland for an Oliver. In the
heat of debate, he was often guilty of harsh, bitter invective. His
manner betrayed a lack of fineness and good-breeding. But his
resentment vanished with the spoken word. He repented the barbed
shaft, the moment it quitted his bow. He would invite to his table the
very men with whom he had been in acrimonious controversy, and perhaps
renew the controversy next day. Greeley testified to this absence of
resentment. On a certain occasion, after the New York _Tribune_ had
attacked Douglas savagely, a mutual acquaintance asked Douglas if he
objected to meeting the redoubtable Greeley. "Not at all," was the
good-natured reply, "I always pay that class of political debts as I
go along, so as to have no trouble with them in social intercourse and
to leave none for my executors to settle."[619]
In the round of social functions which Senator and Mrs. Douglas
enjoyed, there was little time for quiet thought and reflection. Men
who met him night after night at receptions and dinners, marvelled at
the punctuality with which he returned to the routine work of the
Senate next morning. Yet there was not a member of the Senate who had
a readier command of facts germane to the discussions of the hour. His
memory was a willing slave which never failed to do the bidding of
master intellect. Some of his ablest and most effective speeches were
made without preparation and with only a few pencilled notes at hand.
Truly Nature had been lavish in her gifts to him.
To nine-tenths of his devoted followers, he was still "Judge" Douglas.
It was odd that the title, so quickly earned and so briefly worn,
should have stuck so persistently to him. In legal attainments he fell
far short of many of his colleagues in the Senate. Had he but chosen
to apply himself, he might have been a conspicuous leader of the
American bar; but law was ever to him the servant of politics, and he
never cared to make the servant greater than his lord. That he would
have developed judicial qualities, may well be doubted; advocate he
was and advocate he remained, to the end of his days. So it was that
when a legal question arose, with far-reaching implications for
American politics, the lawyer and politician, rather than the judge,
laid hold upon the points of political significance.
The inauguration of James Buchanan and the Dred Scott decision of the
Supreme Court, two days later, marked a turning point in the career of
Judge Douglas. Of this he was of course unaware. He accepted the
advent of his successful rival with composure, and the opinion of the
Court, with comparative indifference. In a speech before the Grand
Jury of the United States District Court at Springfield, three months
later, he referred publicly for the first time to the Dred Scott case.
Senator, and not Judge, Douglas was much in evidence. He swallowed the
opinion of the majority of the court without wincing--the _obiter
dictum_ and all. Nay, more, he praised the Court for passing, like
honest and conscientious judges, from the technicalities of the case
to the real merits of the questions involved. The material,
controlling points of the case were: first, that a negro descended
from slave parents could not be a citizen of the United States;
second, that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and void
from the beginning, and thus could not extinguish a master's right to
his slave in any Territory. "While the right continues in full force
under ... the Constitution," he added, "and cannot be divested or
alienated by an act of Congress, it necessarily remains a barren and
worthless right, unless sustained, protected, and enforced by
appropriate police regulations and local legislation, prescribing
adequate remedies for its violation. These regulations and remedies
must necessarily depend entirely upon the will and wishes of the
people of the Territory, as they can only be prescribed by the local
legislatures." Hence the triumphant conclusion that "the great
principle of popular sovereignty and self-government is sustained and
firmly established by the authority of this decision."[620]
There were acute legal minds who thought that they detected a false
note in this paean. Was this a necessary implication from the Dred
Scott decision? Was it the intention of the Court to leave the
principle of popular sovereignty standing upright? Was not the
decision rather fatal to the great doctrine--the shibboleth of the
Democratic party?
On this occasion Douglas had nothing to add to his exposition of the
Dred Scott case, further than to point out the happy escape of white
supremacy from African equality. And here he struck the note which put
him out of accord with those Northern constituents with whom he was
otherwise in complete harmony. "When you confer upon the African race
the privileges of citizenship, and put them on an equality with white
men at the polls, in the jury box, on the bench, in the Executive
chair, and in the councils of the nation, upon what principle will you
deny their equality at the festive board and in the domestic circle?"
In the following year, he received his answer in the homely words of
Abraham Lincoln: "I do not understand that because I do not want a
negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife."
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 592: Sheahan, Douglas, pp. 442-443; Iglehart, History of the
Douglas Estate in Chicago.]
[Footnote 593: Letter in Chicago _Times_, August 30, 1857.]
[Footnote 594: _Globe_, 29 Cong., 1 Sess., pp. 749-750.]
[Footnote 595: _Globe_, 32 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 870.]
[Footnote 596: _Ibid._, 31 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 75.]
[Footnote 597: _Globe_, 31 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 266.]
[Footnote 598: _Ibid._, 32 Cong., 1 Sess., pp. 350-351.]
[Footnote 599: _Ibid._, p. 769.]
[Footnote 600: _Globe_, 32 Cong., 1 Sess., App., p. 951.]
[Footnote 601: _Ibid._, p. 952.]
[Footnote 602: Letter to Governor Matteson, January 2, 1854, in
Sheahan, Douglas, pp. 358 ff.]
[Footnote 603: MS. Letter, Douglas to C.H. Lanphier, November 11,
1853.]
[Footnote 604: _Globe_, 36 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 953.]
[Footnote 605: _Globe_, 36 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 953.]
[Footnote 606: _Ibid._, p. 1050.]
[Footnote 607: Chicago _Times_, January 27, 1858.]
[Footnote 608: _Globe_, 31 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 132.]
[Footnote 609: Mrs. Pryor, Reminiscences of Peace and War, p. 68;
Villard, Memoirs, I, p. 92.]
[Footnote 610: Letter of Mrs. Lippincott ("Grace Greenwood") to the
writer.]
[Footnote 611: Conversation with Stephen A. Douglas, Esq., of
Chicago.]
[Footnote 612: The marriage took place November 20, 1856.]
[Footnote 613: See Philadelphia _Press_, June 8, 1861.]
[Footnote 614: Letter of J.H. Roberts, Esq., of Chicago to the writer;
also letter of Mrs. Lippincott to the writer.]
[Footnote 615: See Philadelphia _Press_, November 17, 1860.]
[Footnote 616: For a copy of this letter, I am indebted to J.H.
Roberts, Esq., of Chicago.]
[Footnote 617: Conversation with Henry Greenbaum, Esq., of Chicago.]
[Footnote 618: Major G.M. McConnell in the Transactions of the
Illinois Historical Society, 1900; see also Forney, Anecdotes of
Public Men, I, p. 147.]
[Footnote 619: Schuyler Colfax in the South Bend _Register,_ June,
1861; Forney in his Eulogy, 1861; Greeley, Recollections of a Busy
Life, p. 359.]
[Footnote 620: The New York _Times_, June 23, 1857, published this
speech of June 12th, in full.]