ependencies.... I would give my
life almost to see you again, but somehow I do not know how to bring it
about, while at the same time I am living in hope that it may be so, and
trusting that you will see me in a different light, and that I can give
you assurances which will justify your vision. I am not very well and
have been consulting a physician, since coming West, who seems to think
that my nerves are in bad condition and that I am worn by striving and
by life. It is curious too that Douglas, though bulky and fat, seems to
me a tired man. Perhaps both of us have lost the way; and it may be true
that later he will have the true vision as I did in you. I wish you
could call me back to you. My mind wavers as I write. Affectionately,
James."

With the exchange of these letters I merged my feelings into other
things. The roar of Illinois and of the country tended to keep my mind
from brooding on Isabel. There was a melancholy resignation in the words
of Lincoln upon his own defeat for the Senatorship, which were in key
with my own grief and helped me to sublimate it. He had written to a
friend who chanced to show me the letter: "It gave me a hearing on the
great and durable questions of the age, which I could have had in no
other way; and though I now sink out of view and shall be forgotten I
believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil
liberty long after I am gone."

The cause of civil liberty! Had not Douglas stood for this too? He had
won against the terrific opposition of the Buchanan administration. He
had fought the slave constitution of Kansas and he had beaten down in
this campaign the enmity which had risen up around him because he had
fought that constitution. The Republicans were exceedingly glad that
Douglas' contest had divided the support of his own party. They had no
thanks for him for what he had done for civil liberty in that regard.
They were glad of his election over Lincoln for the sinister reason that
Douglas' triumph, since Douglas was almost at one with Lincoln as to the
matter of slavery, meant a decline and a division of the Democratic
party as a whole. At the same time there was talk now of Lincoln for the
Presidency. But Lincoln did not think he was worthy of the honor.
Lincoln was writing and saying: "What is the use of talking of me whilst
we have such men as Seward and Chase, and everybody knows them, and
scarcely anybody outside of Illinois knows me; besides, as a