ailant
on the defensive. Now Sumner and now Chase was denying that he had come
into office by a sacrifice of principle; now Seward was defending his
own State of New York against a charge of infidelity to the compact of
1820; now Everett, friend and biographer and successor of Webster, was
protesting that he had not meant to misrepresent Webster's views.
Always, after these encounters, Douglas knew how to come back, with a
graver tone, to the larger issue, as if they, and not he, were trying to
obscure it. A spectator might have fancied that these high-minded men
were culprits, and he their inquisitor. Now and then, as when he dealt
with the abolitionists, there was no questioning the sincerity of his
feeling, and it stirred him to a genuine eloquence. He was not surprised
that Boston burned him in effigy. Had not Boston closed her Faneuil Hall
upon the aged Webster? Did not Sumner live there? And he turned upon
the senator from Massachusetts: "Sir, you will remember that when you
came into the Senate, and sought an opportunity to put forth your
abolition incendiarism, you appealed to our sense of justice by the
sentiment, 'Strike, but hear me first!' But when Mr. Webster went back
in 1850 to speak to his constituents in his own self-defense, to tell
the truth and to expose his slanderers, you would not hear him, but _you
struck him first_." Again and again, as at the end of a paragraph of
unadorned but trenchant sentences the small, firm-knit figure quivered
with a leonine energy, the great, swart head was thrown backward, and
the deep voice swelled into a tone of triumph or defiance, the listeners
could not forbear to applaud. Once, even Seward broke forth: "I have
never had so much respect for him as I have to-night."

The vote in the Senate was 27 ayes to 14 noes; but in the House the
opposition was dangerously strong, and but for the precaution of
securing the support of the administration the bill might have failed.
There was a fierce parliamentary battle. Richardson, Douglas's friend
and chief lieutenant, kept the House in continuous session thirty-six
hours trying to force through a motion to fix a term for the debate.
Feeling rose on both sides. Personal encounters were imminent. Douglas,
in constant attendance, watched every move of the opposition and was
instant with the counter-move. It was a month before the bill could be
brought to a vote, and then it passed, with a slight change, by a
majority of thirteen