and municipal jurisprudence. If this Constitution is to be repudiated
for the law of God, who is to be the prophet to reveal the will of God
and establish a theocracy for us?"

I began to think of this law of God. Men are always reaching for it.
Sometimes it is only a club for interest or revenge. You have offended
me. God will punish you. If God was opposed to slavery he could have
prevented it in the beginning and He could terminate it now. Perhaps
Douglas thought of this when saying that God had not provided a code of
municipal law. If He had, He could have written freedom into the
Constitution. Douglas was at least sure that he knew as much about the
law of God as Garrison or Seward, or abolitionist lecturers in back
halls.

De Tocqueville had written that "America is the country of the whole
world where the question of religion has asserted the most real power
over the souls of men." The ringing of church bells, church going,
revivals, the calling upon God to note and punish sin, pervaded the
country and the cities. The Bible was a textbook of God's thinking. It
justified slavery in the South; it encouraged abolitionism in the North;
it suggested interference and regimentation; it counseled forgiveness
and vengeance.

At this time in New York one could not turn or pick up the most casual
publication without finding something in the nature of a moral
propagandum. At breakfast I read from the _New York Independent_ that
"Rum, profaneness and Sabbath breaking always go together." The editor
was "sorry to find that the stockholders of the Saratoga railroad still
run their cars upon the Sabbath. It is an odious and monstrous
violation, not only of the laws of God, but of all the decencies of
Christian society. And yet I had noticed ladies traveling in them,
thundering into Saratoga on the Lord's Day. Women traveling in a public
conveyance on the Sabbath. There is something in this peculiarly
degrading and shameful. It ought to be only the lowest of the sex that
would stoop to such debasement." And another paper said: "We are sorry
to learn that the directors have established an accommodation train for
Sunday morning between this city and Poughkeepsie, in addition to the
mail train to Albany. Mr. James Boorman, through whose efficient service
as President the road was mainly built, has resigned his office as
director and has addressed a firm remonstrance to the Board against this
impiety."

This was the time in whic