“Let’s see a play tonight. There’s that new one, A Fortune to Share. Shall we go?”
I see myself puttering in the yard. There was time to prune the trees, to cut wood, plant flowers. The horse and cow were part of our lives. I was another man then.
I wonder what happened to my grey hat; it had a wide band inside, fine for stuffing letters and checks. Maybe Billy has it, hanging on the tree, at the back of our office.
The White House
Evening
Throughout that long, dry summer, Stephen Douglas and I battled our verbal battles. There was a noble pertinacity in the “Little Giant.” I called him a “slanderer” and a “sneak.” He dubbed me a “fraud,” and alluded to pro-slavery conspiracies. He attacked my “house divided” stand... I insisted that a nation could not endure half-free, half-slave.
Douglas had his private car, bannered and flagged. A handsome brass cannon boomed from a flatcar coupled to his train, boomed his entry into every town and city. Often our debates were veritable picnics, fireworks, bands. I rode on a Conestoga drawn by six white horses...bunting... flowers...pretty girls. Sometimes a secretary recorded our speeches.
As the summer wore on, I began to stress the moral issues with great emphasis. I had little hope that I would win the senate seat; my voice, pitched higher than his, also lacked accomplished delivery. The silent artillery of time was firing at us. I heard the country’s slaves crying out. I remembered that John Randolph said that slavery was “a volcano in full eruption.”
Votes...but it is not altogether a matter of votes.