He touched many hearts when he reminded his hearers that in the great Northwest, Northerners and Southerners met and married, bequeathing the choice gifts of both sections to their children. "When their children grow up, the child of the same parents has a grandfather in North Carolina and another in Vermont, and that child does not like to hear either of those States abused.... He will never consent that this Union shall be dissolved so that he will be compelled to obtain a passport and get it viséd to enter a foreign land to visit the graves of his ancestors. You cannot sever this Union unless you cut the heart strings that bind father to son, daughter to mother, and brother to sister, in all our new States and territories." And the heart of the speaker went out to his kindred and his boys, who were almost within hearing of his voice. "I love my children," he exclaimed, "but I do not desire to see them survive this Union."
At Richmond, Douglas received an ovation which recalled the days when Clay was the idol of the Whigs;[[870]] but as he journeyed northward he felt more and more the hostility of Breckinridge men, and marked the disposition of many of his own supporters to strike an alliance with them. Unhesitatingly he threw the weight of his personal influence against fusion. At Baltimore, he averred that while Breckinridge was not a disunionist, every disunionist was a Breckinridge man.[[871]] And at Reading, he said, "For one, I can never fuse, and never will fuse with a man who tells me that the Democratic creed is a dogma, contrary to reason and to the Constitution.... I have fought twenty-seven pitched battles, since I entered public life, and never yet traded with nominations or surrendered to treachery."[[872]] With equal pertinacity he refused to countenance any attempts at fusion in North Carolina.[[873]] Even more explicitly he declared against fusion in a speech at Erie: "No Democrat can, without dishonor, and a forfeiture of self-respect and principle, fuse with anybody who is in favor of intervention, either for or against slavery.... As Democrats we can never fuse either with Northern Abolitionists or Southern Bolters and Secessionists."[[874]]
In spite of these protests and admonitions, Douglas men in several of the doubtful States entered into more or less definite agreement with the supporters of Breckinridge. The pressure put upon him in New York by those to whom he was indebted for his nomination, was almost too strong to be resisted. Yet he withstood all entreaties, even to maintain a discreet silence and let events take their course. Hostile newspapers expressed his sentiments when they represented him as opposed to fusion, "all the way from Maine to California."[[875]] "Douglas either must have lost his craft as a politician," commented Raymond, in the editorial columns of the Times, "or be credited with steadfast convictions."[[876]]
Adverse comment on Douglas's personal canvass had now ceased. Wise men recognized that he was preparing the public mind for a crisis, as no one else could. He set his face westward, speaking at numerous points.[[877]] Continuous speaking had now begun to tell upon him. At Cincinnati, he was so hoarse that he could not address the crowds which had gathered to greet him, but he persisted in speaking on the following day at Indianapolis. He paused in Chicago only long enough to give a public address, and then passed on into Iowa.[[878]] Among his own people he unbosomed himself as he had not done before in all these weeks of incessant public speaking. "I am no alarmist. I believe that this country is in more danger now than at any other moment since I have known anything of public life. It is not personal ambition that has induced me to take the stump this year. I say to you who know me, that the presidency has no charms for me. I do not believe that it is my interest as an ambitious man, to be President this year if I could. But I do love this Union. There is no sacrifice on earth that I would not make to preserve it."[[879]]
While Douglas was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he received a dispatch from his friend, Forney, announcing that the Republicans had carried Pennsylvania in the October State election. Similar intelligence came from Indiana. The outcome in November was thus clearly foreshadowed. Recognizing the inevitable, Douglas turned to his Secretary with the laconic words, "Mr. Lincoln is the next President. We must try to save the Union. I will go South."[[880]] He at once made appointments to speak in Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, as soon as he should have met his Western engagements. His friends marvelled at his powers of endurance. For weeks he had been speaking from hotel balconies, from the platform of railroad coaches, and in halls to monster mass-meetings.[[881]] Not infrequently he spoke twice and thrice a day, for days together. It was often said that he possessed the constitution of the United States; and he caught up the jest with delight, remarking that he believed he had. Small wonder if much that he said was trivial and unworthy of his attention;[[882]] in and through all his utterance, nevertheless, coursed the passionate current of his love for the Union, transfiguring all that was paltry and commonplace. From Iowa he passed into Wisconsin and Michigan, finally entering upon his Southern mission at St. Louis, October 19th. "I am not here to-night," he told his auditors, with a shade of weariness in his voice, "to ask your votes for the presidency. I am not one of those who believe that I have any more personal interest in the presidency than any other good citizen in America. I am here to make an appeal to you in behalf of the Union and the peace of the country."[[883]]
