intense life, this
miraculous development. He seemed to me the man of the hour, the man
even of the age.

No sooner was he sworn in as a Congressman than he proceeded to make his
presence felt. He did precisely what he had done in Illinois when he
came to Winchester, penniless and unknown: he seized an opportunity. He
admired Andrew Jackson with an almost unqualified heart, and he rose to
Jackson's defense in Congress.

I have said that I was reading Niles' _Register_. Through it I was able
to follow Douglas' career in Congress from the beginning.

Abigail had made friends with a certain Robert Aldington, who had also
come west to teach school. And when we met at the Williams' residence of
evenings there were sharp exchanges of opinion between us about life,
books, the new city of Chicago, the destiny of America, and Douglas.
Aldington was keeping abreast with all the new books in America and
England as well. He too had read De Tocqueville; but he was also
familiar with Rousseau, Voltaire, the French Encyclopaedists; with
Locke. And he assured me that Calhoun, the Senator from South Carolina,
had written a treatise on the philosophy of government which for depth
and dialectic power, was a match for Locke. He also knew the poets
Shelley and Byron. He had studied the French Revolution. He was watching
the feverish developments of Italy and Germany. The tide of emigration
into Chicago and Illinois furnished him material for infinite
speculation. What would this hot blood, seeking opportunity and freedom
from old world restraints, do for the new country? He admired Douglas to
a degree, but he disliked what he sensed in him as materialism.

We were reading together the proceedings in Congress concerning the fine
which had been imposed by court upon Jackson at New Orleans when he was
in military charge of the city in 1812. Douglas had taken this as his
occasion to make himself known to the House and to the country at large.
He was nothing in Congress because of his achievements in Illinois. He
had to win his spurs. He had contended with great force and brilliancy
that Jackson, in declaring martial law, had not committed a contempt of
court; that if Jackson had violated the Constitution in declaring
martial law the matter was not one of contempt or for a local court to
judge. "Do you see," said Aldington, "his mind runs in a channel of
pure legalism, and then it escapes between freer shores." Aldington
continued: "The trou