of the North on the platform that it is the
duty of the Federal Government to force the people of a Territory to
have slavery when they do not want it."

The discussion extended itself to other Senators; Jefferson Davis, of
Mississippi, Clay, of Alabama, Mason, of Virginia, and Gwin, of
California, seconded the demands and arguments of Brown; while Pugh,
of Ohio, Broderick, of California, and Stuart, of Michigan, came to
the help and defense of Douglas and non-intervention. Several
Republicans drifted into the debate on behalf of the position and
principles of their party, which of course differed from those of both
Brown and Douglas. The discussion was continued to a late hour, and
finally came to an end through mere lapse of time, but not until an
irreparable schism in the Democratic party had been opened.

[Sidenote] Douglas to Dorr, June 22, 1859. Baltimore "Sun," June
24, 1859.

Silence upon so vital an issue could not long be maintained. In the
following June, an Iowa friend wrote to Douglas to inquire whether he
would be a candidate for the Presidential nomination at the coming
Charleston Convention. Douglas replied that party issues must first
be defined. If the Democracy adhered to their former principles,
his friends would be at liberty to present his name. "If, on the
contrary," continued he, "it shall become the policy of the Democratic
party, which I cannot anticipate, to repudiate these their
time-honored principles, on which we have achieved so many patriotic
triumphs, and in lieu of them the convention shall interpolate into
the creed of the party such new issues as the revival of the African
slave-trade, or a Congressional slave-code for the Territories, or the
doctrine that the Constitution of the United States either establishes
or prohibits slavery in the Territories beyond the power of the people
legally to control it, as other property--it is due to candor to say
that, in such an event, I could not accept the nomination if tendered
to me."

[Sidenote] Ray to Lincoln, July 27, 1858. MS.

We must leave the career of Douglas for a while, to follow up the
personal history of Lincoln. The peculiar attitude of national
politics had in the previous year drawn the attention of the whole
country to Illinois in a remarkable degree. The Senatorial campaign
was hardly opened when a Chicago editor, whose daily examination of a
large list of newspaper exchanges brought the fact vividly under his
ob