Children of the Market Place Part 26

"Yes, that's what it will come to. What's all this talk anyway about Honest Old Abe? Every man is honest enough, and no man in politics much more honest than another. We don't need that kind of dramatics to elect Seward. There is enough to the man to elect him. We mean to have a clean-cut, high-toned campaign with a great man to lead us, who is known to the whole country. The day is past for this log-cabin business. It's now a stone front and champagne."

I went back with Yarnell to the Richmond House, then turned my own way to study the crowds. Chicago was a carnival of unlicensed spirits. What thousands of blue flies already swarmed upon the fresh carca.s.s of this new political party! A few years before and it was poor, but of flesh that was fresh. Now it was beginning to stink. Tariffs, railroads, all powerful moneyed interests, special privileges, were settling upon it, blowing it full of eggs. All the old Whigs now long hungry, the old Federalists in disguise, the old plotters and schemers long defeated, were here. The motley elements that Douglas had derided as anti-Masonics, Know-nothings, Abolitionists, Spiritualists, where were they? Sunk in silence, out shouted, out talked, outnumbered by office seekers and monopolists. Tom Hyer was bawling, Garrison could not be heard. The New England manufacturers were here. Whittier was singing their songs and did not know it. I began to think of Rabelais, and of life as gluttony, eating and drinking, digestion and evacuation. I had a vision of all these hordes of men dead at last, their b.u.t.tocks exposed to driving rains, upturned to a dark sky which breathed futility and contempt upon ended plots and hungers!

That night I started out again with Abigail and Aldington. There had not been anything like the same amount of drinking at Charleston. Harlots staggered through the streets, their arms interlocked with those of howling men. Tom Hyer pa.s.sed, leading his gang of toughs, the gayly liveried band swelling the air with great horns and drums. Again the rails and banners for "Honest Old Abe." Rumors caught us as we pa.s.sed: the Germans were for Lincoln; Greeley wanted Douglas elected President and was scheming to defeat Seward for the nomination. We went to the Richmond House. I wanted Abigail and Aldington to see the smoking, drinking, gabbling delegates from New York. We ran into Yarnell. He was preoccupied, and was a little in drink. He stood with us for a moment, and then was b.u.t.tonholed and taken away. We returned to the streets to watch the marchers.

Yarnell was good enough to get tickets for Abigail, Aldington, and me, asking us with a half smile not to cheer for any one unless we cheered for Seward.

It was in the air that Seward would be nominated. Greeley said so, but he was really fighting Seward. We spied the bald head and bespectacled eyes of the great editor moving about the Oregon delegates. The tumult and the pa.s.sion of the Charleston convention were not as dramatic as this. These men were here to destroy the Democratic party, to take control of the government. The air was of concentrated pa.s.sion and will.

There was a declaration of principles to be formulated out of sagacity and dramaturgy. Principles were to be observed but baits to be dangled; factions were to be conciliated, relative claims adjusted; the higher thought of the nation respected; radicalism tickled but not embraced; wrong censured, but needless offense avoided. Hence state rights got a sop; the tariff was advocated and the Pacific railroad; the harmless Declaration of Independence was quoted at large. Everybody had used it for more than eighty years--why not this platform?

The balloting begins. The expectation is intense. All of us have caught the crowd spirit, the infection of the mob. New England is polled first.

What is the matter? She does not give Seward the fully expected vote.

Very well! New York is reached. William M. Everetts, hook-nosed and dished of mouth, plumps New York seventy votes for Seward. The convention recovers from its fear. All is going well for Seward after all. What of Pennsylvania and her tariff? She has fifty-seven votes; fifty and one half of these go to a favorite son, Simon Cameron. This is a mere compliment; Pennsylvania will come to Seward now that her favorite son has been honored. Illinois is reached and votes for Lincoln. There are cheers. But he is the favorite son of Illinois. These are his people. The next ballot they will go to Seward. Indiana is reached. All of her vote goes to Lincoln. There are great cheers. But Lincoln split rails once in Indiana. This is a complimentary vote too.

Ohio is reached. She has two favorite sons, Chase and McLean. Missouri is reached. Edward Bates is her son and gets the vote. What is this vote of Virginia,--fourteen votes out of her twenty-three for Lincoln? Some one near us whispers: "The South hates Seward worse than any one."

At last the whole vote is announced: Seward has 173-1/2; Lincoln 102.

The Illinois River breaks loose; the great shouter for Lincoln, hired for the occasion, storms and bawls above the hubbub of the convention.

Where is Hyer the prize fighter? He has been out with his gang.

