e President said that a great gain
had been made to the cause of the Union, by the direction which
the speeches of Douglas would give to the sympathy and action of
the Northern Democracy. From the hour of actual danger, Mr. Douglas
had spoken no partisan word, had known no partisan division, had
labored only for the government of the nation, had looked only to
its safety and its honor. He had a larger following than any other
party leader of his day. Nearly a million and a half of men believed
in his principles, were devoted to him personally, trusted him
implicitly. The value of his active loyalty to the Union may be
measured by the disaster which would have been caused by hesitation
on his part. When he returned to his State, after the firing on
Sumter, the Republican Legislature of Illinois received him with
a display of feeling as profound as that with which they would have
welcomed Mr. Lincoln. His address on that memorable occasion was
worthy of the loftiest patriot, and was of inestimable value to
the cause of the Union. Perhaps no words spoken carried confidence
to more hearts, or gave greater strength to the National cause.

Mr. Douglas did not live to return to the Senate. The extra session
of March closed his public service. He died in Chicago on the
third day of June, 1861, at the early age of forty-eight. His last
days were his best days. The hour of his death was the hour of
his greatest fame. In his political career he had experienced the
extremes of popular odium and of popular approval. His name had
at different periods been attended with as great obloquy as ever
beset a public man. It was his happy fate to have changed this
before his death, and to have secured the enthusiastic approbation
of every lover of the Union. His career had been stormy, his
partisanship aggressive, his course often violent, his political
methods sometimes ruthless. He had sought favor at the South too
long to regain mastery of the North, and he had been defeated in
the Presidential struggle of 1860,--a struggle in which the ambition
of his life had been centred. But with danger to the Union his
early affections and the associations of his young life had come
back. He remembered that he was a native of New England, that he
had been reared in New York, that he had been crowned with honors
by the generous and confiding people of Illinois. He believed in
the Union of the States, and he stood by his country with