encies, had combined with the Whigs to embarrass the
Democratic delegation at Washington.[319] Their expectation seems to
have been that they could thus force Senator Douglas to resign his
seat, for he had been an uncompromising opponent of the Wilmot
Proviso. Free-Soilers, Whigs, and Northern Democrats with anti-slavery
leanings had voted for the instructions; only the Democrats from the
southern counties voted solidly to sustain the Illinois delegation in
its opposition to the Proviso.[320] While not a strict sectional vote,
it showed plainly enough the rift in the Democratic party. A
disruptive issue had been raised. For the moment a re-alignment of
parties on geographical lines seemed imminent. This was precisely the
trend in national politics at this moment.

There was a traditional remedy for this sectional malady--compromise.
It was an Illinois senator, himself a slave-owner, who had proposed
the original Missouri proviso. Senator Douglas had repeatedly proposed
to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, in the same
spirit in which compromise had been offered in 1820, but the essential
conditions for a compromise on this basis were now wanting.

It was precisely at this time, when the Illinois legislature was
instructing him to reverse his attitude toward the Wilmot Proviso,
that Senator Douglas began to change his policy. Believing that the
combination against him in the legislature was largely accidental and
momentary, he refused to resign.[321] Events amply justified his
course; but the crisis was not without its lessons for him. The
futility of a compromise based on an extension of the Missouri
Compromise line was now apparent. Opposition to the extension of
slavery was too strong; and belief in the free status of the acquired
territory too firmly rooted in the minds of his constituents. There
remained the possibility of reintegrating the Democratic party through
the application of the principle of "squatter sovereignty," Was it
possible to offset the anti-slavery sentiment of his Northern
constituents by an insistent appeal to their belief in local
self-government?

The taproot from which squatter sovereignty grew and flourished, was
the instinctive attachment of the Western American to local
government; or to put the matter conversely, his dislike of external
authority. So far back as the era of the Revolution, intense
individualism, bold initiative, strong dislike of authority, elemental
je