their way through.
Bands played. Far off a stump speaker's voice could be heard. All this
waste of sand and scrub oak which I had seen in 1833 was now covered
with buildings big and little. It was the battleground between two sons
of Illinois.

October came. I grew more and more apprehensive for Douglas' fate. I had
had a letter from Isabel gently foreshadowing her marriage. My boy was
not advancing in his work at school. Inexorable loneliness was
descending upon me.

Douglas came to Chicago on a speaking trip. He had been in Indianapolis
where his voice was so hoarse that he could scarcely be heard. Chicago
gave him a magnificent ovation. They saw the man now in all his
clearness of mind and strength of heart. He repudiated the schemes of
fusion.

"Every disunionist," he said, "is a Breckenridge man. As Democrats, we
can never fuse either with northern Abolitionists or southern bolters
and secessionists. Yes, my friends, I say to you what I said in North
Carolina and in the same words: I would hang every man higher than Haman
who would attempt to resist by force the execution of any provision of
the Constitution which our fathers made and bequeathed to us. You cannot
sever this Union unless you cut the heartstrings that bind father to
son, daughter to mother, and brother to sister in all our new states and
territories. I love my children, but I do not desire to see them survive
this Union."

With these words his tired and broken voice fell back into weakness from
the great melody and power of its habitual quality. His weary body had
risen into fresh strength for this utterance. His face assumed a great
majesty. Men and women alike wept to hear him speak so--wept for the
dark days ahead, wept for a great man failing in a struggle in which he
was yet holding to cherished ideals, now being blown and scattered by
the storm of the new era. They saw him surrounded on all sides by
enemies. The South hated him. The northern Democrats with southern
ideas hated him. The fanatics hated him. The Republican party which he
had stepped upon with giant contempt hated him. In eight years of
existence it had gathered to itself the contemptible factions that he
had satirized. They had united now in the supreme purpose of defeating
him. He was appealing for the same principles to which he had always
been devoted. He was defending the Union as he had defended it since the
days when I saw Jackson put his arm around him, and look with