While Douglas was thus steadily growing into complete accord with the New England elements in his section—save on one vital point,—he fell captive to the beauty and grace of one whose associations were with men and women south of Mason and Dixon's line. Adèle Cutts was the daughter of Mr. J. Madison Cutts of Washington, who belonged to an old Maryland family. She was the great-niece of Dolly Madison, whom she much resembled in charm of manner. When Douglas first made her acquaintance, she was the belle of Washington society,—in the days when the capital still boasted of a genuine aristocracy of gentleness, grace, and talent. There are no conflicting testimonies as to her beauty. Women spoke of her as "beautiful as a pearl;" to men she seemed "a most lovely and queenly apparition."[[609]] Both men and women found her sunny-tempered, generous, warm-hearted, and sincere. What could there have been in the serious-minded, dark-visaged "Little Giant" to win the hand of this mistress of many hearts? Perhaps she saw "Othello's visage in his mind"; perhaps she yielded to the imperious will which would accept no refusal; at all events, Adèle Cutts chose this plain little man of middle-age in preference to men of wealth and title.[[610]] It proved to be in every respect a happy marriage.[[611]] He cherished her with all the warmth of his manly affection; she became the devoted partner of all his toils. His two boys found in her a true mother; and there was not a household in Washington where home-life was graced with tenderer mutual affection.[[612]]
Across this picture of domestic felicity, there fell but a single, fugitive shadow. Adèle Cutts was an adherent of the Roman Church; and at a time when Native Americanism was running riot with the sense of even intelligent men, such ecclesiastical connections were made the subject of some odious comment. Although Douglas permitted his boys to be educated in the Catholic faith, and profoundly respected the religious instincts of his tender-hearted wife, he never entered into the Roman communion, nor in fact identified himself with any church.[[613]] Much of his relentless criticism of Native Americanism can be traced to his abhorrence of religious intolerance in any form.
This alliance meant much to Douglas. Since the death of his first wife, he had grown careless in his dress and bearing, too little regardful of conventionalities. He had sought by preference the society of men, and had lost those external marks of good-breeding which companionship with gentlewomen had given him. Insensibly he had fallen a prey to a certain harshness and bitterness of temper, which was foreign to his nature; and he had become reckless, so men said, because of defeated ambition. But now yielding to the warmth of tender domesticity, the true nature of the man asserted itself.[[614]] He grew, perhaps not less ambitious, but more sensible of the obligations which leadership imposed.
No one could gainsay his leadership. He was indisputably the most influential man in his party; and this leadership was not bought by obsequiousness to party opinion, nor by the shadowy arts of the machine politician alone. True, he was a spoilsman, like all of his contemporaries. He was not above using the spoils of office to reward faithful followers. Reprehensible as the system was, and is, there is perhaps a redeeming feature in this aspect of American politics. The ignorant foreigner was reconciled to government because it was made to appear to him as a personal benefactor. Due credit must be given to those leaders like Douglas, who fired the hearts of Irishmen and Germans with loyalty to the Union through the medium of party.[[615]]
The hold of Douglas upon his following, however, cannot be explained by sordid appeals to their self-interest. He commanded the unbought service of thousands. In the early days of his career, he had found loyal friends, who labored unremittingly for his advancement, without hope of pecuniary reward or of any return but personal gratitude; and throughout his career he drew upon this vast fund of personal loyalty. His capacity for warm friendships was unlimited. He made men, particularly young men, feel that it was an inestimable boon to be permitted to labor with him "for the cause." Far away in Asia Minor, with his mind teeming with a thousand strange sensations, he can yet think of a friend at the antipodes who nurses a grievance against him; and forthwith he sits down and writes five pages of generous, affectionate remonstrance.[[616]] In the thick of an important campaign, when countless demands are made upon his time, he finds a moment to lay his hand upon the shoulder of a young German ward-politician with the hearty word, "I count very much on your help in this election."[[617]] If this was the art of a politician, it was art reduced to artlessness.
