With all his courage in meeting recent attacks, it was plain that his only hope of the Presidency lay in the prospect of his reconciliation with the Southern leaders. They needed his help to prevent the Radicals, Seward, Chase and Lincoln, from carrying the next election. He needed their help to compass the nomination.
He decided without lowering his standard to win them back by the mere efficiency of his service. But the Southern leaders were not in search of a Northern master. They wanted servants in the high places of Government not less humble than the blacks who tilled their plantations. They instinctively knew that he was not and could not be such a servant. Rather than support him they would see Seward elected. He at least frankly avowed his hostility. If they elected Douglas and he declined to obey, their position would be awkward. If a sectional Republican were elected, they could secede and set up an independent Government.
On the 7th of May Davis spoke in support of a series of radical resolutions introduced by him on February 2nd, declaring that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature had power to impair the Constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into the common Territories and there hold it; that it was the duty of Congress to protect this right; and that the inhabitants had no power either by direct legislation or by their unfriendly attitude to exclude slavery until they formed a State Constitution. He spoke with great force in support of them.
He ascribe the authorship of the pernicious heresy of squatter sovereignty to Cass, and threw doubt on the soundness of Douglas' Democracy by a long recital of what he regarded as unsound and heretical opinions and votes. He showed the complete failure of his distinctive policy in Kansas and the authoritative rejection of his principles by the Supreme Court. While the speech was courteous and dignified in manner, apparently delivered to elucidate the subject rather than to injure Douglas, it portrayed the wreck of his statesmanship and exposed the unsoundness of his Democracy with dangerous clearness while his candidacy was in the hands of the National Convention.
A week later he replied. Already the Charleston Convention, and with it his candidacy, had virtually gone to pieces because of Southern hostility to him and his principles. Davis was the head o the Southern junta, and the debate in the Senate was known to express in cold phrase, the passions that had rent the Convention and threatened to disrupt the party.
As Douglas, anxious but unfaltering, rose to speak, there was a hush in the crowded Chamber. After a sneering allusion to his controversy with Black, he announced his purpose to defend himself against the attack made by Davis. The speech occupied two days in its delivery and was a unique and artistic piece of senatorial politics. It was addressed less to the Senate than to the adjourned Charleston Convention. He exhaustively proved the soundness of Democracy and repelled the charge of heresy by rehearsing the history of Democratic Conventions and platforms since 1848, quoting the declarations of the party and its leaders in Convention, on the platform and through the press.
Cass, he said, the author of the now deadly doctrine of popular sovereignty, was nominated in 1848. The Compromise of 1850embodied that principle. The Kansas-Nebraska struggle was settled by expressly adopting it. The Cincinnati platform, on which all Democrats had stood for four years, distinctly affirmed it. The Charleston Convention, within a few days, had reaffirmed it. His own speeches showed that he had adhered to it constantly from the beginning of his career. The change was not in him but in the Southern wing of the party. He protested that he did not desire the nomination and only permitted his name to be used that he might be vindicated against the presumptuous efforts of a little coterie to cast doubt upon his Democracy and their attempt to proscribe him as a heretic might be rebuked.
The most hostile critic must feel some sympathy for him in his new and indefensible position. His now heretical opinions had but recently borne the authentic stamp of Democracy. His party, following its real sentiments and the judicial interpretation of the Constitution, had silently abandoned its old creed to which he still clung with tenacity and ardor.
Davis, answering, asked him the blunt question, whether, if elected President, he would sign a bill to protect slave property in States, Territories, or the District of Columbia. He declined to answer suggesting the impropriety of declaring in advance what he would do if elected.
Congress adjourned on June 25th.
