Children of the Market Place Part 18

I began to notice that Dorothy was unusually quiet. She complained of fatigue, of pain. We had done too much perhaps. One morning she could not arise. Abigail and Aldington were returning to Chicago. We had expected to go with them. But Dorothy could not travel now--she could not stand that terrible journey of boats and cars, of changes and delays. So we bade adieu to our friends.

Dorothy did not rally, as I had expected. She grew weaker day by day.

She became gravely ill. In the midst of the extra labor thrown upon Mammy, she too was compelled to take to her bed. I was forced to look about for servants, finding two Irish girls at last. Then quite suddenly Mammy died. She was very old. And thus we were cut off from all our past, Nashville, the old days. And I stayed almost constantly by Dorothy's side, trying to bring back her strength. It entered my mind at times that after all I was not as tender a husband to Dorothy as I should have been. I was with her a good deal, to be sure. At the same time, I was much preoccupied. She did not like politics, and could not share my interest in that direction. The condition of the country really distressed her. She had seen slavery in its benign aspect, and she was impatient with any criticism of the inst.i.tution.

It was months before Dorothy sat up and began to walk again. I could see that she was frailer than before and might never be strong again. Our boy Reverdy was not robust. And the winter was coming on. At the same time Dorothy did not wish to return to Was.h.i.+ngton. She wanted to hear no more of politics. I had to select her books for her, something that soothed her, led her into dreams. _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ was now appearing in serial form. I was reading it with great amus.e.m.e.nt. But I dared not show it to Dorothy. I had heard Beecher and knew his sentimental att.i.tude. This book had for me the same quality. Yet it helped me to pa.s.s many hours while watching by Dorothy's side. Somehow I felt that it would produce a storm akin to the religious psychology which was sweeping the country. Critics were already noting its moral effect. Mrs.

Stowe was hailed by Sumner as a "Christian genius," a Joan of Arc.

Garrison said that it would make two million abolitionists. In Paris it was compared to Dumas' _The Three Guardsmen_ as a popular _tour de force_. Others detected in it a resemblance to Rousseau's _Nouvelle Heloise_. One pleaded for the liberty of the slave, the other for the rights of the peasant. But I knew that the book was not really true. It forefronted the brutality of slavery, it minimized the benevolent aspects of the inst.i.tution, which I had myself seen. It was written with intensity of feeling, with the revivalist's method and emotion. It was like her brother's sermons, and equally unauthentic. Yet how strangely was this book received. It won Macaulay and Longfellow and George Sand, and stirred the heart of Heine. It exasperated the South. The winds of destiny previously let loose were blowing madly now.

In the midst of my own cares I awoke one morning to read that Douglas was on his way to Cuba. The thought went through my mind, why not take Dorothy and go in order to give her the benefit of this summer climate through the winter? As Douglas had traveled by way of New Orleans he had stopped in Memphis and I read in the _Tribune_ what he had said to the people there: "If old Joshua R. Giddings should raise a colony in Ohio and settle down in Louisiana he would be the strongest advocate of slavery in the South; he would find when he got there that his opinion would be very much modified; he would find on those sugar plantations that it was not a question between the white man and the negro, but between the negro and the crocodile. You come right back to the principle of dollars and cents."

At New Orleans he had uttered the G.o.d of nature doctrine: "There is a line or belt of country meandering through the valleys and over the mountain tops which is a natural barrier between free territory and slave territory, on the south of which are to be found the productions suitable to slave labor, while on the north exists a country adapted to free labor alone. But in the great central region, where there may be some doubt as to the effect of natural causes, who ought to decide the question except the people residing there, who have all their interests there, who have gone there to live with their wives and children?"

No recognition of a right and a wrong, to be sure. But no express advocacy of a wrong. I could not see then, and have never been able to see since, why Douglas with this practical facing of the business of life could not fare equally well with public opinion as Hamilton has fared with it, who advocated corruption in government as a means to a national power.

I went to Dorothy with my plan about Cuba, telling her that Douglas had gone there. It stirred her languid spirits. She was all eagerness to start. We took pa.s.sage from New York, sailing around Florida, at last around Morro Castle into the harbor of Havana. The blueness of the water, with the balmy wind blowing almost incessantly began to restore Dorothy. The Spanish city lying before our eyes, yellow and continental, awoke her interest. At the dock there were crowds of idlers, Spaniards, negroes, to see us fasten and disembark. With Dorothy and our son and two maids we made our way to a hotel near the water. I was anxious to look up Douglas; but it was impossible the first evening, owing to Dorothy's indisposition. She had been seasick and the journey had fatigued her. Nevertheless we went to the roof of the hotel together and sat there until nearly midnight, inhaling the luxurious breeze from the gulf and gazing up at the brilliant stars of this tropical sky.

The next morning I was down to breakfast early, leaving Dorothy to be served in her room. The hotel was drab and decayed exteriorly; but the dining room was a continental elegance of marble, gilt, and mirrors.

