Next morning Douglas returned to the attack, and the President, under pressure, sent the nomination of Young to the Senate; before five o'clock of the same day, Polk was surprised to receive a notification from the Secretary of the Senate that the nomination had been confirmed. The President was a good deal mystified by this unusual promptness, until three members of the Illinois delegation called some hours later, in a state of great excitement, saying that Douglas and Breese had taken advantage of them. They had no knowledge that Young's nomination was being pressed, and McClernand in high dudgeon intimated that this was all a bargain between Young and the two Senators. Douglas and Breese had sought to prevent Young from contesting their seats in the Senate, by securing a fat office for him. All this is ex parte evidence against Senator Douglas; but there is nothing intrinsically improbable in the story. In these latter days, so comparatively innocent a deal would pass without comment.
Immediately upon taking his seat in the Senate, Douglas was appointed chairman of the Committee on Territories. It was then a position of the utmost importance, for every question of territorial organization touched the peculiar interests of the South. The varying currents of public opinion crossed in this committee. Senator Bright of Indiana is well described by the hackneyed and often misapplied designation, a Northern Democrat with Southern principles; Butler was Calhoun's colleague; Clayton of Delaware was a Whig and represented a border State which was vacillating between slavery and freedom; while Davis was a Massachusetts Whig. Douglas was placed, as it appeared, in the very storm center of politics, where his well-known fighting qualities would be in demand. It was not so clear to those who knew him, that he possessed the not less needful qualities of patience and tact for occasions when battles are not won by fighting. Still, life at the capital had smoothed his many little asperities of manner. He had learned to conform to the requirements of a social etiquette to which he had been a stranger; yet without losing the heartiness of manner and genial companionableness with all men which was, indeed, his greatest personal charm. His genuineness and large-hearted regard for his friends grappled them to him and won respect even from those who were not of his political faith.[[240]]
An incident at the very outset of his career in the Senate, betrayed some little lack of self-restraint. When Senator Cass introduced the so-called Ten Regiments bill, Calhoun asked that its consideration might be postponed, in order to give him opportunity to discuss resolutions on the prospective annexation of Mexico. Cass was disposed to yield for courtesy's sake; but Douglas resented the interruption. He failed to see why public business should be suspended in order to discuss abstract propositions. He believed that this doctrine of courtesy was being carried to great lengths.[[241]] Evidently the young Senator, fresh from the brisk atmosphere of the House, was restive under the conventional restraints of the more sedate Senate. He had not yet become acclimated.
Douglas made his first formal speech in the Senate on February 1, 1848. Despite his disclaimers, he had evidently made careful preparation, for his desk was strewn with books and he referred frequently to his authorities. The Ten Regiments bill was known to be a measure of the administration; and for this reason, if for no other, it was bitterly opposed. The time seemed opportune for a vindication of the President's policy. Douglas indignantly repelled the charge that the war had from the outset been a war of conquest. "It is a war of self-defense, forced upon us by our enemy, and prosecuted on our part in vindication of our honor, and the integrity of our territory. The enemy invaded our territory, and we repelled the invasion, and demanded satisfaction for all our grievances. In order to compel Mexico to do us justice, it was necessary to follow her retreating armies into her territory ... and inasmuch as it was certain that she was unable to make indemnity in money, we must necessarily take it in land. Conquest was not the motive for the prosecution of the war; satisfaction, indemnity, security, was the motive—conquest and territory the means."[[242]]
Once again Douglas reviewed the origin of the war re-arguing the case for the administration. If the arguments employed were now well-worn, they were repeated with an incisiveness that took away much of their staleness. This speech must be understood as complementary to that which he had made in the House at the opening of hostilities. But he had not changed his point of view, nor moderated his contentions. Time seemed to have served only to make him surer of his evidence. Douglas exhibited throughout his most conspicuous excellencies and his most glaring defects. From first to last he was an attorney, making the best possible defense of his client. Nothing could excel his adroit selection of evidence, and his disposition and massing of telling testimony. Form and presentation were admirably calculated to disarm and convince. It goes without saying that Douglas's mental attitude was the opposite of the scientific and historic spirit. Having a proposition to establish, he cared only for pertinent evidence. He rarely inquired into the character of the authorities from which he culled his data.
