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Children of the Market Place, a novel by Edgar Lee Masters |
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Chapter 34 |
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_ CHAPTER XXXIV I took a house in Madison Street, some two blocks from the lake. There was first the business of having Mammy and Jenny registered, something similar to a dog license. But Mr. Williams helped me about that. I had not seen Abigail yet, but of course she knew that I was married. A vague faithlessness accused me. And yet I had never spoken a word of love to her. It was my admiration for her and hers for me, rising up to ask me why I had married Dorothy. Did I really know myself? Dorothy was entranced with Chicago. She thrived under its more bracing air. She loved the bustle, the stir. We were now in the midst of the presidential campaign, and Mammy and Jenny saw political enthusiasm in a new phase. Marching men passed through the street. There were shouts, torches, many speeches on America's greatness. Mrs. Clayton came to Chicago before the election and was all delight over the new life which had come to her. The pulsations of great vitality in the rapidly growing nation were well exemplified in Chicago's development. The country was bursting with commercial expansion; it was lusty with the infusion of strong blood from Europe. Nearly a million Irishmen and Germans had been added to the population since 1840. Illinois, as a garden spot, had received her share of these virile stocks. The iron production, which was in a primitive stage when I arrived in America, had now grown to be a great industry. There was anthracite coal, which was first mined in Pennsylvania in 1814 on a very inconsiderable scale; and now the output was more than five million tons a year. It was supplanting wood in the making of steam. The Chippewas had ceded their copper lands on the south shore of Lake Superior, and the mining and manufacture of copper had become an extensive industry. Gold was taken in large quantities from the Appalachians. There were about five thousand miles of railroad in the country as compared with the something more than one thousand miles which it had in 1833. The telegraph was following the railroads. For in this very year, under the administration of President Tyler, $30,000 had been appropriated by Congress for the building of a telegraph line from Baltimore to Washington. But above all, the country thrilled with the prospect of acquiring Texas and settling the territory of Oregon. Douglas was at once one of the creators and one of the most conspicuous products of this great drama. He had been reelected to Congress by a plurality of over 1700 votes over his Whig opponent. The Whigs opposed the annexation of Texas. Clay was against it. New England preached and sang against it. But Tyler had tried to negotiate a treaty for it. It had failed. He devoted much of his last annual message to Congress to the Texas subject, soliciting "prompt and immediate action on the subject of annexation." Douglas, during the campaign in Illinois and in Tennessee, had denounced those weaklings who feared that the extension of the national domain would corrupt the institutions of the country. As to war with Mexico because of Texas, let it come. The Federal system was adapted to expansion, to the absorption of the whole continent. Great Britain should be driven, with all the vestiges of royal authority, from North America. "I would make," he said, "an ocean-bound republic, and have no more disputes about boundaries or red lines upon the maps." These words sent a thrill through the country. What had Clay to offer as a counteractant, as an equal inspiration to the pride of this lusty nation? Surely not the tariff. This imaginative impulse had carried Mr. Polk to the Presidency; but before Mr. Tyler laid down his office he was able to send a message to Texas with an offer of annexation. It was accepted, and in December of that year, 1845, Texas became a state of the Union. Mother Clayton had come on to Chicago at last, and we were fully settled with Mammy and Jenny to run the house. My life was ideal, divided as it was between money making and participation in Chicago's development. We had Mr. and Mrs. Williams and Abigail and Aldington as a nucleus for new friendships. I could see more clearly than ever that Dorothy and Abigail were as dissimilar as two women could be. Nevertheless, they became friends. Mrs. Williams and Mother Clayton found much in common. My business relations with Mr. Williams were altogether agreeable. I resumed my readings with Abigail and Aldington, although Dorothy was not greatly interested. Poe's _Raven_ went the rounds this winter and created an excitement. We read Hawthorne's novels. Emerson's _Essays_, the second series, appeared. Then the first discordant note came between Dorothy and Abigail. For Emerson said: "We must get rid of slavery, or get rid of freedom." Abigail exclaimed over this epigrammatic truth. Dorothy looked at Abigail disapprovingly, apparently seeing in her face evidence of a different