Douglas was not stopping here, as I had already learned. I concluded that he would be at one of the better known hotels on the Prado, and I hurried thither as fast as I could. I soon located him; but he had gone out for a few days, was making something of a tour of the island, including a visit to the celebrated cave of Matanzas. Leaving a note for Douglas which apprised him of my hotel, I hurried back to Dorothy. The city was so brilliant under the golden suns.h.i.+ne, and the air so delightful, that I wished to spend these wonderful hours in seeing the city.

Havana was as novel to me as to Dorothy. It was Spanish, therefore having no resemblance to London or any other English town. It seemed to me to be about the size that New York was in 1833. We spent three days driving through the Paso de Paula, along the Malecon, up and down the Prado lined with laurels and distinguished for fine houses and clubs. We visited the parks, the Exchange, the old churches, the navy yard, La Fueza, built by De Soto, the old markets of Colon and Tacon, the Palace; and we stood in the Cathedral before the medallion which marked the burial place of Columbus when his remains were removed here from Santa Domingo in 1796. We dined about the cafes and hotels, and attended the theater, and walked, when Dorothy felt equal to it, through the parks, or along the wall of the sea which stretched from the punta.

I have already recorded so much of wrangling politics and the debates of infuriate minds that one might infer that I was leading no life of my own. Do you think that I am only a shadow or a registering machine, and that Dorothy is not flesh and blood? Sometimes it occurs to me that I am not treating her as a woman in spite of my desire to be thoughtful. A vast world of rich imagination, of vital emotion was in truth moving about me all the while, and in b.r.e.a.s.t.s that I did not comprehend. For all my life up to this time and beyond it, as you shall see, was occupied with money making and with watching princ.i.p.ally the epic development of America. But I was later to awake as from a day dream or from a life in a sh.e.l.l, to the consciousness of a brighter world of sunlight and of wings. I was at peace now, and with Dorothy, whose frailty required my watchfulness and my care, and whom I delighted to please with lovely things. That was the extent of my emotional life. And so we drove, and visited the shops in Opispo Street. For I was waiting for Douglas. I wanted to take him off to a bull fight or a c.o.c.k fight.

And I was eager to hear him talk of his plans, of America, of anything that came from his fluent and restless mind.

One evening when Dorothy and I were in the comfortable lounging chairs on the roof of the hotel, looking over toward Morro Castle, counting the largest of the richly brilliant stars, Douglas came upon us. He had returned from his trip only that afternoon. Finding my note, and leaving other engagements, he had come over to call, delighted and surprised to find that we were in Havana. Cuba already had a railroad, but it was not of much extent. He had been traveling by carriage, and in the hillier localities in a vehicle of two enormous wheels, drawn by horses driven in tandem. He had seen the cave, the pineapple fields, the sugar plantations. His imagination was already at work for America.

He went on to say to me that whenever the people of Cuba should show themselves worthy of freedom by a.s.serting their independence and should apply for annexation to the United States, they ought to be annexed. And that whenever Spain should be ready to sell Cuba, with the consent of its inhabitants, the United States should accept the chance. With spirit he exclaimed that if Spain should transfer Cuba to England, or any other European power America should take Cuba by force. "It is folly," he said, "to debate the acquisition of the island. It naturally belongs to the American continent. It guards the mouth of the Mississippi River, which is the heart of the American continent and the body of the American nation." This led Douglas to speak, and with bitterness, of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, which had given England joint control of any ca.n.a.l across the Isthmus of Panama. "I was disgusted with this treaty as I was disgusted with the settlement of the Oregon boundary. Just look at it! Here the Monroe Doctrine has been an avowed policy for thirty years, declaring that no European colonization will be permitted in America. And what happens? Whenever there has been no opportunity to enforce the doctrine, because there has been nothing at issue, we have c.o.c.k-a-doodle-dooed; and whenever a chance has arisen to enforce it we have beaten a retreat, frightened to death by the awful consequences if we do enforce it. Frightened by our own spokesmen, Senators and others.

Frightened by England in the main; for truly we have no other power to fear. So when the Clayton-Bulwer treaty came up I fought it as I fought Polk on the Oregon boundary of '49. I said then, and I say now, that the time may come when we shall want to possess some portion of Central America. It has come to the pa.s.s that I can't stand for America as to new territory without having the Abolitionists charge me with favoritism to the South. But it's a lie and history will vindicate me. But if I want Cuba or Central America for slavery I want them also for America.

And what does England want them for? For freedom, I suppose, for the good of America! The agreement not to fortify the ca.n.a.l was not reciprocal, because England holds Jamaica, which guards the entrance to the ca.n.a.l. What rights did England have to the Mosquito Coast? Well, her t.i.tle is at least doubtful.

