Children of the Market Place

by Edgar Lee Masters

"We must go," I said quickly. "I wouldn't miss that for the world. We must go." And I was thinking, what better way to forget Isabel? Reverdy was really glad to hear this debate at Alton; but it was necessary for him to attend to some things this day in preparation of being absent to-morrow. In the afternoon he had to drive out to his farm, and I went with him. And when we came within a short distance of the log cabin, where I had spent my first winter on the farm, I was seized with a desire to see it again. There was so much of Rome and Italy fresh in my mind with which to contrast my previous life. And we drove to the cabin.

The door had fallen to one side. The clay between the logs had dried, turned to dust, and fallen away. The roof had sagged. The fireplace was going to wreck. We looked in. Weeds had grown up during the summer through the crevices of the floor. The place was lonely and haunted. "Well," said Reverdy, "this is the kind of a home that Lincoln had as a boy. He was born in a cabin like this; and he's poor now. He has never got rich like Douglas has. And Douglas will soon be as poor as Lincoln if he keeps on at the same rate spending money in this campaign. They say he has mortgaged nearly all his property in Chicago. Everybody's fighting him—the Republicans, all the Abolitionists, and half the Democrats. This campaign means his political death or life."

"You say Lincoln was born in a log cabin. Is this a campaign of the log cabin, hard cider, and war records?"

"Well, perhaps more log cabins, but no war record. Lincoln was never in any war but the Black Hawk. He was against the Mexican War; and when in Congress voted for resolutions that the war was unconstitutional and improper. No, he is not old Harrison or old Zach Taylor. Still the log cabin is in the fight."

Then Reverdy went on to tell me that Lincoln was a clean man and that the Republicans had no abler man in Illinois; that he had been a good deal in politics after all, though quiet for about ten years. That while Douglas had been Senator, chairman of the committee on territories, his name on everybody's tongue, the most prominent man and the most active in the whole country, building railroads, organizing territories, battling with Great Britain, settling California and Oregon, and Kansas and Nebraska, traveling abroad into Russia and Asiatic Europe, and companioning with notables everywhere, making money almost like a millionaire, Lincoln had been over at Springfield practicing law, talking on the street corners, sitting in his office alone in reflection, sometimes reading; but all the while, in a way, resting.

"He's fresh and Douglas is tired," said Reverdy. "He has the advantage of not having committed himself much. Douglas has spoken freely on everything. He's four years older than Douglas, but he's a younger man. He's a temperance man they say; and while I like a drink, I don't like to see a man drink as much as Douglas does. They say he's been pouring it down during this campaign. But as for Douglas' stooping to debate with Lincoln, it's no stoop. They make the fur fly when they talk. What I fear is that there's going to be trouble in this country. I hate slavery, but I hate this agitation too. I don't want to see the North keep on making war on the South. It will breed trouble sure. And this is where I stand with Douglas. He is for non-interference with slavery and his election will be a quieter."

When we got back to Reverdy's house I plunged into the newspapers containing the debates. I read until suppertime, and then late into the night. I read them all. I went to bed and analyzed the arguments.

A house divided against itself cannot stand! This was Seward's irrepressible conflict clothed in Biblical language. The religious revival which had swept the country gave these words a compelling acceptance. But as I read this it came over me that both Jesus and Lincoln were sophists. For a house divided against itself can stand; and irrepressible conflicts rage forever. They may change their ground, but they do not cease. I had seen this in Europe and in Italy, where in the January just past a certain Orsini had attempted the life of Louis Napoleon because he had not acceded to the labors of Cavour and thus hastened the liberty of Italy. And yet Italy was standing and France. Houses are divided everywhere and they stand. Beelzebub is crafty enough to cast out devils here and there in order to confound his kingdom with the Kingdom of Heaven. Of course he does not cast all the devils out—if he did he would lose his kingdom—only enough to make himself appear as one of the divine wonder-workers. A house divided against itself can stand, even as the world can stand with both good and evil in it, with both God and Satan in divided authority over it; and even as man has good and evil in his own nature and still lives and works without becoming wholly good or wholly evil. So could this country stand divided into free and slave states as it was formed at the beginning. There was not the slightest chance that it would ever become all slave, as Lincoln had presented one of the alternatives of a divided house. There was great chance that it would become all free by natural processes, as Douglas had indicated over and over again before the time of these debates.

Here I found that the debaters had split hairs on what the fathers had done. "Why can't these agitators leave the states as they were made by the fathers, slave and free?" asked Douglas. "They were not made," retorted Lincoln, "they were found; slavery was found and was let be as it was." "No," said Douglas, "the fathers organized a republic, adopted a Constitution; and when they made it, instead of abolishing slavery, making it free, they kept slavery and made it slave by the votes of states passing upon and acceding to an instrument of government. And besides, this instrument of government provided for the importation of more slaves from Africa; and provided for the capture and return of fugitive slaves now in the country or thereafter to be imported into the country."

Douglas had attacked the doctrine of a divided house with all possible power and brilliancy. He had insisted that there was no more reason for the house of America to be divided because there was negro slavery in some states and no slavery in others, than because there was prohibition in Maine and whisky in Kentucky. And that there would be disunion if some states warred on other states about the purely domestic affairs of the latter. This was the only sense in which the house could be divided, and caused to fall. That disparate interests in the states should not make hostility between them; and that hostility arising from attacks and agitation should be put down. He went on to denounce the Republican party for holding and preaching a faith that arrayed one section of the country against another; and with great satire and invective he showed that the Republicans stood upon sectional principles which could not be preached in the South and not everywhere in the North. "But now you have a sectional organization," he had said to a theocratic audience at Galesburg, "a party which appeals to the northern section of the Union against the southern, a party which appeals to northern passion, northern pride, northern ambition, and northern prejudices, against southern people, the southern states, and southern institutions. The leaders of that party hope to be able to unite the northern states in one great sectional party; and inasmuch as the North is the strongest section they will thus be enabled to outvote, conquer, and control the South. Is there a Republican in Galesburg who can travel into Kentucky and carry his principles with him across the Ohio?"