It was a courageous little party that left St. Louis for Memphis and the South. Mrs. Douglas was still with her husband, determined to share all the hardships that fell to his lot; and besides her, there was only James B. Sheridan, Douglas's devoted secretary and stenographer. The Southern press had threatened Douglas with personal violence, if he should dare to invade the South with his political heresies.[[884]] But Luther bound for Worms was not more indifferent to personal danger than this modern intransigeant. His conduct earned the hearty admiration of even Republican journals, for no one could now believe that he courted the South in his own behalf. Nor was there any foolish bravado in this adventure. He was thoroughly sobered by the imminence of disunion. When he read, in a newspaper devoted to his interests, that it was "the deep-seated fixed determination on the part of the leading Southern States to go out of the Union, peaceably and quietly," he knew that these words were no cheap rhetoric, for they were penned by a man of Northern birth and antecedents.[[885]]
The history of this Southern tour has never been written. It was the firm belief of Douglas that at least one attempt was made to wreck his train. At Montgomery, while addressing a public gathering, he was made the target for nameless missiles.[[886]] Yet none of these adventures were permitted to find their way into the Northern press. And only his intimates learned of them from his own lips after his return.
The news of Mr. Lincoln's election overtook Douglas in Mobile. He was in the office of the Mobile Register, one of the few newspapers which had held to him and his cause through thick and thin. It now became a question what policy the paper should pursue. The editor asked his associate to read aloud an article which he had just written, advocating a State convention to deliberate upon the course of Alabama in the approaching crisis. Douglas opposed its publication; but he was assured that the only way to manage the secession movement was to appear to go with it, and by electing men opposed to disunion, to control the convention. With his wonted sagacity, Douglas remarked that if they could not prevent the calling of a convention, they could hardly hope to control its action. But the editors determined to publish the article, "and Douglas returned to his hotel more hopeless than I had ever seen him before," wrote Sheridan.[[887]]
On his return to the North, Douglas spoke twice, at New Orleans and at Vicksburg, urging acquiescence in the result of the election.[[888]] He put the case most cogently in a letter to the business men of New Orleans, which was widely published. No one deplored the election of an Abolitionist as President more than he. Still, he could not find any just cause for dissolving the Federal Union in the mere election of any man to the presidency, in accordance with the Constitution. Those who apprehended that the new President would carry out the aggressive policy of his party, failed to observe that his party was in a minority. Even his appointments to office would have to be confirmed by a hostile Senate. Any invasion of constitutional rights would be resented in the North, as well as in the South. In short, the election of Mr. Lincoln could only serve as a pretext for those who purposed to break up the Union and to form a Southern Confederacy.[[889]]
On the face of the election returns, Douglas made a sorry showing; he had won the electoral vote of but a single State, Missouri, though three of the seven electoral votes of New Jersey fell to him as the result of fusion. Yet as the popular vote in the several States was ascertained, defeat wore the guise of a great personal triumph. Leader of a forlorn hope, he had yet received the suffrages of 1,376,957 citizens, only 489,495 less votes than Lincoln had polled. Of these 163,525 came from the South, while Lincoln received only 26,430, all from the border slave States. As compared with the vote of Breckinridge and Bell at the South, Douglas's vote was insignificant; but at the North, he ran far ahead of the combined vote of both.[[890]] It goes without saying that had Douglas secured the full Democratic vote in the free States, he would have pressed Lincoln hard in many quarters. From the national standpoint, the most significant aspect of the popular vote was the failure of Breckinridge to secure a majority in the slave States.[[891]] Union sentiment was still stronger than the secessionists had boasted. The next most significant fact in the history of the election was this: Abraham Lincoln had been elected to the presidency by the vote of a section which had given over a million votes to his rival, the leader of a faction of a disorganized party.