Would the Abolitionists put up a ticket?  Perhaps.  What would come of arraying section against section?  Suppose slavery could be put to a vote.  In 1840 the Abolitionists had polled 7,000 votes in the country.  In 1844, 60,000.  This proved that it was not difficult to throw a firebrand into America’s affairs.  Suppose this vote grew and an Abolitionist President should ultimately be elected?  What of American progress in such a contingency?  What of a wrecked republic before the greedy eyes of England, the envious hands of kings?  Why should such folly be?  Let the slavery question alone.  Keep it out of the way of American development.  Let the territories decide for themselves whether they would have slavery or not; let the states coming in do so, with slavery or without, as they chose.

We took a drink every now and then, and Douglas turned to the subject of railroad extension.  He told me of a certain Asa Whitney.  Whitney had lived in China.  He had returned to America in 1844, urging that a railroad across the continent would bring the trade of China to the United States and enable American merchants to control it.  If a canal were built, supplemented by a railroad across that part of the Isthmus of Panama not traversed by the canal, about 115 miles, the distance between New York and San Francisco would be shortened by 1100 miles, and from New Orleans to San Francisco by 1700 miles.  This related to the proposed Tehuantepec canal.  Ah! but England had already got an interest in this route.  So Whitney proposed a railroad from Lake Michigan through the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific.  He had laid this plan before the Senate in 1845, showing that if a railroad were built the journey from New York to the mouth of the Columbia River could be made in eight days, and to China in thirty days.  A naval station on the Columbia River, but eight days from Washington city, and the Pacific could be commanded; next, the Indian Ocean and the South Seas.  Oregon would become a great state at once.  The commerce of China, Japan, Manila, Australia, Java, Calcutta, and Bombay would be ours.  What would England say to this?  Oh, yes, the Abolitionists might object!  Freedom for the negro at any sacrifice.  “Let us have a drink,” said Douglas, with a laugh.

“I am for this plan,” said Douglas.  “True, he wants $65,000,000—­that is, he wants to raise that much and has asked Congress for a grant of land sixty miles wide across the continent with which to get the money.  He is on a lecture tour now, I hear, and has got the Boards of Trade of New York, Cincinnati, Louisville, and some others to favor his plan.  As usual, like all other things, the rivalry between the North and the South will affect the route.  The Mexican annexations make it necessary to run the road farther south.  There is to be a convention in St. Louis soon about the matter, and I intend to go to it.”

“What do you think about gold being discovered in California?  Now I wonder if Webster does not want to give California back to Mexico.  A good joke on us if the Whigs win the next election.  How can they play with things in this way?”