Could it be possible that this Captain Brown should have his Pinturicchio? Well, might it not be so since Victor Hugo, living in exile, had also given Brown an apotheosis? Abigail also had Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, who was preaching the doctrine of brotherhood, democracy, resistance to the law.
"What sort of country is this?" I asked Abigail. "Can every one set himself up as a judge of the laws and disobey them if he chooses? If you had heard Douglas' speech you would be convinced that this sort of mania will cease or there will be war. Even Emerson is among these idealistic rebels, for he says that it is a lack of health to cry 'madman' at a hero as he passes. I think the Bible is responsible for much of this turmoil and foolish rebellion, if not all of it. Lincoln founded his campaign upon the Bible: a house divided against itself cannot stand. And just because Christ is taken as divine, every word and act of his is lived up to by some madman as justification for acts like those of Brown."
In the meantime Abigail had found among her papers the words of Victor Hugo: "He is not a New Englander," she said, "nor an American idealist. And he says—I'll translate it for you: 'In killing Brown the Southern States have committed a crime which will take its place among the calamities of history. The rupture of the Union will fatally follow the assassination of Brown. As to Brown, he was an apostle and a hero. The gibbet has only increased his glory and made him a martyr.'"
Well, was not Douglas a martyr too? Who had done more for his country? Was Lincoln any more radical than Douglas? Lincoln was defeated to be sure, but Douglas was penalized for what he had said in these debates. No sooner had he returned to Washington than he found himself deposed from the committee on territories. He was beginning to be a man without a party. He was paying for his ideas.
A book called Helpers, the Impending Crisis of the South had at this time woven itself into the clouds of the gathering storm. It had influenced the election of a Speaker in Congress, for although Lincoln was defeated in Illinois, the Republicans had 25 Senators to 38 Democrats; and the House had 109 Republicans to 128 Democrats. A crisis was indeed impending, with Douglas, the greatest man in the country, dishonored and disarmed by the Southern States. What was growing up, and from what source, which should be the master of the destiny of the country? What was giving it strength but some form of materialism? The phrase "the struggle for existence" crept into our conversation, for Darwin's The Origin of Species had made its appearance this year. We discussed its principles as far as we could make them out from the reports of the book. Every one knew that strength survives. But what is strength? Did the North have strength, or the South? Did moral ideas have strength, or did war? All the while, where did God come in? Abigail said: "He comes in in this very struggle, defeat and devouring. For all the while there is triumph in the realm of the mind, and mind is God. My friend, you can think of Douglas and slavery and politics, and impending war; I know of something that overtops them all and can handle all of them as playthings. That is chemistry."
"Where do you get all these things?" I asked Abigail. "From Richard, from books, from publications, everywhere. I am watching this thrilling thing called life and I can laugh when I see you taking Douglas and Lincoln so seriously; for really they amount to very little. Douglas has given some of his land to found a university. What will they teach in it? Anything of Douglas'? What? No, young minds will read philosophy there and study mathematics and chemistry by which engines, bridges, telegraphs, will be constructed. Here is a funny thing. You remember the Atlantic cable was laid last summer. Poor old Buchanan, the mighty President of a mighty Republic, is so ignorant that he doubts the verity of the message which Queen Victoria sent to him. Douglas and Lincoln! What are their speculations as to whether this ridiculous old document called the Constitution goes into a territory or not? Give me old Bishop Berkeley with his inquiries concerning the virtues of tar water. It takes imagination of some moment to sense, as he did, that tar contains the purified spirits of the trees, of vegetation which can heal and help man. These were dreams worth while. Now a German chemist named Kekule, comes along and develops a theory called the valence of atoms. And who can tell what will come of that? For that matter, Sir Walter Raleigh did more for the world than Douglas. He found petroleum in the Trinidad pitch lake way back in the sixteenth century. And now a well has just been drilled, not for salt as you saw it in Kentucky as a boy, but for the oil for which they then had no use except to make ointment for people who stumble on the pier trying to catch a boat."
I said to Abigail: "I have never pretended that Douglas was a scientist or an artist or that he had a philosophical mind, but now that you bring these things to my attention I want to ask you why he is not a first-class disciple of Darwin, since he has advocated the processes of nature in the solution of the slavery question."
"Nature! Well, are climate and soil any more nature than thought? Can't we use our will and our thought to assist climate and soil, about anything? But after all I get tired of this emphasis of the one slavery, just as you do. Why not include some other slaveries for condemnation? There is Emerson for example. He didn't start out with this John Brown idea. He began with a plea for emancipation intellectually from England; and for emancipation from the slavery of orthodoxy."
"Yes," said Aldington, "I wish to add my plea too, and against the slavery of a lot of things: against the slavery of courts and bad laws and bad thoughts and poverty, and the whole business which we can see growing up in America, and making laws to stimulate it and protect it."