[665] Ibid., p. 1870.
[666] Globe, 35 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 1870.
[667] Rhodes, History of the United States, II, p. 300.
[668] Cox, Three Decades of Federal Legislation, p. 58.
CHAPTER XVI[ToC]
THE JOINT DEBATES WITH LINCOLN
National politics made strange bed-fellows in the winter of 1857-8. Douglas consorting with Republicans and flouting the administration, was a rare spectacle. There was a moment in this odd alliance when it seemed likely to become more than a temporary fusion of interests. The need of concerted action brought about frequent conferences, in which the distrust of men like Wilson and Colfax was, in a measure, dispelled by the engaging frankness of their quondam opponent.[[669]] Douglas intimated that in all probability he could not act with his party in future.[[670]] He assured Wilson that he was in the fight to stay—in his own words, "he had checked his baggage and taken a through ticket."[[671]] There was an odd disposition, too, on the part of some Republicans to indorse popular sovereignty, now that it seemed likely to exclude slavery from the Territories.[[672]] There was even a rumor afloat that the editor of the New York Tribune favored Douglas for the presidency.[[673]] On at least two occasions, Greeley was in conference with Senator Douglas at the latter's residence. To the gossiping public this was evidence enough that the rumor was correct. And it may well be that Douglas dallied with the hope that a great Constitutional Union party might be formed.[[674]] But he could hardly have received much encouragement from the Republicans, with whom he was consorting, for so far from losing their political identity, they calculated upon bringing him eventually within the Republican fold.[[675]]
A Constitutional Union party, embracing Northern and Southern Unionists of Whig or Democratic antecedents, might have supplied the gap left by the old Whig party. That such a party would have exercised a profound nationalizing influence can scarcely be doubted. Events might have put Douglas at the head of such a party. But, in truth, such an outcome of the political chaos which then reigned, was a remote possibility.