"But what I hate about the ca.n.a.l treaty is the recognition of the right of European powers to intervene in American affairs. We contracted with England to protect any ca.n.a.l or railroad across the Isthmus; and not only that, we invited other European powers to join with us in that protection. And that lets in all the kings of Europe, and where's your Monroe Doctrine? It vanishes into air. Study it out; you will see all these Whigs and all these motley groups joining the Whigs, pulling together by a sort of momentum started by the old crowd which sided with England against America in the Revolution. They are the same crowd that tried to break down the American system when they were banded together as Federalists. They tried secession at Hartford, when they didn't like the War of 1812; then they held up their hands in horror when South Carolina threatened to secede over the tariff. They called on G.o.d to avenge the Mexican War; then they grabbed this slavery matter to give them a moral push into power. They elected a President, but were afraid to formulate a platform. All the while they had played with England, skulking and running and fawning upon England, when our vital interests were at stake, and siding with England on the ca.n.a.l and on Oregon. They are better than other men! They are more holy! They are pure, just, broad! They love G.o.d! They are the only Christians! There is only one evil and that is slavery! But there are many G.o.ds, of which banks and tariffs are not the least; yet I notice that they do not give away Texas and California, those unholy fruits of a wicked war for which you fought, my friend. They like the gold and the wheat. And in order to ride into power they put forward old Taylor, and blow hot and cold with him and Millard Fillmore."

The great organ-like voice of Douglas poured forth a steady stream of talk as we sat together under the wonderful stars of a clear sky, with the soft breeze from the Gulf blowing around us. Dorothy had fallen asleep. I got up and looked at her, and finding her resting peacefully I returned to my chair. It was now near midnight. We could hear the rattle of cabs on the cobblestones, the cries of strange voices in Spanish; and we saw the lights in the harbor, the lights in the Prado, over the city which was still feasting and playing. Then Douglas confided to me that he was going to be a candidate for President in this next campaign of 1852.

The prospects were very good, he thought. If he could get two or three western states to speak out in his favor he would win. He wondered if I could not go to Iowa for him. He hoped to have the leading politicians of Illinois as delegates at Baltimore. He wished me to be a delegate, not that I was a leading politician, but I counted for as much since I was an old friend and a sympathetic adherent. I told him to use me in any way that would serve him.

Having all these enterprises on his hands he was leaving for Mobile in the morning. No time to see a bull fight. "I'll not say good night to Mrs. Miles," he said. "Let her sleep." He got up to tiptoe away. "Good night, Senator," called Dorothy. She had aroused at the cessation of our talk. Douglas returned and in his most gallant manner bade Dorothy good night. Then he strode away, stepped through the trapdoor, began to descend, disappeared. I looked up at the great stars. Then lifting Dorothy into my arms, I carried her to the stairs and on my back to our room.

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 ca.n.a.l.

It was still cool in Chicago, the air fresh and vital. Great s.p.a.ces of deep blue stood far back, cool and thrillingly serene; against these s.p.a.ces 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 bl.u.s.tering 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 s.p.a.ces 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 leaders.h.i.+p. 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 pa.s.sing. 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 att.i.tude 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 Hamps.h.i.+re.

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 a.s.sociations 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.

CHAPTER XLVI

New Orleans had grown to be a city of 170,000 people. Its commerce was enormous. It was the great entrepot of the continent's sugar and cotton industries.

Day by day I stood on the wharves, watching the steamers unload and load, gazing over the busy ma.s.s of humanity back of which was labor, black and white, slave and free! The great Mississippi, broad and foul, waking from its sleep in the lowlands above, gathering speed here, feeling the call of the sea, begins to move with increased life. Across from the city are lowlands, sugar refineries, smoke stacks. The negroes call to each other, laugh with spontaneous, childlike humor. The wharf officers, the brokers, pa.s.s with intense faces. It is hot. Sweat drips from black faces and from white. Whips crack. Mules trot and stumble over the loose and resounding boards. Heavy wheels rumble. And the life of gambling, drinking, pleasure, crawls about the French quarter, along Ca.n.a.l Street, on Royal Street. The bell in the Cathedral rings. I catch the whiff of flowers. Gulls fly over the muddy water.

I think of Douglas far away in Russia, of all my life in its early days, now growing so misty. I am more than thirty-seven; and sometimes I feel weary. I grieve for Dorothy. She has wound herself with tenderness around my heart. But less and less can she share life with me.

I go to the Place d'Armes to see the equestrian statue of Jackson which has been erected here since my last visit. It is now called Jackson Square. The St. Louis Cathedral has been largely rebuilt. I wander through the Cabildo again, visit the old cemeteries, read the names of the dead. The scent of strange blossoms affects me poignantly. I stroll through the parks, and I visit the life in the French quarter.

Dorothy can drive with me at times, but not for long. Our boy distresses her; and a governess keeps him away much of the time. There are memories all about me. La Fayette has been here. He was in this very Cabildo. The old hero of New Orleans, who blessed Dorothy and me, walked these streets. Now he is long gone. Clay is gone, Webster, Calhoun. The country is at a pause. Hawthorne's friend is President. And Douglas is in St. Petersburg, riding a horse grotesquely, and bringing his western ways into the very presence of the Czar.