Not least among the qualities which made Douglas a great, persuasive, popular leader, was his quite extraordinary memory for names and faces, and his unaffected interest in the personal life of those whom he called his friends. "He gave to every one of those humble and practically nameless followers the impression, the feeling, that he was the frank, personal friend of each one of them."[[618]] Doubtless he was well aware that there is no subtler form of flattery, than to call individuals by name who believe themselves to be forgotten pawns in a great game; and he may well have cultivated the profitable habit. Still, the fact remains, that it was an innate temperamental quality which made him frank and ingenuous in his intercourse with all sorts and conditions of men.
Those who judged the man by the senator, often failed to understand his temperament. He was known as a hard hitter in parliamentary encounters. He never failed to give a Roland for an Oliver. In the heat of debate, he was often guilty of harsh, bitter invective. His manner betrayed a lack of fineness and good-breeding. But his resentment vanished with the spoken word. He repented the barbed shaft, the moment it quitted his bow. He would invite to his table the very men with whom he had been in acrimonious controversy, and perhaps renew the controversy next day. Greeley testified to this absence of resentment. On a certain occasion, after the New York Tribune had attacked Douglas savagely, a mutual acquaintance asked Douglas if he objected to meeting the redoubtable Greeley. "Not at all," was the good-natured reply, "I always pay that class of political debts as I go along, so as to have no trouble with them in social intercourse and to leave none for my executors to settle."[[619]]
In the round of social functions which Senator and Mrs. Douglas enjoyed, there was little time for quiet thought and reflection. Men who met him night after night at receptions and dinners, marvelled at the punctuality with which he returned to the routine work of the Senate next morning. Yet there was not a member of the Senate who had a readier command of facts germane to the discussions of the hour. His memory was a willing slave which never failed to do the bidding of master intellect. Some of his ablest and most effective speeches were made without preparation and with only a few pencilled notes at hand. Truly Nature had been lavish in her gifts to him.
To nine-tenths of his devoted followers, he was still "Judge" Douglas. It was odd that the title, so quickly earned and so briefly worn, should have stuck so persistently to him. In legal attainments he fell far short of many of his colleagues in the Senate. Had he but chosen to apply himself, he might have been a conspicuous leader of the American bar; but law was ever to him the servant of politics, and he never cared to make the servant greater than his lord. That he would have developed judicial qualities, may well be doubted; advocate he was and advocate he remained, to the end of his days. So it was that when a legal question arose, with far-reaching implications for American politics, the lawyer and politician, rather than the judge, laid hold upon the points of political significance.
The inauguration of James Buchanan and the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court, two days later, marked a turning point in the career of Judge Douglas. Of this he was of course unaware. He accepted the advent of his successful rival with composure, and the opinion of the Court, with comparative indifference. In a speech before the Grand Jury of the United States District Court at Springfield, three months later, he referred publicly for the first time to the Dred Scott case. Senator, and not Judge, Douglas was much in evidence. He swallowed the opinion of the majority of the court without wincing—the obiter dictum and all. Nay, more, he praised the Court for passing, like honest and conscientious judges, from the technicalities of the case to the real merits of the questions involved. The material, controlling points of the case were: first, that a negro descended from slave parents could not be a citizen of the United States; second, that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and void from the beginning, and thus could not extinguish a master's right to his slave in any Territory. "While the right continues in full force under ... the Constitution," he added, "and cannot be divested or alienated by an act of Congress, it necessarily remains a barren and worthless right, unless sustained, protected, and enforced by appropriate police regulations and local legislation, prescribing adequate remedies for its violation. These regulations and remedies must necessarily depend entirely upon the will and wishes of the people of the Territory, as they can only be prescribed by the local legislatures." Hence the triumphant conclusion that "the great principle of popular sovereignty and self-government is sustained and firmly established by the authority of this decision."[[620]]