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Children of the Market Place, a novel by Edgar Lee Masters |
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Chapter 21 |
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_ CHAPTER XXI Fortunately for my peace of mind I had much to do and much to interest me. The country was developing rapidly under my eyes. Thousands of farms were coming into cultivation. The prairie grass was vanishing before the corn. Villages were springing up everywhere. Jacksonville was growing. A furor of land selling, the selling of lots and blocks in the newly formed towns, swept over the state. And my own farm had increased in value, both because of the care I had given it and because of the growing population. For in truth, while Illinois had about 160,000 inhabitants when I came to it, now as we approached the year 1837 it was estimated that there were nearly 400,000 souls within its borders. Douglas had no sooner become a member of the legislature, as it seemed to me, than he resigned to take the office of register of land in Springfield, which was now the capital of the state. He was reported to me to be making a great deal of money now, sometimes as much as $100 a day. I saw him in the summer. He was a figure of dash, self-possession, energy and clear-headedness. He confided to me that he intended to run for Congress. He was now twenty-four, a political leader in his party, fearless, dreaded, and resourceful. Douglas had advised me to read political history. Accordingly, during the long evenings at the farm, I had gone through Elliott's _Debates_ and the _Federalist_. My grandmother sent me De Tocqueville's _De la Democratie en Amerique_, which I read in French. But now I began to see that abolition sentiment was growing. Societies were being formed and had been for about two years in the northern part of the state. Here in Jacksonville the agitation of the slavery question was frowned upon; but it was fermenting under the surface of southern sentiment. I was now treated to an American panic, and times were hard. The East wanted a tariff to protect its manufacturers; the South wanted land and slaves. Texas had been filling up with Americans since 1820. She seceded from Mexico and declared her independence now; and General Houston, a Virginian by birth, a Tennesseean by residence, had taken command of the Texas troops, and after the Alamo massacre, had defeated the Mexicans with terrible slaughter in the battle of San Jacinto. The New England conscience excoriated these things and attributed them to the machinations of the slavocracy. But while Douglas had no mastery of the tariff question in its details, his mind shot through to the general philosophy of it. He often said to me that books and works of art should be admitted free of duty. He was wont to laugh at the New England conscience which could swallow the tariff and the growing factory system, and yet reject with such holy loathing cotton and slavery. He could not handle statistics, but he was a master of principles. As my grandmother was writing me regularly of affairs in England, of the progress of events, of the building of railroads, of Charles Wheatstone's electric telegraph, and of the new books of moment, I on my part was attempting to keep her informed of my life, and of the swiftly moving panorama of Illinois life. And here I insert one of my letters to her because it covers so much of the ground of this time of my life. "Dear Grandmama: I have before written you of my friend Mr. Douglas who came to Illinois just a little while before I did, and who has had such a phenomenal rise in life in this new country. He is now making ready to go to Congress, and I am to be one of the delegates to the convention which is expected to nominate him. Having resigned a very lucrative post in the Land Office, he has gone into the practice of law and the pursuit of politics. For the latter he has a positive genius, as his whole mind is taken up with visions and plans for the development of the country, and for the aggrandizement of the United States. He is honest and outspoken, courageous even to audacity; but he is sometimes accused of devious ways, and of taking up anything that has a stomach in it. But no one can say that he changes his principles; rather he avails himself of opportune conditions, which are many, to advance himself and the things he believes in. The country has no truer friend. Though I am an alien I am a resident, and therefore I can participate in political affairs and help him without being naturalized. At the present time Douglas is in Springfield, and is much in the office of one of the newspapers there, to which he contributes editorials sometimes. Recently the office was attacked by some men who had been accused of trickery of some sort by the newspaper. Douglas was present; and, though he is a little fellow, he helped to beat off the attacking parties; and in the general assault the sheriff was stabbed by one of the editors; but the matter has all blown over. "My own unfortunate affair has the appearance now of dying down. "A very terrible thing has happened in the killing the Reverend Lovejoy at Alton, a town not far from Jacksonville. He was running an abolition newspaper which was offensive to the slave interests or the peace interests, if you want to call them that. And persisting in