And when we met at the Williams' residence of
evenings there were sharp exchanges of opinion between us about life,
books, the new city of Chicago, the destiny of America, and Douglas.
Aldington was keeping abreast with all the new books in America and
England as well. He too had read De Tocqueville; but he was also
familiar with Rousseau, Voltaire, the French Encyclopaedists; with
Locke. And he assured me that Calhoun, the Senator from South Carolina,
had written a treatise on the philosophy of government which for depth
and dialectic power, was a match for Locke. He also knew the poets
Shelley and Byron. He had studied the French Revolution. He was watching
the feverish developments of Italy and Germany. The tide of emigration
into Chicago and Illinois furnished him material for infinite
speculation. What would this hot blood, seeking opportunity and freedom
from old world restraints, do for the new country? He admired Douglas to
a degree, but he disliked what he sensed in him as materialism.
We were reading together the proceedings in Congress concerning the fine
which had been imposed by court upon Jackson at New Orleans when he was
in military charge of the city in 1812. Douglas had taken this as his
occasion to make himself known to the House and to the country at large.
He was nothing in Congress because of his achievements in Illinois.
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