In the long run, the confidence of party associates is the surest passport to real influence in the House. It might easily happen, indeed, that Douglas, with all his rough eloquence, would remain an impotent legislator. The history of Congress is strewn with oratorical derelicts, who have often edified their auditors, but quite as often blocked the course of legislation. No one knew better than Douglas, that only as he served his party, could he hope to see his wishes crystallize into laws, and his ambitions assume the guise of reality. His opportunity to render effective service came also in this first session.
Four States had neglected to comply with the recent act of Congress reapportioning representation, having elected their twenty-one members by general ticket. The language of the statute was explicit: "In every case where a State is entitled to more than one Representative, the number to which each State shall be entitled under this apportionment shall be elected by districts composed of contiguous territory equal in number to the number of Representatives, to which said State may be entitled, no one district electing more than one Representative."[[170]] Now all but two of these twenty-one Representatives were Democrats. Would a Democratic majority punish this flagrant transgression of Federal law by unseating the offenders?
In self-respect the Democratic members of the House could not do less than appoint a committee to investigate whether the representatives in question had been elected "in conformity to the Constitution and the law."[[171]] Thereupon it devolved upon the six Democratic members of this committee of nine to construct a theory, by which they might seat their party associates under cover of legality. Not that they held any such explicit mandate from the party, nor that they deliberately went to work to pervert the law; they were simply under psychological pressure from which only men of the severest impartiality could free themselves. The work of drafting the majority report (it was a foregone conclusion that the committee would divide), fell to Douglas. It pronounced the law of 1842 "not a law made in pursuance of the Constitution of the United States, and valid, operative, and binding upon the States." Accordingly, the representatives of the four States in question were entitled to their seats.
By what process of reasoning had Douglas reached this conclusion? The report directed its criticism chiefly against the second section of the Act of 1842, which substituted the district for the general ticket in congressional elections. The Constitution provides that "the Times, Places, and Manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations." But by the law of 1842, contended the report, Congress had only partially exercised its power, and had attempted "to subvert the entire system of legislation adopted by the several States of the Union, and to compel them to conform to certain rules established by Congress for their government." Congress "may" make or alter such regulations, but "the right to change State laws or to enact others which shall suspend them, does not imply the right to compel the State legislatures to make such change or new enactments." Congress may exercise the privilege of making such regulations, only when the State legislatures refuse to act, or act in a way to subvert the Constitution. If Congress acts at all in fixing times, places, and manner of elections, it must act exhaustively, leaving nothing for the State legislatures to do. The Act of 1842 was general in its nature, and inoperative without State legislation. The history of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was cited to prove that it was generally understood that Congress would exercise this power only in a few specified cases.[[172]]
Replying to the attacks which this report evoked, Douglas took still higher ground. He was ready to affirm that Congress had no power to district the States. To concede to Congress so great a power was to deny those reserved rights of the States, without which their sovereignty would be an empty title. "Congress may alter, but it cannot supersede these regulations [of the States] till it supplies others in their places, so as to leave the right of representation perfect."[[173]]
The argument of the report was bold and ingenious, if not convincing. The minority were ready to admit that the case had been cleverly stated, although hardly a man doubted that political considerations had weighed most heavily with the chairman of the committee. Douglas resented the suggestion with such warmth, however, that it is charitable to suppose he was not conscious of the bias under which he had labored.
Upon one auditor, who to be sure was inexpressibly bored by the whole discussion of the "everlasting general ticket elections," Douglas made an unhappy impression. John Quincy Adams recorded in his diary,—that diary which was becoming a sort of Rogues' Gallery: "He now raved out his hour in abusive invectives upon the members who had pointed out its slanders and upon the Whig party. His face was convulsed, his gesticulation frantic, and he lashed himself into such a heat that if his body had been made of combustible matter, it would have burnt out. In the midst of his roaring, to save himself from choking, he stripped off and cast away his cravat, and unbuttoned his waist-coat, and had the air and aspect of a half-naked pugilist. And this man comes from a judicial bench, and passes for an eloquent orator."[[174]]
No one will mistake this for an impartial description. Nearly every Democrat who spoke upon this tedious question, according to Adams, either "raved" or "foamed at the mouth." The old gentleman was too wearied and disgusted with the affair to be a fair reporter. But as a caricature, this picture of the young man from Illinois certainly hits off the style which he affected, in common with most Western orators.
Notwithstanding his very substantial services to his party, Douglas had sooner or later to face his constituents with an answer to the crucial question, "What have you done for us?" It is a hard, brutal question, which has blighted many a promising career in American politics. The interest which Douglas exhibited in the Western Harbors bill was due, in part at least, to his desire to propitiate those by virtue of whose suffrages he was a member of the House of Representatives. At the same time, he was no doubt sincerely devoted to the measure, because he believed profoundly in its national character. Local and national interests were so inseparable in his mind, that he could urge the improvement of the Illinois River as a truly national undertaking. "Through this channel, and this alone," he declared all aglow with enthusiasm, "we have a connected and uninterrupted navigation for steamboats and large vessels from the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, to all the northern lakes." Considerations of war and defense, as well as of peace and commerce, counselled the proposed expenditure. "We have no fleet upon the lakes; we have no navy-yard there at which we could construct one, and no channel through which we could introduce our vessels from the sea-board. In times of war, those lakes must be defended, if defended at all, by a fleet from the naval depot and a yard on the Mississippi River." After the State of Illinois had expended millions on the Illinois and Michigan canal, was Congress to begrudge a few thousands to remove the sand-bars which impeded navigation in this "national highway by an irrevocable ordinance"?[[175]]
This special plea for the Illinois River was prefaced by a lengthy exposition of Democratic doctrine respecting internal improvements, for it was incumbent upon every good Democrat to explain a measure which seemed to countenance a broad construction of the powers of the Federal government. Douglas was at particular pains to show that the bill did not depart from the principles laid down in President Jackson's famous Maysville Road veto-message.[[176]] To him Jackson incarnated the party faith; and his public documents were a veritable, political testament. In the art of reading consistency into his own, or the conduct of another, Douglas had no equal. To the end of his days he possessed in an extraordinary degree the subtle power of redistributing emphasis so as to produce a desired effect. It was the most effective and the most insidious of his many natural gifts, for it often won immediate ends at the permanent sacrifice of his reputation for candor and veracity. The immediate result of this essay in interpretation of Jacksonian principles, was to bring down upon Douglas's devoted head the withering charge, peculiarly blighting to a budding statesman, that he was conjuring with names to the exclusion of arguments. With biting sarcasm, Representative Holmes drew attention to the gentleman's disposition, after the fashion of little men, to advance to the fray under the seven-fold shield of the Telamon Ajax—a classical allusion which was altogether lost on the young man from Illinois.