Drinking? We do not know. At any rate he is late, has missed one of the psychologies of the convention. After the noise is subsided, we hear that Bates, Greeley's favorite, has forty-eight votes. "Call the roll!"

"Call the roll!" shout hundreds of delegates. Men are going mad with anxiety. Arms are waved frantically, delegates rise from their seats and bawl undistinguishable words. Curses and hisses fill the air. The second ballot begins. Why does Pennsylvania deliberate, why does she retire so often to consult her wishes? There is laughter over it. She changes her vote now. Her favorite son, Cameron, gets two; forty-eight go to Lincoln. What is the matter with Seward? We had heard there was plenty of Seward money in Pennsylvania. Yarnell had told me so. Why doesn't the machinery work? Ohio falls off seven votes for Chase; Bates loses thirteen of his Missouri votes. Vermont throws her whole vote to Lincoln, and the Stentor from the Illinois River bottoms raises a thunder of applause. But Tom Hyer has now arrived and the Seward chorus is working.

The vote is announced: Seward has 184-1/2; Lincoln 181; necessary to a choice, 233. Seward is ruined. Tom Hyer is down. The band, the banners are for nothing. All the Seward money is for nothing. To be Governor, Senator, the leading man of the party for years, the great debater of the Senate, the author of the irrepressible conflict, the most dreaded enemy of the South--all this goes up and out in a second like a poor sulphur match in a gale. Seward is ruined. A country lawyer from Springfield, Illinois, once a state legislator, once a Congressman, has killed him in two blows. What has done it? The irrepressible conflict.

It has crushed him before it crushed many more, old and young throughout the land. He is too famous. His words are too well known. The house divided against itself is not so well known. Lincoln is obscure. He is a trim new champion of fifty-one years of age, ready after some fifteen or more years of resting and training, for a great fight.

Yet may not Greeley's Bates still come in? A horse not so swiftly running before now has a chance. Where would Seward's strength be thrown now that he cannot use it for himself? Can he throw it to any one? No!

For the third ballot gives Seward 180 and Lincoln 231-1/2. But Seward is still holding on. Ohio has been sticking to Chase. The vote is not announced by the chair. But hundreds of pencils have kept the score. And just about as it is to be announced, Ohio throws four votes from Chase to Lincoln. Lincoln is nominated! The West of Douglas has won.

The convention goes mad. The Illinois River roars like waters over a thousand dams. Lake Michigan shouters make the rafters tremble. A cannon is fired from the roof. But no one inside hears it. We go forth to the street. Ma.s.ses are yelling and crying with delight. Old Abe from Illinois is nominated. Chicago is delirious with joy. From the Tremont House a hundred guns are fired. Processions start; everywhere men are bearing rails. Bands play. Drink flows like sudden freshets. Yarnell pa.s.ses at a distance. He is staring straight ahead, hurrying somewhere.

What is left for Seward, for his supporters? Virginia had been bought, why didn't she deliver? Ohio was fingered for Seward. Why didn't Ohio yield? Pennsylvania had taken quant.i.ties of Seward money. Why this ingrat.i.tude? What nominated Lincoln? The Seward men have an answer.

The madness of the crowd for railsplitting! The log-cabin tradition!

Genius and statesmans.h.i.+p have been set aside for a popular symbol, railsplitting. A party of moral ideas has reverted to claptrap. These are the bitter comments of Seward's beaten army. Then there are curses for Greeley. Greeley has avenged Seward's lifetime enmity. He has slaughtered the great man of the party. Why? The old traitor wants Douglas elected.

CHAPTER LXI

The press comments of the country on Lincoln's nomination were exceedingly conflicting. He was written of as the man whom Douglas had beaten two years before, and without other distinction; as lacking in culture, in every way inferior to Seward; as a whangdoodle stump speaker of the second cla.s.s, and without any known principle. What is this talk of Old Abe Lincoln, Old Uncle Abe, Honest Abe Lincoln? Was he not a log roller in the Illinois legislature of 1836? Had he not been driven from position to position by Douglas in the debates? What is honest about him above other men? Why a nomination on the strength of a deceiving nickname? Is he not for the tariff and loose construction? Has he not been a Whig with all the humb.u.g.g.e.ry of that party, of log cabins and imperial practices?

The Republican press was more favorable. He was hailed as a man of the people, sprung from the people. On a hurried visit with Douglas, he told me that Lincoln was as able as any man the Republicans had, abler far than Seward; and of great integrity, though he loathed Lincoln's political faith. "I'll carry nearly every northern state against him,"

said Douglas. "The Union must be saved. I know the South. They will secede if Lincoln is elected. It's utter madness of them to think of this; but mad they are. We must handle them accordingly. Wall Street, New York, is afraid of Lincoln. They don't want their business disturbed by secession or even by a hostile South. Cotton is that strong."

