Office, he has gone into the practice of law and the pursuit
of politics. For the latter he has a positive genius, as his whole mind
is taken up with visions and plans for the development of the country,
and for the aggrandizement of the United States. He is honest and
outspoken, courageous even to audacity; but he is sometimes accused of
devious ways, and of taking up anything that has a stomach in it. But no
one can say that he changes his principles; rather he avails himself of
opportune conditions, which are many, to advance himself and the things
he believes in. The country has no truer friend. Though I am an alien I
am a resident, and therefore I can participate in political affairs and
help him without being naturalized. At the present time Douglas is in
Springfield, and is much in the office of one of the newspapers there,
to which he contributes editorials sometimes. Recently the office was
attacked by some men who had been accused of trickery of some sort by
the newspaper. Douglas was present; and, though he is a little fellow,
he helped to beat off the attacking parties; and in the general assault
the sheriff was stabbed by one of the editors; but the matter has all
blown over.

"My own unfortunate affair has the appearance now of dying down.

"A very terrible thing has happened in the killing the Reverend Lovejoy
at Alton, a town not far from Jacksonville. He was running an abolition
newspaper which was offensive to the slave interests or the peace
interests, if you want to call them that. And persisting in his
agitation of the slave question they undertook to destroy his press. In
the altercation Lovejoy was shot. There is great feeling over the
matter.

"It is impossible for me to convey to you the intellectual atmosphere of
the country. It is so full of contradictions and cross currents. For
example, you come to believe that a Whig is against slavery. Then some
one comes forward to propose a certain General Harrison, a leading Whig,
for President in 1840; and some one arises to show that when he was
Governor of Indiana, when it was a territory, he tried to introduce
slavery, contrary to the Ordinance of 1787. I wrote you of this
Ordinance before. Then there are the most numerous groups of people of
every sort of weird convictions; some organized to oppose Masonry;
others to curb the Irish and the Catholics; others to prohibit the use
of wine and all intoxicants; others to advance the cause of free love