I went through that transaction dazed and without
verifying things, as I should have done." "Oh, no, if Zoe were living
you would know of it long before now."

After our drive we came back to Sarah and the meal that she had prepared
for us. Women reflect the politics of the hour in nerves and anxiety, in
anticipated sorrows. Sarah wished all agitations to stop. She longed for
peace. She was in dread of war. Perhaps Dorothy's health had been
affected by the growing turbulence of the country.

Young Amos and Jonas came in and ate with us. We turned to the talk of
railroads and the growth of Chicago. Sarah took a hand now and said:
"These things are all right. You won't get any war out of railroads and
telegraphs. You men can reason and argue as much as you please about
this slavery matter; but I have two sons, and I didn't bring them into
the world to be killed in a war; and I won't have it if I can help
it--not for all the niggers in the world."

CHAPTER XLVIII

If I were recording the life of an artist I should be dealing with
different causes acting upon his development, or with different effects
produced by the same times in which Douglas lived. Instead I am trying
to set forth the soul of a great man who extracted from his environment
other things than beauty; or rather the beauty of national progress. The
question was, after all, whether Douglas was helping to give America a
soul. What was he accomplishing for the real greatness of his country by
giving it territory and railroads? What kind of a soul was he giving it?
Who in this time was giving America a soul? Abigail had often hinted at
these questions. And I had to confess that they occupied my thoughts.

I run over now with as much brevity as possible the events which led to
the crisis of Douglas' life. With the Compromises of 1850 the Whig party
began its rapid decline. The South did not like the Whig tariff. The
Whig attitude on the slavery question was too ambiguous to appeal to the
North. With its dissolution other organizations began to feed on its
remains. The Know-nothings arose and disappeared, without accomplishing
anything. Greeley said of them that they were "as devoid of the elements
of persistence as an anti-cholera or anti-potatobug party would be."

In early 1854 the Whigs, Free Soilers and Anti-Slavery Democrats met at
Ripon, Wisconsin, and proposed to form a new party, to be called the
Republican party. They took part of the name wh