Douglas had advised me to read political history. Accordingly, during
the long evenings at the farm, I had gone through Elliott's _Debates_
and the _Federalist_. My grandmother sent me De Tocqueville's _De la
Democratie en Amerique_, which I read in French.
But now I began to see that abolition sentiment was growing. Societies
were being formed and had been for about two years in the northern part
of the state. Here in Jacksonville the agitation of the slavery question
was frowned upon; but it was fermenting under the surface of southern
sentiment.
I was now treated to an American panic, and times were hard. The East
wanted a tariff to protect its manufacturers; the South wanted land and
slaves. Texas had been filling up with Americans since 1820. She seceded
from Mexico and declared her independence now; and General Houston, a
Virginian by birth, a Tennesseean by residence, had taken command of the
Texas troops, and after the Alamo massacre, had defeated the Mexicans
with terrible slaughter in the battle of San Jacinto. The New England
conscience excoriated these things and attributed them to the
machinations of the slavocracy. But while Douglas had no mastery of the
tariff question in its details, his mind shot through to the general
philosophy of it. He often said to me that books and works of art should
be admitted free of duty.
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