Douglas was full of fight and energy. He intended to canva.s.s the entire country. He was going into the South to point out the dangers of a divided country. "They are terribly mad at me down there. But I have never feared an audience yet. I intend to face them--and win them."

No Presidential nominee had ever made a speaking tour before. Lincoln stayed quietly in Springfield. Seward made a speaking campaign, traveling on a special train. At Springfield he stayed in his car and did not show Lincoln the courtesy of calling upon him. Lincoln, without standing on any pride, went to see Seward, edging his way through the crowd to the car.

Douglas fought everywhere to the last. If in his Senatorial days and before he had been complaisant to the slavocracy, the Charleston convention would not have seceded from him. His course now in the campaign silenced men like Hale and Seward who had nagged him for years with their depreciations and suspicions. He went into Virginia and there while speaking he was heckled by a Breckenridge follower. He was asked if the Southern States would be justified in seceding if Lincoln should be elected President. "No," thundered Douglas. "The election of a man to the Presidency of the American people, in conformity to the Const.i.tution of the United States, would not justify any attempt at dissolving this glorious confederacy."

"But if the Southern States secede upon the inauguration of Lincoln, before he commits an overt act against their rights, would you advise or vindicate resistance by force to their secession?" If Douglas had ever prost.i.tuted his mind to the South, now was the time to do it again. But this was his answer:

"I answer that it is the duty of the President of the United States and all others in authority under him to enforce the laws of the United States as pa.s.sed by Congress and as the court expounds them. And I, as in duty bound by my oath of fidelity to the Const.i.tution, would do all in my power to aid the government of the United States in maintaining the supremacy of the laws against all resistance to them, come from what quarter it might. The President should meet all attempts to break up the Union as Old Hickory treated the nullifiers in 1832."

What of the right of revolution? Douglas conceded that, but insisted that the election of Lincoln would not be "such a grievance as would justify revolution, or secession."

I believed this too. Upon large ground if the South had the right to hold the negroes in slavery, the North would have the right to hold the South in the Union. If the South wanted to stuff fate into a small pocket of logic and allow their narrow bigotry to get the better of their reason, I was in favor of licking them in the name of sport and in justification of Darwin's law of the survival of the fittest.

Douglas, in spite of threats against his life, went into the Far South appealing to them to consider the dangers ahead. The Democratic party was hopelessly divided. Some partisan newspapers were carrying two tickets on the editorial page. Others were fighting Douglas bitterly; others supporting with fierce energy Breckenridge of Kentucky. Many were scheming with a view to the contingency that the election would be a tie and that the House of Representatives, in making the choice, would select Douglas.

Chicago was a whirlpool of excitement. In the middle summer Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, traveling in America as Baron Renfrew, came to Chicago on his way hunting in Illinois. The fate of the nation was a pa.s.sing play to him. While he was here he was a greater object of interest than either Douglas or Lincoln. We heard that he was to stand on the balcony of his hotel to watch the political parades of the evening. Mr. Williams and I went forth to see the future King of England.

The city was thronged with people. Bands were playing everywhere. The Wide-awakes, a Republican organization, were out in force marching as soldiers, dressed in glazed caps and capes, carrying torches. Mottoes and transparencies were borne aloft by hundreds. "Free soil for free men." "No more slave territories." "We do care whether slavery is voted up or down." "Abraham Lincoln cares"--these were the banners. And everywhere the banner "Protection to American Industries." Men carried rails. The crowds cheered and roared. And Baron Renfrew looked on, surrounded by his entourage and a few of the elite of Chicago. We stared up into his face. Did he smile, approve? Was he greatly interested? If America should divide it would be better for England. We saw him turn and smile as he evidently spoke to one of his party.

Then a parade of Douglas men pa.s.sed. They too carried banners. "Little Giant." "Ever Readies." "Cuba Must Be Ours." "We want none but white men at the helm." "We want a statesman, not a railsplitter for President."

"Free Trade"--these were the Douglas mottoes. We turned at last and made our way through the crowd. Hawkers were selling railsplitter pins, Honest Abe pins. The streets were a medley of noise, confusion; the sidewalks were blocked. Drunken men, eager men pushed their way through.

Bands played. Far off a stump speaker's voice could be heard. All this waste of sand and scrub oak which I had seen in 1833 was now covered with buildings big and little. It was the battleground between two sons of Illinois.

