the slaves was continued by their grandfather to the children, after Mr. Douglas, for the reasons given, had declined the absolute gift of the entire property.

It has been thought proper and just toward Mr. Douglas that this matter should be stated clearly and distinctly. At the time that Col. Martin made him the valuable present, Mr. Douglas was not blessed with an over abundance of treasure. As a pecuniary gift this was of great value, and in his circumstances would, if converted into money, have enabled him, by judicious investments in Chicago and elsewhere in Illinois, to have laid the foundation for a princely fortune. The gift was clogged with no conditions. He was at liberty to convert plantations and slaves into cash at any moment. How many of those who have denounced him as a slaveholder, as being the " owner of human beings," and the "proprietor of human chattels," would have resisted the offer that he declined, is a question which the observer of the general hollowness of abolition pretensions will have no difficulty in answering.

A senator from Ohio, with a want of taste, a want of a becoming sense of the proprieties of life, shortly after the death of Mrs. Douglas, was shameless enough to introduce the matter into a debate in the Senate. The remarks made by Mr. Wade on that occasion elicited the following feeling, touching, manly reply from Mr. Douglas:

"Mr. President, the senator from Ohio [Mr. Wade] has invaded the circle of my private relations in search of materials for the impeachment of my official action. He has alluded to certain southern interests which he insinuates that I possess, and remarked, that where the treasure is there the heart is also. So long as the statement that I was one of the largest slaveholders in America was confined to the abolition newspapers and stump orators I treated it with silent contempt. I would gladly do so on this occasion, were it not for the fact that the reference is made in my presence by a senator for the purpose of imputing to me a mercenary motive for my official conduct. Under these circumstances, silence on my part in regard to the fact might be construed into a confession of guilt in reference to the impeachment of motive. I therefore say to the senator that his insinuation is false, and he knows it to. be false, if he has ever searched the records or has any reliable information upon the subject. I am not the owner of a slave,

and never have been, nor have I ever received and appropriated to my own use one dollar earned by slave labor. It is true that I once had tendered to me, under circumstances grateful to my feelings, a plantation with a large number of slaves upon it, which I declined to accept, not because I had any sympathy with abolitionists or the abolition movement, but for the reason that, being a northern man by birth, by education and residence, and intending always to remain such, it was impossible for me to know, understand, and provide for the wants, comforts and happiness of those people. I refused to accept them because I was unwilling to assume responsibilities which I was incapable of fulfilling. This fact is referred to in the will of my father-in-law as a reason for leaving the plantation and slaves to his only daughter, (who became the mother of my infant children), as her separate and exclusive estate, with the request that if she departed this life without surviving children the slaves should be emancipated and sent to Liberia at the expense of her estate; but in the event she should leave surviving children, the slaves should descend to them, under the belief, expressed in the will, that they would be happier and better off with the descendants of the family, with whom they had been born and raised, than in a distant land where they might find no friend to care for them. This brief statement, relating to private and domestic affairs, (which ought to be permitted to remain private and sacred), has been extorted and wrung from me with extreme reluctance, even in vindication of the purity of my motives in the performance of a high public trust. As the truth compelled me to negative the insinuation so offensively made by the senator from Ohio, God forbid that I should be understood by any one as being willing to cast from me any responsibility that now does, or ever has attached to any member of my family. So long as life shall last-and I shall cherish with religious veneration the memory and virtues of the sainted mother of my children-so long as my heart shall be filled with parental solicitude for the happiness of those motherless infants, I implore my enemies, who so ruthlessly invade the domestic sanctuary, to do me the favor to believe that I have no wish, no aspiration, to be considered purer or better than she who was, or they who are, slaveholders.

"Sir, whenever my assailants shall refuse to accept a like

amount of this species of property tendered to them, under similar circumstances, and shall perform a domestic trust with equal fidelity and disinterestedness, it will be time enough for them to impute mercenary motives to me in the performance of my official duties."

The "ownership of slaves" has for several years been one of the favorite themes upon which the lower and more disreputable class of the opposition have loved to dilate in denouncing Douglas to sympathetic audiences. Men of respectability, even among the abolitionists, have ceased to discourse of it. But in 1858, in the memorable contest to which a proper share of this book is devoted, the matter was revived and assumed a new and more intensified color by men who, in uniting with the abolitionists to accomplish a common end, felt compelled to resort to fabrications which no honorable Republican would stoop to invent.

