Fate seemed still to be with us, after all, as I have so often had occasion to believe may be a possible thing. That war of conquest which Mr. Calhoun opposed, that same war which grew out of the slavery tenets which he himself held—the great error of his otherwise splendid public life—found its own correction in the Civil War. It was the gold of California which put down slavery. Thenceforth slavery has existed legally only north of the Mason and Dixon line!
We have our problems yet. Perhaps some other war may come to settle them. Fortunate for us if there could be another California, another Texas, another Oregon, to help us pay for them!
I, who was intimately connected with many of these less known matters, claim for my master a reputation wholly different from that given to him in any garbled "history" of his life. I lay claim in his name for foresight beyond that of any man of his time. He made mistakes, but he made them bravely, grandly, and consistently. Where his convictions were enlisted, he had no reservations, and he used every means, every available weapon, as I have shown. But he was never self-seeking, never cheap, never insincere. A detester of all machine politicians, he was a statesman worthy to be called the William Pitt of the United States. The consistency of his career was a marvelous thing; because, though he changed in his beliefs, he was first to recognize the changing conditions of our country. He failed, and he is execrated. He won, and he is forgot.
My chief, Mr. Calhoun, did not die until some six years after that first evening when Doctor Ward and I had our talk with him. He was said to have died of a disease of the lungs, yet here again history is curiously mistaken. Mr. Calhoun slept himself away. I sometimes think with a shudder that perhaps this was the revenge which Nemesis took of him for his mistakes. His last days were dreamlike in their passing. His last speech in the Senate was read by one of his friends, as Doctor Ward had advised him. Some said afterwards that his illness was that accursed "sleeping sickness" imported from Africa with these same slaves: It were a strange thing had John Calhoun indeed died of his error! At least he slept away. At least, too, he made his atonement. The South, following his doctrines, itself was long accursed of this same sleeping sickness; but in the providence of God it was not lost to us, and is ours for a long and splendid history.
It was through John Calhoun, a grave and somber figure of our history, that we got the vast land of Texas. It was through him also—and not through Clay nor Jackson, nor any of the northern statesmen, who never could see a future for the West—that we got all of our vast Northwest realm. Within a few days after the Palo Alto ball, a memorandum of agreement was signed between Minister Pakenham and Mr. Buchanan, our secretary of state. This was done at the instance and by the aid of John Calhoun. It was he—he and Helena von Ritz—who brought about that treaty which, on June fifteenth, of the same year, was signed, and gladly signed, by the minister from Great Britain. The latter had been fully enough impressed (such was the story) by the reports of the columns of our west-bound farmers, with rifles leaning at their wagon seats and plows lashed to the tail-gates. Calhoun himself never ceased to regret that we could not delay a year or two years longer. In this he was thwarted by the impetuous war with the republic on the south, although, had that never been fought, we had lost California—lost also the South, and lost the Union!
Under one form or other, one name of government or another, the flag of democracy eventually must float over all this continent. Not a part, but all of this country must be ours, must be the people's. It may cost more blood and treasure now. Some time we shall see the wisdom of John Calhoun; but some time, too, I think, we shall see come true that prophecy of a strange and brilliant mentality, which in Calhoun's presence and in mine said that all of these northern lands and all Mexico as well must one day be ours—which is to say, the people's—for the sake of human opportunity, of human hope and happiness. Our battles are but partly fought. But at least they are not, then, lost.
For myself, the close of the Mexican War found me somewhat worn by travel and illy equipped in financial matters. I had been discredited, I say, by my own government. My pay was withheld. Elisabeth, by that time my wife, was a girl reared in all the luxury that our country then could offer. Shall I say whether or not I prized her more when gladly she gave up all this and joined me for one more long and final journey out across that great trail which I had seen—the trail of democracy, of America, of the world?
At last we reached Oregon. It holds the grave of one of ours; it is the home of others. We were happy; we asked favor of no man; fear of no one did we feel. Elisabeth has in her time slept on a bed of husks. She has cooked at a sooty fireplace of her own; and at her cabin door I myself have been the guard. We made our way by ourselves and for ourselves, as did those who conquered America for our flag. "The citizen standing in the doorway of his home, shall save the Republic." So wrote a later pen.
It was not until long after the discovery of gold in California had set us all to thinking that I was reminded of the strange story of the old German, Von Rittenhofen, of finding some pieces of gold while on one of his hunts for butterflies. I followed out his vague directions as best I might. We found gold enough to make us rich without our land. That claim is staked legally. Half of it awaits an owner who perhaps will never come.
There are those who will accept always the solemn asseverations of politicians, who by word of mouth or pen assert that this or that party made our country, wrote its history. Such as they might smile if told that not even men, much less politicians, have written all our story as a nation; yet any who smile at woman's influence in American history do so in ignorance of the truth. Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton have credit for determining our boundary on the northeast—England called it Ashburton's capitulation to the Yankee. Did you never hear the other gossip? England laid all that to Ashburton's American wife! Look at that poor, hot-tempered devil, Yrujo, minister from Spain with us, who saw his king's holdings on this continent juggled from hand to hand between us all. His wife was daughter of Governor McKean in Pennsylvania yonder. If she had no influence with her husband, so much the worse for her. In important times a generation ago M. Genêt, of France, as all know, was the husband of the daughter of Governor Clinton of New York. Did that hurt our chances with France? My Lord Oswald, of Great Britain, who negotiated our treaty of peace in 1782—was not his worldly fortune made by virtue of his American wife? All of us should remember that Marbois, Napoleon's minister, who signed the great treaty for him with us, married his wife while he was a mere chargé here in Washington; and she, too, was an American. Erskine, of England, when times were strained in 1808, and later—and our friend for the most part—was not he also husband of an American? It was as John Calhoun said—our history, like that of England and France, like that of Rome and Troy, was made in large part by women.