Children of the Market Place Part 13

I spoke my plan to Dorothy, "Come, let's take mother, Mammy, and Jenny with us. Close the house for good. I want all of you. We can transfer all this happiness to Chicago. I will get a big house. I have some one now with whom to share my riches. This sharing is the beginning of my real satisfaction in life."

Dorothy took my hand, pressed her cheek against mine. "Oh, my dear, my dear!" was all she said. I felt her cheek moistening with tears. Then drawing her to me I said: "Yes, my dear, that is my wish. Let us drive back now and tell mother."

Mrs. Clayton was silent for some seconds. Then she said: "Aren't you best alone? Take Mammy and Jenny if you wish. But perhaps I can't be a mother to you, James; perhaps you won't want to be a son to me as time goes on. These things must come to mothers and fathers. The daughters find new homes and go away. I did that. And now Dorothy has the same right."

"No," I said, with emphasis, "I want you. I want to transfer this whole atmosphere to Chicago. I want all of you with me. I do not wish you to wander off on this visit. After that what, anyway? You should not be separated from Dorothy. Come, and if you want to go on a visit from Chicago, well and good."

If this was to be, there was much to do. Could we wait until the house was rented, or at least placed with an agent, the furnis.h.i.+ngs stored if necessary? Yes, I could wait and Dorothy could wait. And day by day both of us importuned Mrs. Clayton to come with us. She saw at last that it was our dearest wish. And she yielded.

In the meanwhile Dorothy and I were driving about the country or sitting under the trees in the yard, living through great rapture, mothered by Mrs. Clayton, and so constantly served by Mammy and Jenny and Mose.

Then the day came. The house was rented. Mrs. Clayton stored some of her furnis.h.i.+ngs. The choicest things she gave to Dorothy--lovely mahogany and silver.

On a morning, with Mammy and Jenny in our traveling party, with Mose helping us to the boat, hiding his saddened spirit under a forced humor, with Mrs. Rutledge and many friends to see us off, we took our departure. Again the musical whistle of the boat; again the stir and vociferous calls of the pier; again on the waters of the Ohio bound for St. Louis. Again the great Mississippi.

But Mrs. Clayton left us at St. Louis to visit Reverdy and Sarah. She would come to Chicago later.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

I took a house in Madison Street, some two blocks from the lake. There was first the business of having Mammy and Jenny registered, something similar to a dog license. But Mr. Williams helped me about that.

I had not seen Abigail yet, but of course she knew that I was married. A vague faithlessness accused me. And yet I had never spoken a word of love to her. It was my admiration for her and hers for me, rising up to ask me why I had married Dorothy. Did I really know myself?

Dorothy was entranced with Chicago. She thrived under its more bracing air. She loved the bustle, the stir. We were now in the midst of the presidential campaign, and Mammy and Jenny saw political enthusiasm in a new phase. Marching men pa.s.sed through the street. There were shouts, torches, many speeches on America's greatness.

Mrs. Clayton came to Chicago before the election and was all delight over the new life which had come to her. The pulsations of great vitality in the rapidly growing nation were well exemplified in Chicago's development. The country was bursting with commercial expansion; it was l.u.s.ty with the infusion of strong blood from Europe.

Nearly a million Irishmen and Germans had been added to the population since 1840. Illinois, as a garden spot, had received her share of these virile stocks.

The iron production, which was in a primitive stage when I arrived in America, had now grown to be a great industry. There was anthracite coal, which was first mined in Pennsylvania in 1814 on a very inconsiderable scale; and now the output was more than five million tons a year. It was supplanting wood in the making of steam. The Chippewas had ceded their copper lands on the south sh.o.r.e of Lake Superior, and the mining and manufacture of copper had become an extensive industry.

Gold was taken in large quant.i.ties from the Appalachians. There were about five thousand miles of railroad in the country as compared with the something more than one thousand miles which it had in 1833. The telegraph was following the railroads. For in this very year, under the administration of President Tyler, $30,000 had been appropriated by Congress for the building of a telegraph line from Baltimore to Was.h.i.+ngton. But above all, the country thrilled with the prospect of acquiring Texas and settling the territory of Oregon. Douglas was at once one of the creators and one of the most conspicuous products of this great drama.

He had been reelected to Congress by a plurality of over 1700 votes over his Whig opponent. The Whigs opposed the annexation of Texas. Clay was against it. New England preached and sang against it. But Tyler had tried to negotiate a treaty for it. It had failed. He devoted much of his last annual message to Congress to the Texas subject, soliciting "prompt and immediate action on the subject of annexation." Douglas, during the campaign in Illinois and in Tennessee, had denounced those weaklings who feared that the extension of the national domain would corrupt the inst.i.tutions of the country. As to war with Mexico because of Texas, let it come. The Federal system was adapted to expansion, to the absorption of the whole continent. Great Britain should be driven, with all the vestiges of royal authority, from North America. "I would make," he said, "an ocean-bound republic, and have no more disputes about boundaries or red lines upon the maps."

