Like myself, he had wished for riches and attained them.  He had lost his riches.  I still possessed mine.  But I was no happier for that.  He had married a woman who was a slave owner.  On my part, I had been made kindred to the slave blood by the marriage of my father.  He wished for land, for wealth, and had taken a purse to marry an octoroon.  Douglas had wished for land for his country and had paralleled the course of the slavocracy to get it.  I had killed a man because of Zoe; then Zoe had disappeared and a part of the accursed land which had come to me through my father had passed to the unknown Fortescue, who had appeared and disappeared from my life like a thief.  I had married Dorothy because my will drove me to it in overcoming her opposition to the fact of Zoe.  I had loved Isabel and lost her.  Douglas had loved the North and the Great West.  Was he to lose them?

Thus Douglas and I seemed to have arrived at the same place in life.  He was broken in fortune and without a party.  I was burdened with what more and more seemed to me a tainted fortune.  And I was as isolated as he was.  I could not help but think of him constantly, of his long years of labor, his great struggles, his heroic fight, his undaunted courage.  Could anything lift him out of his complication to honor and freedom?  He was the most talked of man for the Presidency.  If he could only win that now and stand as a master man for nationalism, union, progress, peace, popular sovereignty, all the great liberties for which he had battled.  He had already failed twice to be nominated.  If now he could not win the prize, what would be his future as against the growing power of the Republican party?

As my heart was set upon Douglas’ ambition I set off for Charleston, South Carolina, in April.  Anything to alleviate my regret over Isabel.

When I arrived there I sought Douglas and found him deep in consultation with his advisers.  He was unmistakably confronted with the severest contest of his life.  He was delighted to see me and got me admission to the convention hall.  I had tried to come as a delegate; but Illinois had split in a fight over her own son, and there were two delegations, one for and one against Douglas.  And I could be on neither.

Douglas’ birthday, April the 23d, saw the opening of the fateful deliberations.  He was destined to have no peace and no rest.  Others might find shelter from the storm.  He was compelled after his great labors in the years before to walk through the lightning and have it gather about his head.  His doctrines on slavery had alienated the whole South from him.  But he had the West, save California and Oregon, which acted with the South.  Yet he was their son too.  He had strength all through the North, because of the West.  That West which he had done so much to create, which he had prophesied would stand as a balance between the North and the South, was for its son and its prophet—­save California and Oregon.