he was offering to
the Democratic party "fresh ammunition," but all knew, and none better
than Douglas, that the Democratic party was in no need of a fresh issue.
He had ruthlessly destroyed the peace of the whole nation, for the sake
of promoting his own selfish interests,--and that, in vain; as in 1853,
Douglas failed to secure the Democratic nomination for the presidency in
1856, which was won by Buchanan.

The bill cost Douglas his prestige, and lost him the confidence of one
half the people of Chicago and Illinois. His friends called him home in
the hope that he might win back the popularity he had lost. But Chicago
would have none of him. He entered the city unwelcomed, had to hire a
building in which to speak, advertised his own meeting, and on the day
of the meeting found the flags at half-mast, while the church bells
tolled the funeral of liberty, where hitherto the bells had pealed the
notes of joy.

It is impossible not to admire Douglas's courage in that trying ordeal.
He found the hall filled with his opponents, yet he began by saying, "My
fellow citizens, I appear before you to vindicate the Kansas-Nebraska
Bill." The words evoked a perfect tumult, which continued for half an
hour. He appealed to their sense of fair play and honour, but they asked
him whether he had played fair with liberty in Washington. Growing
angry, he tried to denounce them as cowards, afraid to listen to a
discussion, and they answered that it was cowardly to desert a slave who
needed a defender. At eleven o'clock he flung his arms in the air and
dared them to shoot, because a man had waved a pistol. The crowd
answered with a shower of eggs, while a man shouted that bullets were
too valuable to be wasted on traitors. At twelve o'clock the bells rang
out the midnight. Douglas pulled out his watch and shouted, "It is
midnight. I am going home and to church, and you may go to Hades!"
Douglas met a mob in Chicago, just as Beecher met a mob in England. But
Beecher conquered his mob in Manchester; the mob in Chicago conquered
Douglas. Beecher won, because he was right and the mob was wrong;
Douglas lost, because he was wrong and the mob was right. "You can fool
all of the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people
all the time; you cannot fool all of the people all of the time" on the
great principles of liberty. Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Bill brought on
an era of civil war in Kansas, sent the guerrillas over the Sunflow