"Unite as a band of brothers," he pleaded, "and rescue your government and its capital and your country from the enemy who have been the authors of your calamity." His eye rested upon the great river. "Ah!" he exclaimed, a great wave of emotion checking his utterance, "This great valley must never be divided. The Almighty has so arranged the mountain and the plain, and the water-courses as to show that this valley in all time shall remain one and indissoluble. Let no man attempt to sunder what Divine Providence has rendered indivisible."[[990]]
As he concluded, anxious questions were put to him, regarding the rumored retirement of General Scott from the army. "I saw him only Saturday," replied Douglas. "He was at his desk, pen in hand, writing his orders for the defense and safety of the American Capital." And as he repeated the words of General Scott declining the command of the forces of Virginia—"'I have served my country under the flag of the Union for more than fifty years, and as long as God permits me to live, I will defend that flag with my sword; even if my own State assails it,'"—the crowds around him broke into tumultuous cheers. Within thirty days the Unionists of western Virginia had rallied, organized, and begun that hardy campaign which brought West Virginia into the Union. On the very day that Douglas was making his fervent plea for the Union, Robert E. Lee cast in his lot with the South.
At Columbus, Douglas was again forced to break his journey; and again he was summoned to address the crowd that gathered below his window. It was already dark; the people had collected without concert; there were no such trappings, as had characterized public demonstrations in the late campaign. Douglas appeared half-dressed at his bedroom window, a dim object to all save to those who stood directly below him. Out of the darkness came his solemn, sonorous tones, bringing relief and assurance to all who listened, for in the throng were men of all parties, men who had followed him through all changes of political weather, and men who had been his persistent foes. There was little cheering. As Douglas pledged anew his hearty support to President Lincoln, "it was rather a deep 'Amen' that went up from the crowd," wrote one who had distrusted hitherto the mighty power of this great popular leader.[[991]]
On the 25th of April, Douglas reached Springfield, where he purposed to make his great plea for the Union. He spoke at the Capitol to members of the legislature and to packed galleries. Friend and foe alike bear witness to the extraordinary effect wrought by his words. "I do not think that it is possible for a human being to produce a more prodigious effect with spoken words," wrote one who had formerly detested him.[[992]] "Never in all my experience in public life, before or since," testified the then Speaker of the House, now high in the councils of the nation, "have I been so impressed by a speaker."[[993]] Douglas himself was thrilled with his message. As he approached the climax, the veins of his neck and forehead were swollen with passion, and the perspiration ran down his face in streams. At times his clear and resonant voice reverberated through the chamber, until it seemed to shake the building.[[994]] While he was in the midst of a passionate invective, a man rushed into the hall bearing an American flag. The trumpet tones of the speaker and the sight of the Stars and Stripes roused the audience to the wildest pitch of excitement.[[995]] Men and women became hysterical with the divine madness of patriotism. "When hostile armies," he exclaimed with amazing force, "When hostile armies are marching under new and odious banners against the government of our country, the shortest way to peace is the most stupendous and unanimous preparation for war. We in the great valley of the Mississippi have peculiar interests and inducements in the struggle ... I ask every citizen in the great basin between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies ... to tell me whether he is ever willing to sanction a line of policy that may isolate us from the markets of the world, and make us dependent provinces upon the powers that thus choose to isolate us?... Hence, if a war does come, it is a war of self-defense on our part. It is a war in defense of the Government which we have inherited as a priceless legacy from our patriotic fathers, in defense of those great rights of freedom of trade, commerce, transit and intercourse from the center to the circumference of our great continent."[[996]]
The voice of the strong man, so little given to weak sentiment, broke, as he said, "I have struggled almost against hope to avert the calamities of war and to effect a reunion and reconciliation with our brethren in the South. I yet hope it may be done, but I am not able to point out how it may be. Nothing short of Providence can reveal to us the issues of this great struggle. Bloody—calamitous—I fear it will be. May we so conduct it, if a collision must come, that we will stand justified in the eyes of Him who knows our hearts, and who will justify our every act. We must not yield to resentments, nor to the spirit of vengeance, much less to the desire for conquest or ambition. I see no path of ambition open in a bloody struggle for triumphs over my countrymen. There is no path of ambition open for me in a divided country.... My friends, I can say no more. To discuss these topics is the most painful duty of my life. It is with a sad heart—with a grief I have never before experienced—that I have to contemplate this fearful struggle; but I believe in my conscience that it is a duty we owe to ourselves and to our children, and to our God, to protect this Government and that flag from every assailant, be he who he may."
