against the Turks because of a quarrel between the Greek and Latin Christians at Jerusalem.  Then the Czar demanded of the Turk the right of a protectorate over all Greek Christians in the Ottoman empire.  It was refused.  Hence war.  And England and France and Cavour’s Sardinians are fighting Russia.  Perhaps the Latin church is the inspiring cause.  Minds and noses concur, and the result is conscience.

America is in a distressed condition and growing worse.  Politics raves.  Malice, destroying forces are abroad.  Always war with or without the sword.  The Greek Christian must be protected; but the Turk must not be vanquished, his country taken by Russia.  Louis Napoleon would win a little glory.  England needs the Turk, because she lusts for Egypt and India.  France wants Algeria and Morocco.  In America the North wants power; the South wants power.  Men are anxious for office.  Labor has interests at stake; so has manufacturing.  Farsighted money makers, imperialists, deploy these factions; parties are formed; the populace is fooled with war records and catch words.  Men must be destroyed in order to achieve results—­for God and liberty.  Among others, Douglas must be destroyed!

He has risen from obscurity to be the first man in America in the realm of statecraft.  He has been a cabinet maker, a lawyer, a legislator, a judge, a Senator, then a leader, now chairman of the committee on territories.  He has perfected political efficiency, introduced the convention system, done for representative government what the reaper has done for the harvest field.  He has done this all himself without wealth or family to boost him.  He is charged with being clever and resourceful, but no one points to corruption in his life.  Is there a statesman in Europe or one in America with a cleaner record?  His whole energy has been devoted to the development of the country.  He has worked for schools, for colleges, for canals, for railroads, for the quick dissemination of intelligence, for the rule of the people on every subject, including slavery, and for that rule in places of maturing sovereignty, like territories, and in places of complete sovereignty, like states.  He is spiritually hard, hates the sap-head, the agitator, the simple-hearted moralist.  He is indifferent to slavery, when it stands in the way of his republic building.  He knows that slavery cannot thrive in the North.  He knows that prairies of corn, hills of iron and coal, fields of wheat are as alien to slavery as the tropics are alien to polar bears and reindeer.  He sees a God who works through climate; and he sees that the cotton calls for a certain kind of worker, and corn for another.  He did not read and he did not know much of anything of the work of Marx and the Revolutionary Manifesto of 1848.  He did not need to.  He sensed the materialistic conception of history.  He had no horror of slavery, knowing exactly what it was; on the other hand he was falsely accused of trying to plant it in the territories.