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Children of the Market Place, a novel by Edgar Lee Masters |
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Chapter 50 |
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_ CHAPTER L No way to mark time quicker than by Presidentials. Four years pass in the space of two or less; for no sooner is a President installed than committees meet for reformations and plans. Six months between the election and the installation of a President! When he has served a year the election is nearly two years passed. Thus, as it seemed, the election of 1856 was upon the country before we had time to appreciate what Mr. Pierce had done. Had he had a fair chance in such a brief period to do anything? I was at work attending to my business, trying to etch too, but I could not keep my mind off the game of politics. Among the tens of thousands of men in Illinois who were devoted to Douglas no one was more loyal to his ambition than I, and perhaps no one was less conspicuous. I followed the _New York Tribune_, the _Springfield Republican_, the _North American Review_, the _Independent, Harper's Weekly_, and the southern press, as well as the papers of Illinois. I had made a large book of clippings, which expressed the journalistic thought of the country. All these things put together kept me fully occupied. Our son Reverdy was coming to an age when his schooling would need attention. I wished to send him to England. But that was difficult to do, because, while Dorothy was urging a trip abroad she wished to go to Italy, on account of the climate. In truth Dorothy was growing more distressed every day over American affairs. She found harshness in Chicago. She did not find sympathy with the ideas with which she had grown up. Her failure to make close friends interfered with her social delights. Mrs. Douglas had perhaps been her greatest intimate. With her death she had seemed to lose interest in other cordial associations. Her nervous organization was badly devitalized. I, too, hoped to see the continent, and particularly Italy. But I did not wish to leave until the campaign was over, owing to my interest in Douglas. I wanted to watch affairs now, but also I wished to help Douglas, if I could. For the first time the Republicans entered the field. They adopted a platform which incorporated the Declaration of Independence. It was against popular sovereignty, lest the people vote in slavery, or be tricked into doing so. It stood for Congressional control of slavery extension, and implicit in this was the constitutional power of Congress to do so. It had, with the Declaration of Independence, with the invocation of God, and appeals to the Bible, gathered a working force in the country. The press, the platform, had been busy to this end. Seward with his higher law was a contributor. Chase, who was termed by Douglas a debater, where Seward and Sumner were only essayists, was one of the big figures in the new movement. Beecher and Greeley were spokesmen of the new organization. The convention nominated Fremont who had explored Oregon in 1842. He was of the spirit of Douglas. He was an expansionist. He had gone into California in 1845, and raised the American flag on a mountain overlooking Monterey. He had helped later to conquer California. He had for various audacious and disobedient acts been tried and court-martialed, and dismissed from military service. President Polk had approved the verdict, but remitted the penalty. Then he had resigned. Now he was the object of the highest honor of an American convention. He was made the spokesman for a platform which denounced the invasion of Kansas by an armed force in the interests of slavery. He had gone into California for the slavocracy which engineered the Mexican War, as New England contended. Now he was at the head of the party waging war upon that slavocracy. A strange people, these Americans! Douglas had said that he did not want the office of President. Perhaps that was an exhibition of political coyness, for he was in the lists just the same! He had 33 votes on the first ballot, of which only 14 came from the South. President Pierce, who was running again, met a wavering fortune. On the sixteenth ballot he had not a vote. Douglas had 121 votes; a certain Mr. Buchanan had 168. On the seventeenth ballot this Mr. Buchanan was nominated. Who was this Mr. Buchanan? He had been Secretary of State under Polk, had helped to secure the Texan territory. So much for the appeal to Young America. He had been minister to Great Britain. Therefore he was abroad when Douglas was gummed with the poisonous sweet of Kansas and Nebraska. He thought slavery was wrong; therefore, you Abolitionists, here's the man for you. He held that territorial extension of slavery need not be feared; let the people rule. As a Congressman he had voted to exclude abolition literature from the mails; come forward Calhoun-ites and vote for Buchanan. They did. Fremont did not get a vote in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee; and only 281 in Maryland, 291 in Virginia, and 364 in Kentucky. But Millard Fillmore, running on a platform of America for Americans, almost divided the vote with Buchanan in those states. He carried Maryland against Buchanan; but of the whole popular vote he was nearly a million behind Buchanan. Fremont had 1,341,264 votes and Buchanan had 1,838,169 votes. The electoral college gave Buchanan 174 votes, Fremont 114, and Fillmore 8. Why could Douglas not have been nominated? We got the news by telegraph in Chicago. As I studied the bulletins, I was wondering whether the result was symptomatic of transient causes or whether it betokened great changes. Had the Declaration of Independence been approved at the polls? How was Douglas taking it? I did not see him. I wrote to him, but he did not reply. Did he get my letter, or was he consoling himself in convivial ways? I now prepared to go abroad. I was leaving a country that had changed in almost every way since I had come to it. I was leaving a city that was nothing but a hamlet when I first saw it. I had seen New Orleans and Chicago connected by rail, and the state grow from a few hundred thousand to a million population. I had seen Arkansas, Florida, Michigan, Iowa, Texas, Wisconsin, California, added to the Union. Coal and iron had become barons and were doing the bidding of steam, which was king. The oil that had floated on the surface of the salt wells of Kentucky was soon to be more powerful than cotton. Everything had changed--but man. Was he rising to a purer height, had a glory begun to dawn on America? Should slavery, polygamy, rum, be driven from the land? Then should we be free and happy, and just and noble? France had got schools and the ballot by the Revolution, but now she had a throne again. We had the ballot but did we have freedom? No law could have made a mob hiss Douglas at the North Market. Freedom in their hearts would have given him an audience. Was I free? Was I happy? I was not free. I was not happy. My life seemed cribbed. Dorothy was an invalid. I went to her from watching the election bulletins. I sat on the side of the bed, took her in my arms. "Let us go to Italy," she said. "I am dying here." She pressed her frail hands around my neck. "Oh let us go--let us go." _ |
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