These words sent a thrill through the country. What had Clay to offer as a counteractant, as an equal inspiration to the pride of this l.u.s.ty nation? Surely not the tariff. This imaginative impulse had carried Mr.

Polk to the Presidency; but before Mr. Tyler laid down his office he was able to send a message to Texas with an offer of annexation. It was accepted, and in December of that year, 1845, Texas became a state of the Union.

Mother Clayton had come on to Chicago at last, and we were fully settled with Mammy and Jenny to run the house. My life was ideal, divided as it was between money making and partic.i.p.ation in Chicago's development. We had Mr. and Mrs. Williams and Abigail and Aldington as a nucleus for new friends.h.i.+ps. I could see more clearly than ever that Dorothy and Abigail were as dissimilar as two women could be. Nevertheless, they became friends. Mrs. Williams and Mother Clayton found much in common. My business relations with Mr. Williams were altogether agreeable.

I resumed my readings with Abigail and Aldington, although Dorothy was not greatly interested. Poe's _Raven_ went the rounds this winter and created an excitement. We read Hawthorne's novels. Emerson's _Essays_, the second series, appeared. Then the first discordant note came between Dorothy and Abigail. For Emerson said: "We must get rid of slavery, or get rid of freedom." Abigail exclaimed over this epigrammatic truth.

Dorothy looked at Abigail disapprovingly, apparently seeing in her face evidence of a different spirit than she had hitherto suspected.

Aldington joined Abigail in praise of Emerson. And for the sake of a balance, I sided with Dorothy and Mother Clayton against them. Though none of us had anything to do directly with the matter of slavery, it thus cast its shadow upon our otherwise happy relations.h.i.+p.

In these readings too I was following with great care the career of Douglas in Congress, in which Abigail and Aldington were not so warmly interested. Douglas' early life, his adventure into the West, had put him through an experience and into the possession of an understanding which were alien to the eastern statesmen. The West was for the enterprise of the young. It was a domain of opportunity for youth, divorced from family influence and the tangles of decaying environment.

Hence Texas must be a.s.similated, and California taken eventually, and the Oregon country acquired. An ocean-bound republic!

As for slavery, it did not enter into Douglas' calculations. I knew, however, that in spite of what any one said, he was not a protagonist of slavery. He simply subordinated it to the interests of expansion. He was willing to leave it to the new states to determine for themselves whether they should have slavery or not. With the impetuosity of his thirty-two years he slipped into a recognition of the Missouri Compromise, and was willing that slavery should be prohibited north of this line. He was generating a plague for himself which would come back upon him later.

But if Douglas' advocacy of the Texas expansion exposed him to charges of a slave adherency, nothing could be said against his cry for the taking of Oregon. The Mormons whom he had befriended without any dishonor to himself had set forth into the untraveled land of Utah.

Already a band of young men from Peoria had gone into the Far West.

Therefore, when he now spoke for Oregon he had a responsive ear among his own people in Illinois. If the eastern people, the dwellers in the old communities, did not kindle to Oregon, it was because they had neither the flare nor did they see the urge of this emigration and occupancy. With the rapid extension of railroads, how soon would the whole vast land be bound together in quick communication!

So it was, Douglas was offering bills in Congress for creating the territory of Nebraska, for establis.h.i.+ng military posts in Oregon, and for extending settlements across the West under military protection. He advocated means of communication across the Rocky Mountains. He thought of his own unprotected youth. He would have the young men from Peoria and from every place feel confident in the knowledge that as builders of the nation's greatness they had the friends.h.i.+p and the strong arm of the government around them.

What was Great Britain doing? Reaching for California, hungering for Texas, eyeing Cuba. She hated republican inst.i.tutions. She would gird them with her own monarchist principles, bodied forth in fortifications and military posts. It should not be. Douglas had said: "I would blot out the lines of the map which now mark our national boundaries on this continent and make the area of liberty as broad as the continent itself.

I would not suffer petty rival republics to grow up here, engendering jealousy of each other, and interfering with each other's domestic affairs, and continually endangering their peace. I do not wish to go beyond the great ocean--beyond those boundaries which the G.o.d of nature has marked out. I would limit myself only by that boundary which is so clearly defined by nature."

Meanwhile President Polk was saying: "Our t.i.tle to Oregon is clear and unquestionable." He was urging the termination of the treaty for joint occupation with Great Britain of Oregon. War! Yes, but Douglas did not fear it. At the beginning of the thirties of his years, he was leading Congress in the formation of an ocean-bound republic.

These were his words: "The great point at issue between us and Great Britain is for the freedom of the Pacific Ocean, for the trade of China and j.a.pan, of the East Indies, and for our maritime ascendency on all these waters."

