Home > Authors Index > Edgar Lee Masters > Children of the Market Place > This page
Children of the Market Place, a novel by Edgar Lee Masters |
||
Chapter 48 |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XLVIII If I were recording the life of an artist I should be dealing with different causes acting upon his development, or with different effects produced by the same times in which Douglas lived. Instead I am trying to set forth the soul of a great man who extracted from his environment other things than beauty; or rather the beauty of national progress. The question was, after all, whether Douglas was helping to give America a soul. What was he accomplishing for the real greatness of his country by giving it territory and railroads? What kind of a soul was he giving it? Who in this time was giving America a soul? Abigail had often hinted at these questions. And I had to confess that they occupied my thoughts. I run over now with as much brevity as possible the events which led to the crisis of Douglas' life. With the Compromises of 1850 the Whig party began its rapid decline. The South did not like the Whig tariff. The Whig attitude on the slavery question was too ambiguous to appeal to the North. With its dissolution other organizations began to feed on its remains. The Know-nothings arose and disappeared, without accomplishing anything. Greeley said of them that they were "as devoid of the elements of persistence as an anti-cholera or anti-potatobug party would be." In early 1854 the Whigs, Free Soilers and Anti-Slavery Democrats met at Ripon, Wisconsin, and proposed to form a new party, to be called the Republican party. They took part of the name which Jefferson had coined, dropping the word "national" out. Douglas, enraged by this blasphemy against Jefferson, suggested that the word "black" be put in where "national" had been left out, making the name Black Republican party. A year later Douglas put through his bill for the organization of Kansas and Nebraska, which provided that they could come into the Union with or without slavery as they chose. He had long before voted against slavery prohibition in Texas; for the extension of the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific; for the Compromises of 1850, which made California free and left Utah and New Mexico to come in free or slave, according to their own wish. I had to confess that he had no clear constitutional theory himself. He was only growing more emphatic in favor of popular sovereignty as a name for territorial independence on the subject. He compared this popular sovereignty to the rights which the Colonies asserted against England to manage their own affairs, and for the violation of which the Revolution ensued. The principle had appeared in most of the bills that he had sponsored or supported. Now it was the real doctrine. He was like an inventor who, after making many experiments, hits upon a working device. He was like a philosopher, who conceives the theory, then clears it, shears away its accidents or even abandons it. He had long been distrusted in the South. The Kansas-Nebraska bill still further alienated the South. The South wanted slavery carried into the territories by the Constitution, even against the will of the people of the territories. What had Douglas to gain with popular sovereignty? He really overestimated its appeal. He knew that the South did not like it, but he believed that it was sound, and that it would win the majority of the people. He advanced it not only as a solution of a vexed condition, but in the name of Liberty. He misconceived the case, and here his tragedy began to flourish. I was sorry to witness his discomfiture and his first forensic defeat. Clergymen denounced him; and thinking no doubt that they were the spokesmen of the back-hall radicalism and ignorant morality which he despised, he fought them back bitterly: "You who desecrate the pulpit to the miserable influence of party politics! Is slavery the only wrong in the country? If so, why not recognize the great principles of self-government and state equality as curatives?" He was burned in effigy and branded a traitor, a Judas, a Benedict Arnold. The whole mob power was used against him. But he was Hercules furious. He was against the wall, but unrepentant. He came to Chicago and announced that he would speak in front of the North Market Hall. It was September, and still lovely summer weather. I could not induce Dorothy to go, so Mr. Williams, Abigail, Aldington, and I went to hear Douglas defend himself. All the afternoon before this evening bells were tolled, flags were hung at half-mast. I got to Douglas, telling him that I feared violence to his person. He waved me off. His brow was heavy with scowls, his eyes deep with emotion. He was like a man ready to fight and die. Finally the hour arrived, and he mounted the platform intrepidly, amid hisses and howls. He paused to let the tumult die. He began again. He was hooted. He stepped forward undaunted, and let forth the full power of his voice: "I come to tell you that an alliance has been made of abolitionism, Maine liquor-lawism, and what there was left of northern Whiggism, and then the Protestant feeling against the Catholic, and the native feeling against the foreigner. All these elements were melted down in one crucible, and the result is Black Republicanism." A voice called out: "You're drunk!" Bedlam broke loose. In a silence Douglas retorted: "Let a sober man say that." There were cheers. He went on: "How do you dare to yell for negro freedom and then deny me the freedom of speech? I claim to be a man of practical judgment. I do not seek the unattainable. I am not for Utopias." "Topers!" said a voice, and there were yells. "Nor for topers," resumed Douglas. "I want results. What have you done with prohibition of slavery in the North by Federal law? You who want negro equality, why don't you repeal the laws of Illinois that forbid the intermarriage of white and blacks, that forbid a negro from testifying against a white man, that allow indentures of apprenticeship, and that require registration of negroes brought into the state, the same as you license a dog? The Federal government does not prevent you. The Ordinance of 1787 gave you the start that you want for Kansas and Nebraska. Yet you have these things; and you don't have slavery. Why? Not because the Federal government says you can't have it, but because you yourself do not want it. I say that this northern country is dedicated by God to freedom, law or no law; if it hadn't been, General Harrison, who introduced slavery into Indiana against the Ordinance of 1787 would have introduced something that would be there now. So much for you Whigs who voted for Harrison in 1840." A voice: "How about Kansas and Nebraska?" There were more yells. "I am telling you, if you will hear me. You old Whigs who followed Henry Clay to the end, why do you denounce me when the Kansas-Nebraska bill is the same in principle as Clay's Compromises of 1850 ..." "How about California?" "It was a compromise. And as I have said before if the people of California had wanted a slave state they would have had it, any law to the ..." Voices crying: "Benedict Arnold! Judas!" Douglas' voice rose to its fullest power. He was fulminating Black Republicans, Know-nothings, Anti-Catholics, humbug Whigs. I felt sure that he would be attacked. For two hours he fought with this wild and wicked audience. He appealed to their sense of fairness. If he was wrong, what harm to hear him through, the better to see the wrong? If he was right, why condemn him unheard? I could only make out a few sentences from time to time. He grew weary at last. He drew out his watch. The audience quieted to hear what he would say. "It is now Sunday morning. I will go to church and you may go to hell." He stepped from the platform, walked boldly through the angry mob, ready to assault him. Without a tremor, fearlessly he edged his way along to his carriage, got into it, and was driven away, the mob hooting, bolder rowdies running after him, and covering him with vile epithets. We walked away slowly without speaking to each other. We were too shamed, too sympathetic with Douglas to tolerate this exhibition of lawlessness. We were disgraced by an American audience which had tried to disgrace an American Senator, who asked for nothing except for the privilege of being heard. When we arrived at Clark and Randolph streets Aldington and Abigail paused for a moment before turning in a direction different from mine. They said good night and went on. I walked with Mr. Williams until I arrived at my house. Then I went in, to lie awake and to think of the spectacle of the evening. _ |
||