h Douglas was now working. Every one knew what
the law of God was. Every one appealed to the Bible as God's word. For
much of this Douglas had perfect contempt; and he was quick to sense a
taint of it in Seward, or any one whom it had infected. Such men as
Stephens of the South were insisting now that the real intellect-of the
North cared nothing about slavery, and only used it to masquerade their
centralizing plots. If local self-government could be extinguished for
the purposes of abolition why not for anything, in behalf of which a
moral enthusiasm could be evoked? Why not a constitutional amendment
establishing a state religion? Why not a state religion under the
present constitutional clause which makes provision for the general
welfare?

One day when Dorothy and I were seated at Niblo's at luncheon I felt
some one touch my shoulder. I looked up and saw Aldington, back of him
Abigail, who was laughing at my expression of surprise. We all broke
into exclamations. They had just returned from Europe. They joined us in
the meal; and there was scarcely enough time to tell back and forth all
that was of mutual interest. He saw me with the _Independent_ and began
to rally me. "Did you know," he said, "that the early Puritans in New
England were the progenitors of one third of the whole population of the
United States by 1834? They constitute one half of the population of the
states of Ohio and New York now, and they have gone into the northwest.
They will make trouble for your Douglas. I admit that they have blighted
art and hobbled literature. They have expurgated Shakespeare, they have
fought the theater, they are always ready for the moral battle. They
know what God wants better than anybody. In a sense they are hounds in
pursuit of a lot of things in the great hunt of life. They are a
stubborn lot. It will be hard to take away from them anything that is
their own, and also to keep them from destroying anything that they
don't want."

"Well, now don't you see," I asked, "that Douglas is against all these
people and that he has all these influences to fight? For example, these
Puritans cannot rule if popular sovereignty is adopted everywhere. They
are numerically too inferior. How, for example, can you stop the
railroads on Sunday if you let communities, states, control the matter?
But if these fanatics get into control of the Federal government, they
can do it. Don't you see the point? This is what Douglas is thinking