spirit than she had hitherto suspected. Aldington joined Abigail in praise of Emerson. And for the sake of a balance, I sided with Dorothy and Mother Clayton against them. Though none of us had anything to do directly with the matter of slavery, it thus cast its shadow upon our otherwise happy relationship. In these readings too I was following with great care the career of Douglas in Congress, in which Abigail and Aldington were not so warmly interested. Douglas' early life, his adventure into the West, had put him through an experience and into the possession of an understanding which were alien to the eastern statesmen. The West was for the enterprise of the young. It was a domain of opportunity for youth, divorced from family influence and the tangles of decaying environment. Hence Texas must be assimilated, and California taken eventually, and the Oregon country acquired. An ocean-bound republic! As for slavery, it did not enter into Douglas' calculations. I knew, however, that in spite of what any one said, he was not a protagonist of slavery. He simply subordinated it to the interests of expansion. He was willing to leave it to the new states to determine for themselves whether they should have slavery or not. With the impetuosity of his thirty-two years he slipped into a recognition of the Missouri Compromise, and was willing that slavery should be prohibited north of this line. He was generating a plague for himself which would come back upon him later. But if Douglas' advocacy of the Texas expansion exposed him to charges of a slave adherency, nothing could be said against his cry for the taking of Oregon. The Mormons whom he had befriended without any dishonor to himself had set forth into the untraveled land of Utah. Already a band of young men from Peoria had gone into the Far West. Therefore, when he now spoke for Oregon he had a responsive ear among his own people in Illinois. If the eastern people, the dwellers in the old communities, did not kindle to Oregon, it was because they had neither the flare nor did they see the urge of this emigration and occupancy. With the rapid extension of railroads, how soon would the whole vast land be bound together in quick communication! So it was, Douglas was offering bills in Congress for creating the territory of Nebraska, for establishing military posts in Oregon, and for extending settlements across the West under military protection. He advocated means of communication across the Rocky Mountains. He thought of his own unprotected youth. He would have the young men from Peoria and from every place feel confident in the knowledge that as builders of the nation's greatness they had the friendship and the strong arm of the government around them. What was Great Britain doing? Reaching for California, hungering for Texas, eyeing Cuba. She hated republican institutions. She would gird them with her own monarchist principles, bodied forth in fortifications and military posts. It should not be. Douglas had said: "I would blot out the lines of the map which now mark our national boundaries on this continent and make the area of liberty as broad as the continent itself. I would not suffer petty rival republics to grow up here, engendering jealousy of each other, and interfering with each other's domestic affairs, and continually endangering their peace. I do not wish to go beyond the great ocean--beyond those boundaries which the God of nature has marked out. I would limit myself only by that boundary which is so clearly defined by nature." Meanwhile President Polk was saying: "Our title to Oregon is clear and unquestionable." He was urging the termination of the treaty for joint occupation with Great Britain of Oregon. War! Yes, but Douglas did not fear it. At the beginning of the thirties of his years, he was leading Congress in the formation of an ocean-bound republic. These were his words: "The great point at issue between us and Great Britain is for the freedom of the Pacific Ocean, for the trade of China and Japan, of the East Indies, and for our maritime ascendency on all these waters." I watched these proceedings to the end, and until the Oregon territory was settled by the fixing of the 49th parallel as the boundary between Great Britain and the United States. Douglas had striven with all his might to extend the boundary to the 54th parallel. He had failed in this, and was bitterly disappointed. He had been accused of boyish dash and temerity in affronting English feeling with a larger demand. It had come to the point where I could not discuss, particularly in Dorothy's presence, these questions with Abigail. She saw nothing in these labors of Douglas but vulgar materialism. That, of course, was the farthest thing from the minds of Mother Clayton and Dorothy. But before the Oregon compact was signed, two grave matters disturbed our peace and brought their influence into our happy household. Congress had failed to pass the bills to protect the settlers in the Oregon territory. And we were at war with Mexico. I felt irresistibly drawn to the war. _ |
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