I have preceded him.  I know what war means.  I know the processes, the psychologies, the technique.  Bands are playing, men are enlisting and marching in Chicago.  Orators are talking, women are singing and sewing.  Shrouds and coffins must be made as well as caps and cloaks.  Iron must be cast, nitrate dug, thousands of laborers set to work to hammer, to nail, to mold, to fashion engines of destruction.  Nurses must be trained, for there will be blood to stanch, wounds to dress, and the dying to comfort.  That Captain Grant whom I saw in St. Louis years ago has come to Springfield from Galena, left his tannery for the war.  He is training some regiments for the service.  Amos, Reverdy’s boy, has joined the army, and Jonas too.  Reverdy writes me about it.  Sarah is full of anger, resentment, terror, and sorrow against this huge thing that has broken over her hearth and taken her sons.  I am too old to fight.  But I have money to give.  I throw myself into the work with the hope of forgetting myself, my losses, my loneliness, my life.  What can I do for Douglas?  I have this wealth.  He is now broken financially.  When he returns to Chicago I must open my purse to him.  What other use have I for money but to give it to this war, or to Douglas?

Douglas comes back from southern Illinois where he has been speaking.  He is going to address a Chicago audience.  It is not likely that they will hoot him now.  After some difficulty I find him.  His face lights up with a certain gladness as he sees me.  But he is a dying eagle that ruffles its feathers when food is offered it; then sinks back upon its broken wing when it sees that it cannot eat.  What is my friendship now to him?  What is any earthly thing to him?  He bears the sorrows of earth without the consolation that any Heaven can cure them.  His voice is hoarse, his face is worn and streaked with agony.  His eyes look through me, over me, beyond me.  He sees me, but what am I?  His hair is gray—­much grayer than mine.  He is only 48 but he is an old man.  He has no place in life now but to save the Union.  All his strength and activity have come to this simple faith, as simple as the faith of a child.  He reaches back into the years when he was 21 and first came to Illinois, to that substance of his being, always inherent and of his genius, which was and is now compact of nationalism, progress, intelligence, the firm union of sovereign states.  This is all he has to sustain him now.  He has laid up this food for the last hours, for this crisis of his soul.  All souls must lay up something spiritual, even as they must lay up food for the winter of life, for the bleak bright hours of the soul’s sterile fight.

And this old love which led him to Jackson when I was there with Dorothy, which led him to Jackson for the great privilege of looking into the old hero’s face is all that sustains Douglas now.  He is poor in purse but rich in service and love; he can never be President if he wished to be.  This new era will take all his devotion, but it will not even make him Senator again.  But what need?  The office is nothing now to him.  He has no place politically, except as a leader of all men.  He is without a party, but he has a country.