his agitation of the slave question they undertook to destroy his press. In the altercation Lovejoy was shot. There is great feeling over the matter. "It is impossible for me to convey to you the intellectual atmosphere of the country. It is so full of contradictions and cross currents. For example, you come to believe that a Whig is against slavery. Then some one comes forward to propose a certain General Harrison, a leading Whig, for President in 1840; and some one arises to show that when he was Governor of Indiana, when it was a territory, he tried to introduce slavery, contrary to the Ordinance of 1787. I wrote you of this Ordinance before. Then there are the most numerous groups of people of every sort of weird convictions; some organized to oppose Masonry; others to curb the Irish and the Catholics; others to prohibit the use of wine and all intoxicants; others to advance the cause of free love; others to socialize the state. There are also religious societies here of every description, such as the Millerites who are now preparing for the Second Advent of Christ which they believe will take place in 1843. They are already making ready to leave their business, get their white robes, and await the Epiphany. In this state, at Nauvoo, a group called Mormons, who came here from Missouri, founded their faith upon a new revelation brought to light by two miraculous stones, said to have been discovered by a man named Joseph Smith. They practice polygamy, as in patriarchal times. They are already stirring up opposition to themselves, for where every one is so good and in his own peculiar way, hostility must result. And in this Democracy, so-called, all the really good people are in the business of forcing others to their own way of thinking. I must tell you also of a branch of the Presbyterian church which separated from the old church on the question of predestination and infant damnation. Of Baptists, Methodists, and others there are numerous sects, which in England would be frowned upon as various forms of ludicrous non-conformism. De Tocqueville's book, for which my thanks to you, dear grandmama, will preserve a very faithful picture of America of this day. "And it is refreshing, strengthening to the mind and clearing to the eye, to see Douglas and to hear him talk about all these things. He stands so clear, so pure of stock so to speak, amid all this variegated growth of political and social heresy. The other day when I was in Springfield I looked him up. Here he was talking of the Lovejoy matter, which led him into a cataloguing of the abolitionists, the anti-Masons, the Spiritualists, the Mormons, free lovers, old centralists, with the Whigs. I think he is proud that he has no hobby in the way of an ideal or ism. He seems unmagnetic to all such things. If he does not look with suspicion upon the reformer and accuse him of masking some selfish purpose, he is likely to think that the reformer is something of a fool. He gazes with an eagle's eye over the whole of American activity; he sees the South interested in cotton, the North concerned with its growing factories. Steam, iron, coal, and land figure in his deductions. He sees the country rising to power on them. And he sees men--whatever their professions--trying to advance their own interests. Hence he laughs down these queer political and religious groups; and while he deplores the death of Lovejoy, he takes it as a matter of course; the wringing of the nose brings forth blood. He is kindly and most loyal, fearless, clear-minded, and powerful; but he is unmoral. He sees the play of life. He sees the stronger getting more, Texas coming eventually to the United States, though blood be shed. The drift of things is impelled by great forces of ancient and world-wide origin. He believes with all his soul in the superiority of the white race, and that it must rule. At the same time Democracy is the thing, but Democracy let loose only after the philosophical channels have been cut. Notwithstanding his laughter at Mormonism, for example, he would not suppress it. He would let it work out its own fate. Free thought and free speech will kill it, or it will survive in spite of them because of its inherent strength, if at all. All together Douglas is very admirable to me. I think he is a genius; one of those human beings who was born old but who will always be young. And here he is in a country that is changing and growing like a village crowd upon a stage. Already Chicago has more than 4,000, and we are soon to have canals and railroads, thanks to Douglas more than to any other man in Illinois. 'The Great Northern Cross,' a railroad, is soon to be built starting at Meredosia on the Illinois River and running to Jacksonville. "As to my own affairs, dear grandmama, I have nothing to wish for in the way of material progress. Upon my return from New Orleans, whither I went in order to think down an unfortunate love affair, I found that Zoe had run away. I do not know where she is, and cannot learn by any means at my present command. Though, if Douglas is nominated for Congress, I mean to go about with him through the state. That will give me opportunity to search for her, particularly if we go to Chicago. Do write when you can, as letters are especially welcome to me from you here in this somewhat lonely life." _ |
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