advised him.  Some said afterwards that his illness was that accursed “sleeping sickness” imported from Africa with these same slaves:  It were a strange thing had John Calhoun indeed died of his error!  At least he slept away.  At least, too, he made his atonement.  The South, following his doctrines, itself was long accursed of this same sleeping sickness; but in the providence of God it was not lost to us, and is ours for a long and splendid history.

It was through John Calhoun, a grave and somber figure of our history, that we got the vast land of Texas.  It was through him also—­and not through Clay nor Jackson, nor any of the northern statesmen, who never could see a future for the West—­that we got all of our vast Northwest realm.  Within a few days after the Palo Alto ball, a memorandum of agreement was signed between Minister Pakenham and Mr. Buchanan, our secretary of state.  This was done at the instance and by the aid of John Calhoun.  It was he—­he and Helena von Ritz—­who brought about that treaty which, on June fifteenth, of the same year, was signed, and gladly signed, by the minister from Great Britain.  The latter had been fully enough impressed (such was the story) by the reports of the columns of our west-bound farmers, with rifles leaning at their wagon seats and plows lashed to the tail-gates.  Calhoun himself never ceased to regret that we could not delay a year or two years longer.  In this he was thwarted by the impetuous war with the republic on the south, although, had that never been fought, we had lost California—­lost also the South, and lost the Union!

Under one form or other, one name of government or another, the flag of democracy eventually must float over all this continent.  Not a part, but all of this country must be ours, must be the people’s.  It may cost more blood and treasure now.  Some time we shall see the wisdom of John Calhoun; but some time, too, I think, we shall see come true that prophecy of a strange and brilliant mentality, which in Calhoun’s presence and in mine said that all of these northern lands and all Mexico as well must one day be ours—­which is to say, the people’s—­for the sake of human opportunity, of human hope and happiness.  Our battles are but partly fought.  But at least they are not, then, lost.

For myself, the close of the Mexican War found me somewhat worn by travel and illy equipped in financial matters.  I had been discredited, I say, by my own government.  My pay was withheld.  Elisabeth, by that time my wife, was a girl reared in all the luxury that our country then could offer.  Shall I say whether or not I prized her more when gladly she gave up all this and joined me for one more long and final journey out across that great trail which I had seen—­the trail of democracy, of America, of the world?

At last we reached Oregon.  It holds the grave of one of ours; it is the home of others.  We were happy; we asked favor of no man; fear of no one did we feel.  Elisabeth has in her time slept on a bed of husks.  She has cooked at a sooty fireplace of her own; and at her cabin door I myself have been the guard.  We made our way by ourselves and for ourselves, as did those who conquered America for our flag.  “The citizen standing in the doorway of his home, shall save the Republic.”  So wrote a later pen.