It was the winter and spring of 1841 that I was visiting Springfield about the sale of my farm.  President Harrison had died after a month in office, and John Tyler had become President.  Douglas was elated over this.  “Tyler is a Democrat,” said Douglas.  “And we have taken victory out of defeat after all.  He has vetoed the new bank bill true to the principles of Jackson; and he has been read out of the Whig party for doing so.  Every member of his Cabinet but Webster has resigned, you know.  The Whigs are getting nothing out of the triumphs of log cabins and hard cider.  They are all a humbug.  Their sins are finding them out.  We will put in a thorough-going Democratic party in 1844.”

Douglas was talking the annexation of Texas.  “Think of it,” he said.  “A territory 750 miles broad added to the domain of this country!  The whole continent by right belongs to us.  Do you think, if we once get it that there will be any whining that we should give it up?  You have seen Illinois filling up; you have seen canals and railroads make their beginning here.  Let’s do the same for Oregon.  I want you to rid yourself of any feeling for Great Britain, and use your English will to the making of America.  Do for America what you would do for England, if you were living there.  She would take the whole earth if she could get it.  Let us take all of North America.

“I am planning to run for Congress again.  I am stifled in this little life.  There is not enough for me to do here.  I am restless to get out and help build up the West.”

I asked Douglas if I should move to Chicago.  His eyes brightened.  “Yes,” he said in his quick way.  “That is a place of great opportunity.  Go there, Jim.  I will be there myself, eventually.  You can become very rich there with the capital that you have for a start.”

Then I told him that I was trying to sell the farm; that I had about matured my plans to move.  He was delighted.  “I’ll miss you here, but a friend is a friend to me, even up there.  Go and build.  You can help make a city.  I want to see this state come into its own.  I want to see schools everywhere, giving the advantages to the young which were denied to me.  This is the most wonderful of states.  Be glad that your destiny brought you here.  At the present rate of immigration the population of Illinois will soon be a million.  When you came here the population of the United States was about twelve million; now it is about seventeen million; it will soon be twenty million.  Do you appreciate these figures?  Look at the New Englanders, the Irish, the Germans that have poured into Illinois.  Some of them come here with ideas that I find hostile to my ambitions.  I have to win them to the liberty of the Democratic party, and keep them from stopping halfway, contented with the fraudulent liberty of the Whigs.  I take them in hand at political gatherings; I love to persuade and shape them.  I will fill this population of Illinois with love of Democratic ideas.  What have the Whigs to offer?  Look at the mixed blood of the Whigs, at their tainted ancestors.  I take the greatest pleasure in exposing them.  It is my fun and my work.”