CHAPTER XXX.

ATE in August, 1856, the writer met Judge Douglas

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in Bloomington. We had a pleasant evening together. Although I had met him occasionally, this was the first extended conversation since we lived in Springfield several years before, when I was a boy. He was worn and tired with the hard work of his canvass and the irregular traveling required to get to so many places, many of which were off the railway or steamboat lines. He had aged very perceptibly since we had known him so well in Springfield. He had a care worn, anxious look, that betokened mental worry, and without hesitation he said that he was greatly distressed by the strained and threatening relation of the North and South on the slavery question.

He received me graciously, and our conversation ran freely. His friendship for my father put us at ease at once. As he encouraged the conversation on public affairs, I was pleased to let it take that direction, and listen to what he had to say. I asked him questions which brought him at once to a full declaration of his beliefs and opinions. He said, "I suppose you are an ardent Abolitionist, and are following your father in a much more rapid development of his ideas than he ever expected?"

I said: "I have been counted an Abolitionist until recently. This year we are all Republicans, who seem to be going as far on slavery as it is prudent, or possible, at least; but I am really an Abolitionist, with no desire to shift the responsibility. After a few such campaigns, which are getting to be as much war as politics, I believe you and your

Northern Democrats will be as much Abolitionists as any of us." I reminded him then that I heard Nimmo Browne tell him that the slave-leaders were getting ready to extend their system by force, civil and military, if need be, since 1845, when they waged war against Mexico.

Douglas replied: "I see you people do not have the respect for the Constitution and the agreements made in consonance therewith and under its authoritative protection. You assail slavery as a moral wrong, and end there, forgetting that if it is wrong, it still has for right of existence the protection of our Constitution and over sixty-five years of continuous, friendly legislation and settlements to sustain it. Further, the Southern people are more excitable and hot-tempered than we are, and, regardless of our opinions, they look upon interference with slavery as an attack on their vested rights under the Constitution and these long years of uninterrupted protection.

"This is their contention, and no matter how much you are opposed to their system, their rights should be fairly considered and recognized. Your party seems to hang its entire belief on opposition to the extension of slavery. The Democratic party, after the most careful consideration of the question, and demanding concessions from both its Northern and Southern factions, has agreed that the best way to settle the dispute whether slavery shall be extended into any forming State is to let the people, who are to be the real State, settle that for themselves, as they do all other domestic questions. This they practically did in California in 1850, and I hope they may do the same in Kansas. I assure you that, to accomplish a fair settlement and an honestly-conducted election by the qualified voters, I will do all that is in my power."

I replied that I was pleased to hear this statement, but that it was very apparent that the slave-leaders, who were leading the Democratic party, neither desired nor expected

a fair and honest settlement, and were then forcing slavery into Kansas and killing its people in armed invasions. I said that, like my father, I did not believe that any man possessed the right to vote another man, red, white, black, or yellow, into slavery, even with his consent, as it was a wrong against society, bringing their labor unjustly into competition with that of free men, and a sin against men and against God, who made men equal in law.

"If you will stand firmly by your determination," I continued, "that slavery shall not be established in Kansas, however, until it is done and ratified by a majority, the people will agree to this as a settlement. Indeed, it is the best they can hope for; but the slave-leaders will not submit. They know as well as we do that slavery is doomed to certain exclusion, whenever it is honestly submitted. They are in full possession of all the powers of Government, and are forcing slavery into the Territory. Neither are they deceived about you, as it appears even now. They will turn against you as mercilessly as they have turned against Benton the moment they feel certain you will serve them no longer. You are a Democrat; but no slave-leader is, or ever was one. Without being presumptuous, I am full of my father's belief, that the party is now preparing for your overthrow. It is indeed true, as you fear, that this is a perilous time, and we believe that the cause of it is away deeper than political parties, their organization, or supremacy. It is the slave-leaders' determination to make this a slave Republic by force of arms. Failing in that, they will attempt to separate and divide the Union."

The meeting was a pleasant one, where the conversation was unrestrained, conducted in running friendly talk that made it an agreeable private chat. He said: "The Southern leaders have always mistrusted me, for since I have been in Congress I have always sustained Jackson and his ideas, as against Calhoun's. Without any evidence beyond my own apprecia

tion of what is going on, I am certain that Davis, Benjamin, and Mason are plotting against me personally, envious because of my hold on the Northern Democracy. I could not say so in so many words that overtures were made to me before the Cincinnati Convention, for I turned them aside to begin with; but I was well aware than any concessions on my part would be met at once. In place of making any concessions, I stated, in the presence of Benjamin and Mason, their leaders in the Senate, that I would go no further than the 'squatter sovereignty' principle for the settlement of slavery in the Territories, and that it must be honestly and fairly voted upon, without armed interference or molestation of any kind.

"At the same time I most unequivocally denounced Atchison's invasions and the whole border imbroglio from beginning to end. I would not have changed my position in the least to receive the nomination for President. This much the Southern leaders know very well. They would like very well to set me aside, as they did Benton, Cass, Marcy, Ewing, and others; or, better still, they would prefer provoking me to leave the party. I think I understand my duty. It seems very plain. I will neither retire nor be driven. I have been in the party all my life. I may be mistaken, and make errors, as men are so liable to do, but I fully intend to be faithful to its principles as long as I live.

"I am constantly annoyed by the men and newspapers that have such sudden convictions, and leave their party all at once. Upon their leaving, before there has been the change of a word or line in any party belief, they set to work, with unspeakable venom, to denounce the party, and myself, more positively, as a scheming politician, faithless to my duties. It has been one of the continuing labors of my life to help and try to help this graceless sort of men." This danger was imminent and threatening. President Pierce's Administration was wholly devoted to the pro-slavery VOL. II.-7

cause, checked only that they might elect another President who was fully pledged to the slave-leaders before his nomination. Intimidation, bluster, and assault were not only raging on the border, but the swagger of the "bully," and the cowardly, creeping assault of the assassin had reached the halls of Congess.

Senator Sumner, of Massachusetts, was stricken by Preston Brooks in his seat, while helpless, in the presence of two other conspirators aiding the cowardly wretch, all three of them members of the House of Representatives. The petext for this attack on a senator was an alleged punishment for a speech delivered by him upon the "Crime in Kansas." His disclosure was so fearlessly done that they determined to kill him for it. Brooks, of South Carolina, vile enough for the work, was found, and the others, Edmonson and Keitt, of the same State, were the cowardly conspirators in the venture.

Sumner's speech could not be replied to. It was the truth, and it revealed the planned and premeditated murder of helpless people in Kansas. These were some of the villains of the propaganda rising to the bloody spirit of the border, in endeavor to kill the witness that was telling the world of their border atrocities. It was true that Sumner knew how to tell such a tale as the killing at the behest of the slave-power. In it, too, he put Butler, a senator from South Carolina at the time, the uncle of the "Bully" Brooks, into the crucible of his fusing rhetoric, that left the maligner of the Western people no more than a little dross, burned out and useless.

Sumner said: "With regret, I come again upon the senator from South Carolina, Mr. Butler, who, omnipresent in this debate, overflowed with rage at the simple suggestion that Kansas had applied for admission as a State, and, with incoherent phrases, discharged the loose expectoration of his speech, now upon her representative, and then