I watched these proceedings to the end, and until the Oregon territory was settled by the fixing of the 49th parallel as the boundary between Great Britain and the United States. Douglas had striven with all his might to extend the boundary to the 54th parallel. He had failed in this, and was bitterly disappointed. He had been accused of boyish dash and temerity in affronting English feeling with a larger demand. It had come to the point where I could not discuss, particularly in Dorothy's presence, these questions with Abigail. She saw nothing in these labors of Douglas but vulgar materialism. That, of course, was the farthest thing from the minds of Mother Clayton and Dorothy.

But before the Oregon compact was signed, two grave matters disturbed our peace and brought their influence into our happy household. Congress had failed to pa.s.s the bills to protect the settlers in the Oregon territory. And we were at war with Mexico.

I felt irresistibly drawn to the war.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

Dorothy was in terror. We had been married so short a time. Our happiness had been undisturbed. We had found such perfect enjoyment in our home. We had taken such delight in the life of Chicago.

But Mother Clayton encouraged me with bright and admiring eyes. I felt that I owed this service to Douglas. He had mapped out the boundaries of Texas. Should I not carry the sword to defend and establish them? The dream which was Douglas' had also taken possession of me.

Abigail saw nothing in the Mexican War beyond an ambition of the Southern States to extend slavery. It was a fight for cotton. The Eastern States did not like the war, the Whigs opposed the war. Illinois had many enemies of the war.

But these were the facts: Mexico had announced that the annexation of Texas would be considered an act of war. She had broken off diplomatic relations with us when we offered to annex it. She had prepared to resist the loss of Texas with force of arms. Our people were in Texas.

They could not be abandoned. "How did they get there?" asked Abigail.

"By pus.h.i.+ng and adventuring where they did not belong."

President Polk had sent troops under General Taylor to defend Texas; he had sent commissioners to Mexico to make a peaceable solution of the dispute. Besides, he was anxious to get the Mexican province of California, as Douglas was, including the wonderful bay and harbor of San Francisco. Would Mexico sell them without a fight? Mexico had declined. General Taylor was therefore ordered to advance to the Rio Grande. There was war! Its shadow entered my household. Dorothy was in tears. Mammy and Jenny were shaking with fear. For I had resolved to enter the fight.

And Chicago was afire with the war spirit. The streets echoed to the music of martial bands; orators addressed mult.i.tudes in various parts of the city. Trade was stimulated. The hotels were thronged with people.

The restaurants were noisy with agitated talkers. Douglas' name was on every one's tongue.

Volunteers had been called for. But Illinois could send but three regiments; she offered six to the cause. Many companies were refused. I organized a company, financing it myself. But it could not be taken, and I joined the army under the colonelcy of John J. Hardin. He it was whom Douglas had supplanted as state's attorney. Now he was to lead troops, to the vindication of Douglas' dream.

Dorothy was inconsolable for my departure. She could not have sustained the ordeal except for Mother Clayton. There were fear, anxiety, and mystical foreboding in Dorothy's heart for a different reason. She was soon to bear a child. She was loath to have me away from her in this ordeal. Yet I had to go. A whole continent moved me; great forces urged me forward. I was now an American. Martial blood stirred in me. All concerns of home, of Dorothy, sank below the great vision of war. The aggregate feelings and thoughts of a people make a superintelligence which may be mistaken for G.o.d. Of this superintelligence Douglas' voice was the great expression. I broke from Dorothy's arms, after vainly attempting to console her.

The six Illinois regiments a.s.sembled at Alton, where I had been so many times before. I was to see this town again in the most dramatic moment of my life, how unimagined in this terrible time of war. We hurried on to join General Taylor, who had already, as we learned later, won the battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. Characters later to figure momentously in the history of the country were here to settle the t.i.tle of Texas with the sword. Robert E. Lee, a lieutenant, was brevetted for bravery in the battles of Cerro Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec. Captain Grant had come with a regiment and joined the forces of General Taylor. He took part in the battles of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, and Monterey; and then being transferred to General Scott's army, he served at Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, Churubusco, Molino del Rey, and at the capture of Chapultepec. Here too was Colonel Jefferson Davis, who led his valorous Mississippians, who put to flight Ampudia at the battle of Buena Vista. Lee, Grant, Davis, Taylor, the next President, all in arms for the ocean-bound republic of the young Congressman from Illinois!

Our Illinois troops with those from other states, numbering in all 5000 men, proceeded to Monterey, thence to Buena Vista where we were confronted by 20,000 Mexicans under the command of General Santa Anna, who had no doubt of a speedy victory over us. On Was.h.i.+ngton's birthday, Santa Anna sent a message to General Taylor to surrender, saying that he did not wish to inflict useless slaughter. General Taylor declined, and we fought.