The Last Leaf | Page 4

the
country an impress of power. Fillmore had recently, through Taylor's
death, become President, and was making his first visit to his home
after his elevation, with members of his Cabinet and other conspicuous
figures of his party. How Douglas came to be of the company I wonder,
for he was an ardent Jacksonian Democrat, but there he was on the
platform before the multitude, and I, a boy of sixteen, watched him
curiously, for he was young as compared with the grey heads about him.
His image, as he stood up to speak, is very clear to me even now--a
face strong-featured and ruddy with vigour beneath a massive forehead
whose thatch had the blackness and luxuriance of youth. His trunk was
disproportionately large, carried on legs sturdy enough but noticeably
short. The wits used to describe him as the statesman "with coat-tails
very near the ground." It is worth while to remark on this physical
peculiarity because it was the direct opposite of Lincoln's configuration.
He, while comparatively short-bodied, had, as all the world knows, an
abnormal length of limb, a fact which I suppose will account for much
of his ungainly manner. In an ordinary chair he was undoubtedly
uncomfortable, and hence his familiar attitude with his feet on the table
or over the mantelpiece. The two fought each other long and sternly on
those memorable platforms in Illinois in 1858, and in their physique
there must have been, as they stood side by side, a grotesque parody of

their intellectual want of harmony. Douglas's usual sobriquet was "the
little giant," and it fitted well--a man of stalwart proportions oddly
"sawed off." His voice was vibrant and sonorous, his mien compelling.
It was no great speech, a few sentences of compliment to the city and of
good-natured banter of the political foes among whom he found
himself; but it was ex pede Herculem, a leader red-blooded to the
finger-tips. I treasure the memory of this brief touch into which I once
came with Douglas for I have come to think more kindly of him as he
has receded. Not a few will now admit that, taken generally, his
doctrine of "squatter sovereignty" was right. Congress ought not to
have power to fix a status for people of future generations. If a status so
fixed becomes repugnant it will be repudiated, and rightfully. Douglas
was certainly cool over the woes of the blacks; but he refused, it is said,
to grow rich, when the opportunity offered, from the ownership of
slaves or from the proceeds of their sale. His rally to the side of Lincoln
at last was finely magnanimous and it was a pleasant scene, at the
inauguration of March 4, 1861, when Douglas sat close by holding
Lincoln's hat. There was an interview between the two men behind
closed doors, on the night the news of Sumter came, of which one
would like to have a report. Lincoln came out from it to issue, through
the Associated Press, his call for troops, and Douglas to send by the
same channel the appeal to his followers to stand by the Government.
What could the administration have done without the faithful arms and
hearts of the War Democrats? And what other voice but that of Douglas
could have rallied them to its support? Had he lived it seems inevitable
that the two so long rivals would have been close friends--that Douglas
would have been in Lincoln's Cabinet, perhaps in Stanton's place. This,
however, is not a memory but a might-have-been, and those are barred
out in this Last Leaf.
Daniel Webster came home to die in 1852. He was plainly failing fast,
but the State for which he stood hoped for the best, and arranged that he
should speak, as so often before, in Faneuil Hall. As I walked in from
Harvard College, over the long "caterpillar bridge" through Cambridge
Street and Dock Square, my freshman mind was greatly perplexed. My
mother's family were perfervid Abolitionists, accepting the extremest
utterances of Garrison and Wendell Phillips. I was now in that

environment, and felt strong impress from the power and sincerity of
the anti-slavery leaders. Fillmore and his Postmaster-General, N.K.
Hall, were old family friends. We children had chummed with their
children. Their kindly, honest faces were among the best known to us
in the circle of our elders. I had learned to respect no men more. I was
about to behold Webster, Fillmore's chief secretary and counsellor. On
the one hand he was much denounced, on the other adored, in each case
with fiery vehemence, and in my little world the contrasting passions
were wildly ablaze. In the mass that crowded Faneuil Hall we waited
long, an interval partly filled by the eccentric and eloquent Father
Taylor, the seamen's preacher,