Mother Clayton
approved the marriage. Abigail mocked it. For his wife was a southern
woman, the owner of many slaves in Mississippi. Douglas had announced
that he would have nothing to do with her property, especially with the
slaves. But how was he to escape a derivative gain? So Abigail asked. I
knew that he disliked the institution; but here it was touching him
again in a peculiarly intimate way. Texas soiled him with its influence
and now his marriage identified him with it. He might regard it, if he
would, as a domestic matter like the liquor business, which Maine had
just now laid low by a prohibition law. As he would not be a liquor
dealer, so he would not be a slave owner. But he was the next thing to
it in the circumstance of his marriage.
But in my absence he had moved to Chicago, and this gave me great
happiness. I should now see much of him. He was speculating in land and
growing rich. He was advocating the immediate construction of the
Illinois Central railroad. He had been triumphantly reelected to
Congress. The Mexican War had helped to do that for him. He was only
thirty-four, but a great and growing figure.
Chicago had changed in my absence. The second water system, consisting
of a reservoir at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Water Street, and a
pump, operated by a 25-horsepower engine, was soon to be supplanted by a
crib sunk in the lake 600 feet from shore, from which the water was to
be drawn by a 200-horsepower engine.
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