I found Dorothy in tears, almost hysterical. Jenny, in her absence, had stepped from the room for a moment. She had not returned. She could not be found. I went on the streets, I searched everywhere. I drove to the open squares, to the Battery. I enlisted the aid of policemen, but they were none too friendly. I went to the Tribune and inserted an advertisement. The hotel employees took a hand. But no Jenny. She was deeply attached to our boy. She could not have willingly wandered away. She must have been kidnapped.
Dorothy cried herself to sleep. I sat through half the night at the window, looking out upon Broadway, listening, at last, to the stir and sounds of dawn. Jenny had been in the Clayton family almost from her birth; an associate of Mammy's for many years. The affection that existed between Dorothy and Jenny was intimate and tender. Dorothy depended upon her for everything. I went to Dorothy and took her in my arms, trying to console her. She was as deeply affected as if she had lost a sister. All that day we searched for Jenny. The days went by, and we did nothing but try to find her. Our loss became the talk of the hotel. The newspapers took up the story. Where was Jenny; in whose hands; what fate had she met? Our boy cried for her, and Mrs. Clayton was inconsolable. But at last we had to move on to Chicago. Was Jenny kidnapped? We never knew. We only knew that we never saw her again. This was the sordidness of slavery, its temptation to the meanest passions, the lowest lusts. The loss of Jenny made me hate it.
CHAPTER XL
I had many business vexations on returning to Chicago. But also the campaign of 1848 was on, and I was deeply interested in it. I had passed through the panic of 1837, but I was not then conscious that a labor movement was on. That panic had stayed it, for a mason or a carpenter was glad of work in those hard days. Then prosperity had revived and now it was in full tide due to a world condition; but in America also due to expansion and railroad building. Mr. Van Buren, in 1840, then being President, and seeking, as his enemies said, to influence the labor vote, had issued an executive order to the effect that laborers and mechanics need work but ten hours a day. Soon after this the bricklayers of Pittsburgh formed a union, the journeyman tailors of Washington opened a shop of their own; the workingmen of Philadelphia got into politics with an Equal Rights party. The laborers everywhere were advocating organization and cooperation and strikes as a means to good wages. In New York the laborers' union association had demanded a dollar a day, made out a political program, which involved opposition to any candidate who did not support the interests of workingmen. Sometimes the militia had to be called out, as in 1846 when some Irish workers on a strike were supplanted by Germans. Horace Greeley had naturally taken a hand in this movement. It attracted the humanitarian mind. The revolutionary processes in Europe of this year, the success of the socialists in France, had a marked influence upon the conditions in America. Meetings were held to congratulate the Chartists in England, the followers of Louis Blanc in France. Strikes were on in Boston and Philadelphia. I was caught in this world drift. I had a strike on my building in Chicago.
I had left my affairs in the hands of an agent manager, who did not assume authority to meet the terms of the strikers. Upon my return I was obliged to settle it myself. I did this by promptly acceding to the demands made upon me. What was a quarter of a dollar more a day to me? I wanted my building to be finished.
One could not escape observing all this rebellion abroad and in America, this awakening of the worker, this fight for human rights upon slavery in the South, even if he did not have it brought to his mind in the concrete way that I did. Slavery might be wrong, that was one thing; it might cut into the rights, first or last, of the free worker; but if the negro was owned in body and in energy, and his labor taken for nothing, except the food, shelter, and clothing required to keep him efficient, was that anything but just a matter of degree from the case of the white man who was paid so much a day, enough to give him food, shelter, and clothing, and thus keep him a fit machine? Thus there was a moral sympathy between the white workers and the black workers; all were making money for an upper man. If it was wrong to appropriate all the black man's labor, it was wrong to appropriate too much of the white man's labor. The Declaration of Independence was a hard nut to crack. While only a few hare-brained agitators wanted negro equality, even Douglas did not like slavery.
The new lands of the West brought fresh troubles to Douglas and desperate struggles to the South. The emigration of revolutionaries from Europe added to the enemies of the slave system. It was hard for them to understand that the Declaration of Independence did not include the negro.
This was the state of affairs in the campaign of 1848. The Democrats had nominated Mr. Cass, of Michigan, for President, and presented him to the people on a platform which placed the responsibility for the Mexican War upon the aggressions of Mexico; it congratulated the American soldiers of that war for having crowned themselves with imperishable glory; it tendered to the Republic of France fraternal salutations upon the success of republican principles, upon the recognition by the French of the inherent right of the people in their sovereign capacity to make and amend their forms of government. It spoke for American Democracy, a sense of the sacred duty, by reason of these popular triumphs abroad, to advance constitutional liberty, to resist monopolies. It advocated a constant adherence to the principles and compromises of the Constitution. It praised the administration of Mr. Polk for repealing the tariff of 1842, and making a start toward free trade.
And not a word about slavery. The convention voted down a resolution which favored "non-interference with the rights of property of any portion of the people of this confederation, be it in the states or the territories, by any other than the parties interested in them."