Thereafter treason had no abiding place within the limits of the State of Illinois. And no one, it may be safely affirmed, could have so steeled the hearts of men in Southern Illinois for the death grapple. In a manly passage in his speech, Douglas said, "I believe I may with confidence appeal to the people of every section of the country to bear witness that I have been as thoroughly national as any man that has lived in my day. And I believe if I should make an appeal to the people of Illinois, or of the Northern States, to their impartial verdict; they would say that whatever errors I have committed have been in leaning too far to the Southern section of the Union against my own.... I have never pandered to the prejudice and passion of my section against the minority section of the Union." It was precisely this truth which gave him a hearing through the length and breadth of Illinois and the Northwest during this crisis.
The return of Douglas to Chicago was the signal for a remarkable demonstration of regard. He had experienced many strange home-comings. His Democratic following, not always discriminating, had ever accorded him noisy homage. His political opponents had alternately execrated him and given him grudging praise. But never before had men of all parties, burying their differences, united to do him honor. On the evening of his arrival, he was escorted to the Wigwam, where hardly a year ago Lincoln had been nominated for the presidency. Before him were men who had participated jubilantly in the Republican campaign, with many a bitter gibe at the champion of "squatter sovereignty." Douglas could not conceal his gratification at this proof that, however men had differed from him on political questions, they had believed in his loyalty. And it was of loyalty, not of himself, that he spoke. He did not spare Southern feelings before this Chicago audience. He told his hearers unequivocally that the slavery question, the election of Lincoln, and the territorial question, were so many pretexts for dissolving the Union. "The present secession movement is the result of an enormous conspiracy formed more than a year since, formed by leaders in the Southern Confederacy more than twelve months ago." But this was no time to discuss pretexts and causes. "The conspiracy is now known. Armies have been raised, war is levied to accomplish it. There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war; only patriots—or traitors."[[997]] It was the first time he had used the ugly epithet.
Hardly had he summoned the people of Illinois to do battle, when again he touched that pathetic note that recurred again and again in his appeal at Springfield. Was it the memory of the mother of his boys that moved him to say, "But we must remember certain restraints on our action even in time of war. We are a Christian people, and the war must be prosecuted in a manner recognized by Christian nations. We must not invade Constitutional rights. The innocent must not suffer, nor women and children be the victims." Before him were some who felt toward the people of the South as Greek toward barbarian. But Douglas foresaw that the horrors of war must invade and desolate the homes of those whom he still held dear. There is no more lovable and admirable side of his personality than this tenderness for the helpless and innocent. Had he but lived to temper justice with mercy, what a power for good might he not have been in the days of reconstruction!
The summons had gone forth. Already doubts and misgivings had given way, and the North was now practically unanimous in its determination to stifle rebellion. There was a common belief that secession was the work of a minority, skillfully led by designing politicians, and that the loyal majority would rally with the North to defend the flag. Young men who responded jubilantly to the call to arms did not doubt, that the struggle would be brief. Douglas shared the common belief in the conspiracy theory of secession, but he indulged no illusion as to the nature of the war, if war should come. Months before the firing upon Fort Sumter, in a moment of depression, he had prophesied that if the cotton States should succeed in drawing the border States into their schemes of secession, the most fearful civil war the world had ever seen would follow, lasting for years. "Virginia," said he, pointing toward Arlington, "over yonder across the Potomac, will become a charnel-house.... Washington will become a city of hospitals, the churches will be used for the sick and wounded. This house 'Minnesota Block,' will be devoted to that purpose before the end of the war."[[998]] He, at least, did not mistake the chivalry of the South. Not for an instant did he doubt the capacity of the Southern people to suffer and endure, as well as to do battle. And he knew—Ah! how well—the self-sacrifice and devotion of Southern women.
The days following the return of Douglas to Chicago were filled also with worries and anxieties of a private nature. The financial panic of 1857 had been accompanied by a depression of land values, which caused Douglas grave concern for his holdings in Chicago, and no little immediate distress. Unable and unwilling to sacrifice his investments, he had mortgaged nearly all of his property in Cook County, including the valuable "Grove Property" in South Chicago. Though he was always lax in pecuniary matters, and, with his buoyant generous nature, little disposed to take anxious thought for the morrow, these heavy financial obligations began now to press upon him with grievous weight. The prolonged strain of the previous twelve months had racked even his constitution. He had made heavy drafts on his bodily health, with all too little regard for the inevitable compensation which Nature demands. As in all other things, he had been prodigal with Nature's choicest gift.