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Children of the Market Place, a novel by Edgar Lee Masters |
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Chapter 45 |
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_ CHAPTER XLV Dorothy and I lingered in Havana until we were sure that spring had come to Chicago. Then we took a boat to New Orleans; and once again I ascended the Mississippi to St. Louis, and thence to Chicago by the Illinois River and the canal. It was still cool in Chicago, the air fresh and vital. Great spaces of deep blue stood far back, cool and thrillingly serene; against these spaces the white clouds coming over from the far west and disappearing into havens over the lake and into Michigan. The lake was roaring to the stiff breezes of the blustering spring. Chicago was a thrilling spectacle. The Illinois Central railroad was being built. The railroad mileage in the country had now risen to more than ten thousand miles. The short roads with steamboat connections were giving way to the trunk lines. Boston was now connected by rail with Montreal. There were nine hundred miles of railroad in Ohio; six hundred in Indiana; about four hundred in Illinois. The Michigan Central connected Chicago with Detroit. The Michigan Southern was opened, and the first train from the East had entered Chicago. A train had started west from St. Louis on the first five miles of the Pacific railroad. Telegraph lines stuck forth everywhere into the great spaces of the country, like the new shoots of a tree. The breech-loading gun had been invented. The fire-alarm telegram system had come into use. Thackeray had come over from England to smile upon us genially, to lecture at the rate "of a pound a minute," as he had expressed it. Young America was putting old America behind her. Calhoun was gone. Clay, defeated in his life's ambition to be President, had crept to his grave. Webster was a dying man. The slavery question had vexed and shadowed his dying years. He had supported the Compromises of 1850 and had been bitterly denounced for it. Whittier had expunged his name from the list of the great and the good. He had wanted to be President too. Men like General Harrison had secured the prize over his head. He was reduced to the rejection of the proffered Vice Presidency. He had been Secretary of State under Harrison, Tyler, and Fillmore. He had supported the bank, the tariff, implied powers, and Hamiltonism. He had followed Clay's leadership. Still he had risen to great heights of oratory and legalistic reason. Carlyle had called him a logic machine in pants. His debate with Hayne, however, was to furnish the material for one of the greatest of state papers, to be written less than a decade from this day. From the hills of Massachusetts he failed to see the West. Young Douglas had fronted him and told him of the power of the new and growing country along the Mississippi River. Old America was passing. The West was asking for the highest recognition. Douglas was thirty-nine and seemed to be the man for President. I did not pretend to be a politician, but only an observer and Douglas' friend. I read everything that was written about the questions of the day, the newspapers, the _Congressional Record_. It was clear to me that the Democrats had been split in 1848 by their attitude toward the Wilmot Proviso, which was intended to keep slavery from the Texan territory. Then came the Compromises under a Whig administration. The Compromises were hated by the South and cursed by the Abolitionists in the North. The Democrats were united by an acquiescence in the Compromises. And now the Whigs were divided because of them. They had played foxy in '48 by a no-platform. They were unable to have one, because they had no united voice. The Free Soil party had collapsed in Illinois. Altogether hopes ran high for the Democrats. But who should be the candidate? Douglas! He seemed to me the ideal man, as Webster seemed the ideal man to admiring Whigs. But Douglas, like Webster, was doomed to fail, at least in this convention. The prize was captured by Franklin Pierce, whom no one knew, but it was not until the forty-ninth ballot. On the forty-eighth ballot Douglas had thirty-three votes to Pierce's fifty-five. Then there was a stampede to Pierce. The West had lost. Young America was put aside for a fair-sized man from New Hampshire. The Whigs met the same month in Baltimore. Webster, soon to die, was again a candidate. The platform was made and submitted to him. He approved of it. It indorsed the Compromises. But again there was an old soldier in the field, in the person of General Scott. He had fought the British in 1812. He had made treaties with the Sauk, Fox, Winnebago, and Sioux tribes after the Black Hawk War. Yes, he had made a brilliant record in the Mexican War. In mental stature he was up to the knees of Webster, and no more. But Webster had no imaginative appeal. He could only pull twenty-nine votes on the first ballot, as against Scott's one hundred and thirty-one votes. Webster never had more than thirty-two votes. On the fifty-third ballot Scott was nominated. And in a few months Webster died, and left the tangles of statecraft to other hands. Who was Franklin Pierce? Pretty soon Hawthorne, whose romances I had enjoyed so much, put forth a life of his long-time friend. "When a friend dear to him almost from boyhood days stands up before his country, misrepresented by indiscriminate abuse on the one hand, and by aimless praise on the other, it is quite proper that he should be sketched by one who has had opportunities of knowing him well and who is certainly inclined to tell the truth." These were Hawthorne's words. Pierce was a gentleman of truth and honor, devoted to his family and to his country, accomplished, of fine appearance, and always Democratic. But how could this man win against an old soldier? Webster and Douglas had lost the nomination, how could a gentleman win the election? I returned to Chicago and to my business. But Douglas' term for Senator was about to expire, and he necessarily entered the campaign with vigor. He traveled from Virginia to Arkansas, from New York to Illinois and all over his own state. He mocked Scott's letter of acceptance, attributing its composition to Seward. His physical endurance seemed exhaustless. All the while he was living and confraternizing and drinking. Pierce was elected. Douglas won the legislature for another Senatorial term. In the midst of these excitements Mrs. Douglas died. She had been to our house but recently. If I had prophesied between her and Dorothy I should have believed the end would come to Dorothy first. Dorothy was so frail, so incapable of effort. Already I was beginning to think of a milder climate for her for the winter. Douglas now seemed to lose heart. His temper became bitter. His dress was slovenly, his manners familiar, his associations indifferent. He was drinking too much. In his public utterances he was more emphatic, more caustic of tongue. If the loss of the nomination had disappointed him, the death of Mrs. Douglas had overwhelmed him. He was not interested in his Illinois Central. He was doing nothing with his large tract of land three miles south of Madison Street. He was very well off. But he had no heart to enjoy his prosperity. He was doing nothing about founding his university. He was a giant sorely smitten, ready to rouse from irritability into fury against his enemies. He was in a poor way to master his own spirit and future. I suggested to him a trip to Europe to forget his sorrows, to recuperate his spirits. He liked the idea. But first he had to return to the Senate. There he spoke of Cuba and its annexation, almost in the same words he had used when talking to me that midnight on the roof of the hotel in Havana. Bitterly he denounced the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. Audaciously he excoriated England. Almost immediately he was off to visit England, but not to see Queen Victoria, although invited to her presence. He went to Russia, saw the Czar. He visited the Crimea and Syria. From New Orleans I followed his travels. I had taken Dorothy there to escape the Chicago winter. _ |
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