That this attitude of mind and these unscholarly habits often were his undoing, was inevitable. He was often betrayed by fallacies and hasty inferences. The speech before us illustrates this lamentable mental defect. With the utmost assurance Douglas pointed out that Texas had actually extended her jurisdiction over the debatable land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, fixing by law the times of holding court in the counties of San Patricio and Bexar. This was in the year 1838. The conclusion was almost unavoidable that when Texas came into the Union, her actual sovereignty extended to the Rio Grande. But further examination would have shown Douglas, that the only inhabited portion of the so-called counties were the towns on the right bank of the Nueces: beyond, lay a waste which was still claimed by Mexico. Was he misinformed, or had he hastily selected the usable portion of the evidence? Once again, in his eagerness to show that Mexico, so recently as 1842, had tacitly recognized the Rio Grande as a boundary in her military operations, he controverted his own argument that Texas had been in undisturbed possession of the country. He corroborated the conviction of those who from the first had asserted that, in annexing Texas, the United States had annexed a war. This from the man who had formerly declared that the danger of war was remote, because there had been no war between Mexico and Texas for nine years!
Before a vote could be reached on the Ten Regiments bill, the draft of the Mexican treaty had been sent to the Senate. What transpired in executive session and what part Douglas sustained in the discussion of the treaty, may be guessed pretty accurately by his later admissions. He was one of an aggressive minority who stoutly opposed the provision of the fifth article of the treaty, which was to this effect: "The boundary-line established by this article shall be religiously respected by each of the two republics, and no change shall ever be made therein except by the express and free consent of both nations, lawfully given by the general government of each, in conformity with its own Constitution." This statement was deemed a humiliating avowal that the United States had wrongfully warred upon Mexico, and a solemn pledge that we would never repeat the offense. The obvious retort was that certain consciences now seemed hypersensitive about the war. However that may be, eleven votes were recorded for conscience' sake against the odious article.
This was not the only ground of complaint. Douglas afterward stated the feeling of the minority in this way: "It violated a great principle of public policy in relation to this continent. It pledges the faith of this Republic that our successors shall not do that which duty to the interests and honor of the country, in the progress of events, may compel them to do." But he hastened to add that he meditated no aggression upon Mexico. In short, the Republic,—such was his hardly-concealed thought,—might again fall out with its imbecile neighbor and feel called upon to administer punishment by demanding indemnity. There was no knowing what "the progress of events" might make a national necessity.[[243]]
As yet Douglas had contributed nothing to the solution of the problem which lurked behind the Mexican cession; nor had he tried his hand at making party opinion on new issues. He seemed to have no concern beyond the concrete business on the calendar of the Senate. He classed all anticipatory discussion of future issues as idle abstraction. Had he no imagination? Had he no eyes to see beyond the object immediately within his field of vision? Had his alert intelligence suddenly become myopic?
On the subject of Abolitionism, at least, he had positive convictions, which he did not hesitate to express. An exciting episode in the Senate drew from him a sharp arraignment of the extreme factions North and South. An acrimonious debate had been precipitated by a bill introduced by that fervid champion of Abolitionism, Senator Hale of New Hampshire, which purported to protect property in the District of Columbia against rioters. A recent attack upon the office of the National Era, the organ of Abolitionism, at the capital, as everyone understood, inspired the bill, and inevitably formed the real subject of debate.[[244]] It was in the heated colloquy that ensued that Senator Foote of Mississippi earned his sobriquet of "Hangman," by inviting Hale to visit Mississippi and to "grace one of the tallest trees of the forest, with a rope around his neck." Calhoun, too, was excited beyond his wont, declaring that he would as soon argue with a maniac from Bedlam as with the Senator from New Hampshire.