"

Douglas had retorted with telling effect: "If the platform is not a
matter of much consequence, why press that question to the disruption of
the party?"

Why? But the South had done it. And Davis had done it.

CHAPTER LX

Who should call upon me the next morning after my arrival in Chicago but
Yarnell? I had not seen him now for several years. And he was a delegate
to the Republican convention.

"How is this?" I asked him. "I remember yet what you said to me about
slavery when we came to America more than twenty-five years ago." "Oh,"
he replied, "that makes no difference. The Republican party is not going
to disturb slavery where it is. It only proposes to keep it out from
what it isn't. The platform will refer to the Declaration of
Independence, and all that. But it will also have a tariff plank. The
Democrats have beaten the Morrill tariff bill; and we want a
tariff--Pennsylvania wants a tariff for iron. And we will nominate
Seward and elect him."

"What if the Southern States secede?"

"That suits us. That will give the Republican party complete control.
With the Southern States out, we will have the Senate and the House as
well as the President, and we can dominate everything, and gather in all
the offices--postmasters, marshals, Federal judges, everything. The
northern Democrats will have nothing to say. Your friend Douglas will
have nothing to say. He is already a played-out horse. He won't be able
to even whinny in the Senate. And the world and the fullness thereof
will be ours."

"How about Seward being too radical?"

"No, he isn't. Look at what it comes to. Kansas will come in as a free
state. The work is already done for that. California came in as a free
state. Minnesota, Oregon, Wisconsin, have all come in as free states
under the Democratic party and with Douglas on top as Senator. There
won't be any more slave states no matter who is elected."

"That's what I think."

"I only say this to show that this talk of the radicalism of Seward is
nonsense. He spoke of the higher law, to be sure, but Douglas has been
talking of nature and nature's God. What's the difference?"

"No difference except that Douglas' law of nature means something and
the higher law means nothing. We can see what the law of nature is; we
don't know what the higher law is, unless you can fathom the mind of the
fanatic; of Thoreau, of John Brown, and Garrison. I will tell you
something: Lincoln of this state is n