The Great Valley

by Edgar Lee Masters

There never was a time
This man was out of public office.
He clung to the people’s treasury
As a magnet clings to a magnet.
Why didn’t your orator tell this audience
He started in life as town assessor?
That would have left me with nothing to say
Except he traded the fixing of taxes
For business!
Oh, you people who unveil pictures!
In his day no one was permitted to say this.
And now everyone has forgotten it.
It is useless to say it.
And here in the year of Columbus
You are unveiling his picture!

And you say the Illinois and Michigan Canal
Had never been built or saved for the people
Except for Archer Price!
Why don’t you tell that he fought the Canal in 1830,
Saying it would burden the people?
And why don’t you say that even then
He was acting for his own interests and the man in the room?
Why don’t you show that his art of compromise
Created the Public Canal Committee
When he failed to block the Canal,
And failed of appointment as Canal Commissioner?
Why don’t you show that through that committee
The squatters stole the wharves on the river?
Why don’t you show how his friends grew rich
Through buying the lands at public sales
Which were given to build the Canal,
And which the Committee was pretending to conserve?
Why don’t you show that through that Committee,
Pretending to be a friend of the people,
He opened a fight at length on the squatters
And won the fight, and won the wharves
For himself and a clique of friends?
Why don’t you tell—?
Cry me down if you will—
I object—I object—

VI
THE LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS DEBATES

Have you ever seen the Douglas monument
There in Chicago?
They say it’s by the Lake,
With a column of marble a hundred feet high,
And a statue of The Little Giant on top,
With knit brows and lion face,
Like he used to look when debatin’ with Linkern.
I want to go up to Chicago sometime,
To see that monument.

And some one told me
They carved on his marble coffin the words:
“Tell my children to obey the laws,
And uphold the constitution.”
Well, they couldn’t have put sadder words
On his coffin than that.
For it was tryin’ to obey the laws and support the
constitution
That killed him.
And why should his children do the same thing and die?

You young men of this day don’t care,
And you don’t understand the old questions.
But a man’s life is always worth understanding,
Especially a man’s like The Little Giant.
Now this was the point:
There was that devilish thing slavery,
And The Little Giant, as senator,
Put through a bill for leaving it to the people
Whether they would have slavery in Kansas or Nebraska,
Or any other territory, and that was popular sovereignty—
And sounds democratic; but three years later
Along comes the Supreme Court and says:
The people of a territory must have slavery
Whether they want it or not, because
The constitution is for slavery, and it follows the flag!
Well, there was The Little Giant
Caught between the law and the constitution!
And tryin’ to obey ’em both!
Or better still he was like Lem Reese’s boy
Who was standin’ one time one foot on shore,
And one in a skiff, baitin’ a hook,
And all at once Col. Lankford’s little steamer
Came along and bobbled the skiff;
And it started to glide out into the river,—
Why the boy walked like a spread compass
For a month.

For the skiff was movin’, and that’s the law.
And his other foot slipped on the slimy bank,
And that’s the constitution!

But if you want to consider a minute
How Time plays tag with people,
And how no one can tell
When he’ll be It, just think:
There was Bill McKinley
Who kept the old constitution’s from goin’ to the Philippines,
And they elected him.
And here was The Little Giant,
Who wanted to send it everywhere,
And they defeated him.
So you see it depends on what it means
Whether you want to keep it or send it.
And nobody knows what it means—
Not even judges.

But just the same them were great days.
One time The Little Giant came here with Linkern
And talked from the steps of the Court-house;
And you never saw such a crowd of people:
Democrats, Whigs, and Locofocos,
Know-nothings and Anti-masonics,
Blue lights, Spiritualists, Republicans
Free Soilers, Socialists, Americans—such a crowd.
Linkern’s voice squeaked up high,
And didn’t carry.
But Douglas!
People out yonder in Proctor’s Grove,
A mile from the Court House steps,
Could hear him roar and hear him say:
“I’m going to trot him down to Egypt
And see if he’ll say the things he says
To the black republicans in northern Illinois.”
It made you shiver all down your spine
To see that face and hear that voice—
And that was The Little Giant!

And then on the other hand there was
Abe Linkern standing six foot four,
As thin as a rail, with a high-keyed voice,
And sometimes solemn, and sometimes comic
As any clown you ever saw,
And runnin’ Col. Lankford’s little steamer,
As it were, you know, which would bobble the skiff,
Which was the law; and The Little Giant’s other foot
Would slip on the bank, which was the constitution.
And you could almost hear him holler “ouch.”
And Linkern would say: This argument
Of the Senator’s is thin as soup
Made from the shadow of a starved pigeon!
And then the crowd would yell, and the cornet band
Would play, and men would walk away and say:
Linkern floored him. And others would say:
He aint no match for The Little Giant.
But I’ll declare if I could decide
Which whipped the other.
For to let the people decide whether they wanted slavery
Sounded good.
And to have the constitution in force sounded good.
And not to have any slavery at all sounded good.
But so far as the law was concerned,
And where it was, and what you could do with it
It was like the shell game:
Now you see the little ball and now you don’t!
Who’s got a dollar to say where the little ball is?