midnight, he stood before them; time and again, as the uproar lessened,
his voice combated it; but they would not let him speak. Nothing, in
fact, but his resolute bearing saved him from violence. On the way home,
his carriage was set upon and he was in danger of his life.

Wherever he went in Northern Illinois, similar scenes were enacted. But
he got a hearing, and in the central counties and in "Egypt," the
southern part of the State, where the people were largely of Virginian
and Kentuckian descent, he was cordially received. He kept his hold upon
his party in Illinois, and Illinois, alone of all the Northwestern
States, would not go over completely to the opposition. The Democratic
candidate for state treasurer was elected. The Know-Nothings and
Anti-Nebraska men got a majority of the congressmen, and by the
defection of certain state senators who held over from a previous
election they were enabled to send Lyman Trumbull, Anti-Nebraska
Democrat, to be Douglas's colleague at Washington. That, when compared
with the results elsewhere in the North, was a striking proof of
Douglas's power with his people. Moreover, the Democrats of the North
who remained in the party had accepted his leadership. In the South, the
party organization was soon free of any effective opposition. The two
wings, so long as they were united, could still control the Senate and
elect presidents. All would still be well, if only all went well on
those Western plains whither Douglas declared that the slavery question
was now banished forever from the halls of Congress.

But all was not going well there. When the Kansas-Nebraska bill passed,
Sumner exultantly exclaimed: "It sets freedom and slavery face to face,
and bids them grapple." Nebraska was conceded to freedom, but the day
Kansas, the southern Territory, was thrown open to settlement, a long,
confused, confusing struggle began. The whole country was drawn into it.
Blue lodges in the South, emigrant aid societies in the North, hurried
opposing forces into the field. The Southerners, aided by colonized
voters from Missouri, got control of the territorial legislature and
passed a slave code. The Free-Soilers, ignoring the government thus
established, gathered in convention at Topeka, formed a free state
constitution, and demanded to be admitted into the Union as a State.
When a new Congress assembled in December, 1855, there were two
governments in Kansas, and the people were separated into ho