The Man in Gray | Page 9

song of slaves at work in the cornfield, harvesting the
first crop of peas planted between the rows.
Stuart caught her hand, pressed it tenderly and kissed it.
"You're an angel, Miss Mary. And I'm going to worship you, if you
won't let me love you."
The girl returned his earnest look with a smile and slowly answered:
"All right, Beauty Stuart, we'll see--"

CHAPTER IV
The dinner at night was informal. Colonel Lee had invited three
personal friends from Washington. He hoped in the touch of the minds
of these leaders to find some relief from the uneasiness with which the
reading of Mrs. Stowe's book had shadowed his imagination.
The man about whom he was curious was Stephen A. Douglas of
Illinois, the most brilliant figure in the Senate. In the best sense he
represented the national ideal. A Northern man, he had always viewed
the opinions and principles of the South with broad sympathy.
The new Senator from Georgia, on the other hand, had made a
sensation in the house as the radical leader of the South. Lee wondered
if he were as dangerous a man as the conservative members of the
Whig party thought. Toombs had voted the Whig ticket, but his
speeches on the rights of the South on the Slavery issues had set him in
a class by himself.
Mr. and Mrs. Pryor had spent the night of the dance at Arlington and
had consented to stay for dinner.
Douglas had captured the young Virginia congressman. And Mrs.
Douglas had become an intimate friend of Mrs. Pryor.
When Douglas entered the library and pressed Lee's hand, the master of
Arlington studied him with keen interest. He was easily the most
impressive figure in American politics. The death of Calhoun and Clay
and the sudden passing of Webster had left but one giant on the floor of
the Senate. They called him the "Little Giant." He was still a giant. He
had sensed the approaching storm of crowd madness and had sought
the age-old method of compromise as the safety valve of the nation.
He had not read history in vain. He knew that all statesmanship is the
record of compromise--that compromise is another name for reason.
The Declaration of Independence was a compromise between the
radicalism of Thomas Jefferson and the conservatism of the colonies. In
the original draft of the Declaration, Jefferson had written a paragraph

arraigning slavery which had been omitted:
"He (the King of Great Britain) has waged cruel war against human
nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the
persons of a distant people who never offended him; capturing and
carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable
death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the
opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of
Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be
bought and sold, he prostituted his negative for suppressing every
legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And
that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye,
he is now exciting these very people to rise in arms among us, and to
purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the
people on whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes
committed against the liberties of one people with crimes which he
urges them to commit against the lives of another."
This indictment of Slavery and the Slave trade was stricken from the
Declaration of Independence in deference to the opposition of both
Northern and Southern slave owners who held that the struggling
young colonies must have labor at all hazards.
Lee knew that the Constitution also was a compromise of conflicting
interests. But for the spirit of compromise--of reason--this instrument
of human progress could never have been created. The word "Slave" or
"Slavery" does not occur within it, and yet three of its most important
provisions established the institution of chattel slavery as the basis of
industrial life. The statesmen who wrote the Constitution did not wish
these clauses embodied in it. Yet the Union could not have been
established without them. Our leaders reasoned, and reasoned wisely,
that Slavery must perish in the progress of human society, and,
therefore, they accepted the compromise.
There has never been a statesman in the history of the world who has
not used this method of constructive progress. There will never be a
statesman who succeeds who can use any other method in dealing with
masses of his fellow men.

Douglas was the coming constructive statesman of the republic and all
eyes were being focused on him. His life at the moment was the
fevered center of the nation's thought. That his ambitions were
boundless no