My hatred of the
South nearly reached self-contempt for the way in which my life had been
united to its feeling. All my thinking of the country and the terrible
events which followed the monumental folly of not giving Douglas a
united nomination dates from these days.
On my way west I read in the press of the verbal clash between this
Jefferson Davis and Douglas in the Senate. With an insulting inflection
Davis had said: "I have a declining respect for platforms. I would
sooner have an honest man on any sort of a rickety platform you could
construct than to have a man I did not trust, on the best platform which
could be made."
Douglas had retorted with telling effect: "If the platform is not a
matter of much consequence, why press that question to the disruption of
the party?"
Why? But the South had done it. And Davis had done it.
CHAPTER LX
Who should call upon me the next morning after my arrival in Chicago but
Yarnell? I had not seen him now for several years. And he was a delegate
to the Republican convention.
"How is this?" I asked him. "I remember yet what you said to me about
slavery when we came to America more than twenty-five years ago." "Oh,"
he replied, "that makes no difference. The Republican party is not going
to disturb slavery where it is. It only proposes to keep it out from
what it isn't.
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