October came. I grew more and more apprehensive for Douglas' fate. I had had a letter from Isabel gently foreshadowing her marriage. My boy was not advancing in his work at school. Inexorable loneliness was descending upon me.

Douglas came to Chicago on a speaking trip. He had been in Indianapolis where his voice was so hoa.r.s.e that he could scarcely be heard. Chicago gave him a magnificent ovation. They saw the man now in all his clearness of mind and strength of heart. He repudiated the schemes of fusion.

"Every disunionist," he said, "is a Breckenridge man. As Democrats, we can never fuse either with northern Abolitionists or southern bolters and secessionists. Yes, my friends, I say to you what I said in North Carolina and in the same words: I would hang every man higher than Haman who would attempt to resist by force the execution of any provision of the Const.i.tution which our fathers made and bequeathed to us. You cannot sever this Union unless you cut the heartstrings that bind father to son, daughter to mother, and brother to sister in all our new states and territories. I love my children, but I do not desire to see them survive this Union."

With these words his tired and broken voice fell back into weakness from the great melody and power of its habitual quality. His weary body had risen into fresh strength for this utterance. His face a.s.sumed a great majesty. Men and women alike wept to hear him speak so--wept for the dark days ahead, wept for a great man failing in a struggle in which he was yet holding to cherished ideals, now being blown and scattered by the storm of the new era. They saw him surrounded on all sides by enemies. The South hated him. The northern Democrats with southern ideas hated him. The fanatics hated him. The Republican party which he had stepped upon with giant contempt hated him. In eight years of existence it had gathered to itself the contemptible factions that he had satirized. They had united now in the supreme purpose of defeating him. He was appealing for the same principles to which he had always been devoted. He was defending the Union as he had defended it since the days when I saw Jackson put his arm around him, and look with paternal pride in his eyes. He knew the heart and the will of the South. He was trying to tell it to the North. He felt that his own election would prevent disunion. He asked people to believe that he wished to be elected, not to gratify his personal ambition, but for the sake of the Union.

It was all in vain. The avalanche, loosened years before by stray adventurers building fires for their little kettles, and running thoughtlessly over weakened attachments, was now moving down on Douglas and the Union. The October election showed that he was defeated.

Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana were carried by the Republicans in the state elections. Douglas was speaking in the South. His life had been threatened. An attempt was made to wreck his train. In Alabama he was showered with missiles. Not a northern paper published these shameful insults, which if published would have won him many friends in the North. Amid dangers and discouragements he went on to the end.

He was in Mobile when the news of Lincoln's election reached him.

Before leaving Alabama he did what he could to prevent that state from seceding.

Undismayed, he went on to New Orleans. There he addressed the business men, pointing out to them that Lincoln would have a hostile Senate on his hands if the South would only remain in the Union; that Lincoln could carry out no abolition or unfriendly policy toward the South without a Senate; that all of Lincoln's appointments would have to be confirmed by the Senate. All of these things he said to dissuade the South from secession. When they would not be persuaded, he tore the mask from their faces and told them directly that Lincoln's election was only a pretext for those who wished to set up a Southern Confederacy.

Lincoln was elected. But Douglas was not dishonored. He had achieved a great personal triumph. He had polled 1,357,157 votes in the country against Lincoln's 1,866,452. In Illinois he had polled 160,215 votes to Lincoln's 172,161--in spite of New England and the Germans. He had received 163,525 votes from the South against Lincoln's 26,430. But he had lost to Breckenridge or Bell fourteen southern states. Protective tariff Pennsylvania had given Lincoln 268,030 and Douglas 16,765.

Protective tariff Ma.s.sachusetts had given Lincoln 106,533 and Douglas 34,372. Douglas had fought the South, he had fought against the disadvantage of a divided party, he had fought the protective tariff, yet Lincoln had polled but a little more than 500,000 votes more than he had. No use to say that the populace does not understand questions of government or that they cannot rise to high justices and rewards.

Douglas' personal triumph had been great, but his remarkable popular support shrunk to an insignificant twelve votes in the electoral college. He was vanquished and I was more deeply depressed than I had ever been in my life. Lincoln was elected!

And the South seceded.

CHAPTER LXII

It is war! Mars has descended. The irrepressible conflict has taken the sword. The house divided against itself is in the last contest to see whether there shall be two houses or one. The devils are now to be cast out, not by Satan but by the Lord mighty in battle, great in anger.

Grapes of wrath are to be treaded now, and a furious wine drawn from the broken flesh of men hitherto growing peacefully on peaceful stems, North and South.