It will be remembered that Illinois during that year was visited by several distinguished men, some of whom had such a profound regard for the rights of the South that they sought the election of Lincoln, with his negro equality doctrines, by the defeat of Douglas. In the list of statesmen who found, during 1858, a hitherto unknown salubriousness in the air of the northwest, was the Hon. JOHN SLIDELL of Louisiana, who being, as was well known, or at least, as it was supposed, a friend, confident, and adviser of the President in the days of the Danite rebellion, attracted by his venerable appearance, as well as by the classic purity of his language upon the subject of Douglas' rëelection, the especial regard of the entire Danite faction, and of the more numerous and respectable party, the Republicans. It was understood-and when we say understood we mean that it was openly declared by the President's followers that Mr. Slidell was the main instrument by which certain changes in the federal offices in Illinois had been made. Dr. DANIEL BRAINARD, surgeon to the marine hospital, owed his appointment to the united and friendly exertions of FRANCIS J. GRUND, and Senator John Slidell. Par nobile fratrum! Immediately after Mr. Slidell's final leave of Chicago it was stated upon the streets and in public places that Senator Douglas (then absent in other parts of the state) was not only a slaveholder, but one that had no parallel in wickednesss, even in Uncle Tom's Cabin. We will not repeat the stories which

were upon the lips of every one, because they eventually took shape, and appeared in a public and formal allegation. A few weeks before the election the leading Republican paper in Chicago charged that Mr. Douglas spent in riotous living an immense annual revenue, derived from his plantations in Mississippi; and not content with thus profiting by his property in human beings his equals in all human attributes-he neglected them, placed them under cruel and tyrannical masters, who denied to the poor slaves food enough to keep them from suffering, and clothing enough to hide their nakedness. Upon this statement of facts, for which the authority of a distinguished southern senator was claimed, the paper produced a sensation article, which was extensively copied throughout all Illinois and the northwest. Mr. Douglas was absent from Chicago, and did not see the charge until after the election. Both Republican and administration orators made the most of the horrid condition of "Douglas' slaves;" and the gentleman to whom Mr. Douglas had intrusted the care and management of his children's estate was held up to the people as a monster of wickedness, and as a demon in cruelty.

The writer of these pages heard the same story repeated at a Republican convention in Chicago in September or October, 1858, by one of the persons nominated as a candidate for the Legislature. The candidate stated that there could be no doubt of the facts, for they were derived from a very distinguished southern man who had lately been in Chicago.

In the meantime the story had reached New Orleans, there attracting much attention. The authors of the story seemed to have overlooked the possibility that there would be ultimately an exposure of its want of truth. The New Orleans Picayune first noticed it, and pronounced it "an election canard." The Chicago Press and Tribune at once responded as follows:

"We have only to say that the story came to us from a personal friend of Mr. Slidell—a gentleman of character and influence in this city-and he assured us that he had the statement from Slidell himself, during his visit to Chicago, while the late canvass was going on. His name is at the service of any one authorized to demand it."

The Democratic paper at Chicago at once demanded the name of the "gentleman of character" who had made the

statement. Upon the streets the name was publicly mentioned, but it had not been given up by the Press and Tribune. At last it was charged that Dr. DANIEL BRAINARD, a federal office-holder, was the man.

On the 18th of December Mr. Slidell published in the Washington Union a denial of having ever told Dr. Brainard or any one else such a story. He said:

I am constrained to believe either that Dr. Brainard did not make the statement attributed to him by the Chicago Press and Tribune, or that he has been guilty of a deliberate and malicious falsehood. I have no recollection of ever having spoken of Mr. Douglas' slaves; it is possible that I may have been asked if he had any property of that description. If so, I could only have answered that they were employed in cotton-planting on the Mississippi river, and were in possession of an old and valued friend, James A. McHatton, than whom a more honorable man or better master cannot be found in Louisiana."

On the 23d of December Dr. Brainard addressed a note to the editors of the Press and Tribune, denying having ever made the statements imputed to him. In the issue of that paper of December 24 the editors lifted the veil and exposed the whole fabrication. That paper said:

"We have on two occasions promised that, when called upon by one authorized to ask the name of the gentleman who related to us, on the authority of Mr. John Slidell, the story of the ill-treatment of Mr. Douglas' slaves, we would give it to the public. Mr. Slidell in his card above makes no demand of the kind; but as he denounces as a falsehood the story itself, we are impelled to make the following statement:

"In July last, about the time of Mr. Slidell's visit to Chicago, one of the editors of this paper was informed by Dr. Daniel Brainard, Professor of Surgery in the Rush Medical College, in a conversation invited by the doctor himself, in his own office, that Mr. Douglas' slaves in the South were 'the subjects of inhuman and disgraceful treatment-that they were hired out to a factor at fifteen dollars per annum each-that he, in turn, hired them out to others in lots, and that they were ill-fed, over-worked, and in every way so badly treated that they were spoken of in the neighborhood where they are held as a disgrace to all slaveholders and the system they support.' The authority given for these alleged facts, by Dr. Brainard, was the Hon. John Slidell, of Louisiana.

"At that time, Dr. Brainard suggested that the case as stated was a proper one for newspaper comment; and he urged that Mr. Douglas should be denounced in the Press and Tribune for his inhumanity. Just before election, on the authority above stated, we did comment upon Mr. Douglas' share in this matter with considerable severity. Out of the article in which he was rebuked this controversy has grown.

"We had no doubt at the time this conversation took place, and have no doubt now, that Dr. Brainard was honest and truthful in his relation. We