The circumstances seemed to affect him profoundly.  He turned away from us, as if to hide his tears, leaving us standing in a group.  Douglas joined us and extended his congratulations, and we departed together, Douglas to confer with Mr. Polk and the rest of us to return to the Clayton mansion.  For there was the wedding now to consider.  I wanted to take Dorothy back to Chicago with me.

Mrs. Clayton invited Douglas to take the evening meal at her house.  Dorothy joined in the request and I ventured to put in a word.  Douglas had to arrange then for a later call upon Mr. Polk.

CHAPTER XXXII

This dinner was the most delightful of occasions.  Dorothy was in brilliant spirits.  And Mrs. Clayton shared in her daughter’s happiness.  The colored servants, all slaves, affectionate and interested, manifested their joy in all sorts of lively and profuse attentions.  I could hear them laughing in the kitchen.  Mammy, the old cook, was singing; Jenny, the maid, came in and out of the dining room with dancing eyes, which she cast upon me, and scarcely less upon Douglas, who was talking in his usual brilliant way.  It was pleasing to me to hear Mrs. Clayton agree with him about so many things.  She was disturbed by the slavery agitation.  She feared for the peace of the Southern States.  She dreaded a negro rebellion.  She commented upon the fact that even the domestic slaves sometimes sulked or slacked; and that this was due to the talk of the Abolitionists.  It was hard enough to keep paid laborers in good discipline; how much easier to encourage the negroes to inattention to duty by attacks upon the system of slavery.  But after all, what was to be done?

Douglas referred to Calhoun’s attempt to exclude abolition writings from the mails.  He referred to this without approving of it.  For Calhoun had conceded the lack of power in the Federal government to interfere with the freedom of the press; but he contended that the states as sovereign powers could prevent the distribution of such literature within their borders.  Everywhere it seemed to me the slavery question divided reason and thinking against themselves and brought great minds into absurdity.

Douglas wanted the slavery agitation to cease, but on the other hand he did not wish to interfere with the freedom of speech and of the press.  Mrs. Clayton now recalled Harriet Martineau’s visit to America of some eight years before.  She had read Society in America and Retrospect of Western Travel.  Did I know that Miss Martineau had stopped in Chicago and had described Chicago as it was then?