“Oh, yes,” said Reverdy, “I have heard most of this before.  But I’ll tell you:  the first man of account who rises up to say that slavery is wrong will be remembered, even if he is not honored.  I am not talking about all these agitators and fellows; nor even of Seward or of Hale—­they’re too sharp and smart.  I mean some man who puts the right feeling into the thing like Mrs. Stowe did in her book.  You see, I was raised in Tennessee, and I don’t care how you apologize for it, or make it look like labor of other kinds, or prove that all labor is slavery, just the same this negro slavery is vile.  You can find good reasons for anything you want to do.  I don’t know where we get our right and wrong—­it comes up from something deep in us.  But when we get it, all this argument that Douglas is so skillful in simply melts away.  I really wonder that so many women in the South favor slavery and that my mother was so wedded to it, and Dorothy now.”

We were passing now the house I had built.  “Who lives there now?” I asked.  Reverdy gave me the name.  It was not the man to whom I had sold the farm.  I thought of Fortescue.  “Where is Fortescue?” “Oh, he lit out from here,” said Reverdy.  “Do you know,” I said, “I have thought it possible that Zoe might not be dead.”  “How could that be?” “I don’t know.  I feel that I went through that transaction dazed and without verifying things, as I should have done.”  “Oh, no, if Zoe were living you would know of it long before now.”

After our drive we came back to Sarah and the meal that she had prepared for us.  Women reflect the politics of the hour in nerves and anxiety, in anticipated sorrows.  Sarah wished all agitations to stop.  She longed for peace.  She was in dread of war.  Perhaps Dorothy’s health had been affected by the growing turbulence of the country.

Young Amos and Jonas came in and ate with us.  We turned to the talk of railroads and the growth of Chicago.  Sarah took a hand now and said:  “These things are all right.  You won’t get any war out of railroads and telegraphs.  You men can reason and argue as much as you please about this slavery matter; but I have two sons, and I didn’t bring them into the world to be killed in a war; and I won’t have it if I can help it—­not for all the niggers in the world.”

CHAPTER XLVIII

If I were recording the life of an artist I should be dealing with different causes acting upon his development, or with different effects produced by the same times in which Douglas lived.  Instead I am trying to set forth the soul of a great man who extracted from his environment other things than beauty; or rather the beauty of national progress.  The question was, after all, whether Douglas was helping to give America a soul.  What was he accomplishing for the real greatness of his country by giving it territory and railroads?  What kind of a soul was he giving it?  Who in this time was giving America a soul?  Abigail had often hinted at these questions.  And I had to confess that they occupied my thoughts.