On all these questions, alike of domestic and of foreign policy, Douglas took an eminently hopeful, an eminently confident and resolute stand. His opinions were such as befitted a strong, competent, successful man. They were characteristic of the West. They were based on a positive faith in democracy, in our constitution of government, in the American people. In that faith, likewise, he addressed himself to the problem which in his day, as before and after, was perplexing the champions of democracy and giving pause to the well-wishers of the Republic. A later generation has learned to think of that problem as the negro question, a race question; Douglas's generation thought of it merely as the slavery question.

The presidential election of 1848 made a good occasion for men to take account of the question, and of their own minds concerning it. In February, 1848, by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded to the United States the territory out of which California, New Mexico, and Utah have been formed. With the signing of the treaty the material elements of the problem, as it presented itself to that generation, were completely arranged.

In fifteen Southern States and in the District of Columbia slavery was sanctioned and protected by law. In fifteen Northern States slavery was prohibited by law. The foreign slave trade was long since prohibited altogether, though from time to time, in a small way, it was surreptitiously revived. The domestic slave trade, among the slave States and in the District, was still permitted. There was a law on the statute book to compel the return of slaves fleeing into the free States, but certain of its provisions had been pronounced unconstitutional, and it was ineffective. Of the territory acquired from France in 1803, all that part which lay south of the line of 36° 30´, North latitude, with Missouri, which lay north of the line, was either organized into slave States or set apart for the Indians; in all that part which lay north of the line of 36° 30´, except Missouri, slavery was forbidden by a law of Congress passed in 1820. It was competent for Congress to repeal the law at any time, but from the country's long acquiescence in it, and from the circumstances of its passage, which were such that a stigma of bad faith would be fixed upon whichever section should move for its repeal, it seemed to have a force and stability more like the Constitution's itself than that of ordinary laws. There remained the territory got from Mexico, concerning which, although from the beginning of the war the question of slavery in any territory that might come to us at the end of it had been constantly in agitation, Congress had as yet passed no law. What law Congress should make about slavery in California, New Mexico, and Utah was the main question. But there was also a question of the right boundary between New Mexico and Texas, which had been admitted in 1845 as a slave State, with an agreement that she might at any time divide herself up into four States.

The material elements of the problem, then, were comparatively simple, and the immediately pressing questions were easily phrased; but the intangible element of public opinion was uncommonly hard to estimate. So far as the great parties were concerned, it was impossible to fix upon either of them any general theory about slavery or any definite policy with it. Up to this time, both had apparently gone on the understanding that it was not a proper issue in political contests. A small group of unpractical men had, in fact, tried to build up a party on the issue of opposition to it, but they had no prospect of carrying a single electoral vote. The adherents of the old parties were agreed on one thing: that there was no lawful way for Congress or the people of the free States to interfere with slavery in the slave States. They were divided among themselves, inside of party lines, on the fugitive slave law, on the interstate slave trade, on slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and on slavery in the Territories.

But if party lines did not yet accurately represent the divisions of opinion on these questions, there was, nevertheless, a grouping of men according to their opinions on the general question which already had its effects in politics. Every thoughtful American of that day belonged to one or another of several groups according to the view he took of two things: slavery itself, and the body of law and usage that had grown up about it. There were the abolitionists, who believed slavery to be so utterly wrong that they were ready to go all lengths to get rid of it, violating the Constitution, breaking the compromises, endangering the Union. There were the Southern fire-eaters, who not only believed slavery right but were similarly willing to go all lengths to defend and extend it. There were the moderate men who made up the bulk of the two great parties in the North, who believed slavery wrong but felt themselves bound by the compromises of the Constitution which protected it where it already existed and debarred from any method of attacking it which might bring the Union into danger. There were the moderate men of the South, Whigs and Democrats alike, who believed either that slavery was right or at least that there was no better state possible for the mass of the blacks, but who were yet devoted to the Union and respected their constitutional obligations. Finally, there were men so constituted that they could decline to take any thought whether slavery were right or wrong, and could deal with every question that arose concerning it as a question of expediency merely, or of law and precedent.

To which of these groups should Douglas join himself? Up to this time, his public record was too meagre to show clearly where he stood. In 1845, when the bill to annex Texas was before the House, he had offered an amendment extending the compromise line of 1820 through the new State, so that if Texas were ever divided slavery would be prohibited in such State or States as should be formed north of that line. Both in the House and in the Senate he had voted against the famous resolution of Mr. David Wilmot to exclude slavery from any territory that we might get from Mexico, and he continued to oppose that motion, in whatever form it appeared, until the legislature of Illinois instructed him to favor it. In 1848, he voted for the so-called Clayton Compromise, which proposed to organize California, Oregon, and New Mexico into Territories and merely extend over them the Constitution and laws of the United States so far as these should prove applicable; but he also voted for the bill to organize the Territory of Oregon with a clause prohibiting slavery. By his speeches, no less than by his votes, he was committed to the position that the Missouri Compromise was a final settlement so far as the Louisiana Purchase was concerned, and that the compromise line ought to be extended through the Mexican Cession to the Pacific. He was not clearly committed on any other of the points at issue between the friends and the opponents of slavery.

But he had roundly denounced the abolitionists, and he had married the daughter of a slaveholder. The day after his wedding his father-in-law presented him a deed to a plantation in Mississippi and a number of slaves. He gave it back, not, so he declared, because he thought it wrong to hold slaves, but because he did not know how to govern them or to manage a plantation. His wife soon fell heir to the land and negroes, and at her death they passed to her children under a will which requested that the blacks be not sold but kept and cared for by the testator's descendants. Douglas, as the guardian of his infant children, respected their grandfather's wishes. For that reason he was called a slaveholder, and a fellow senator once openly accused him of shaping his course as a public man to accord with his private interests. He denied and disproved the charge, but proudly added: "I implore my enemies, who so ruthlessly invade the private sanctuary, to do me the favor to believe that I have no wish, no aspiration, to be considered purer or better than she who was, or they who are, slaveholders."

He was of those who could be indifferent to the moral quality of slavery. He could favor whatever policy the Constitution required, or precedents favored, or public expediency demanded; if his enemies were to be believed, he could take whatever course ambition and self-interest impelled him to. Never once during his long wrestling with the slavery question did he concede that any account should be taken of the moral character of the institution, or intimate that he believed it wrong for one man to hold another man in bondage.

The Democratic National Convention of 1848, though its platform was as vague as it could be made, nominated a candidate who was committed to a particular plan with slavery in the Territories. The candidate was Lewis Cass, of Michigan, and his plan was set forth in a letter to one Nicholson, of Nashville, Tennessee, of date December 24, 1847. The plan appeared to be a very simple one. It was to leave the people of each Territory, so soon as it should be organized, free to regulate their domestic institutions as they chose. He favored it for two reasons: first, because Congress had no right to interfere; and second, because the people themselves were the best judges of what institutions they ought to have. That was the barest form of the doctrine which its opponents in derision named "squatter sovereignty." It was contrary to the doctrine of the Wilmot Proviso, which invoked the authority of Congress to exclude slavery from all the Territories, and contrary, also, to whatever doctrine or no doctrine was implied in the motion to extend the compromise line to the Pacific, exercising the authority of Congress to exclude slavery north of the line and forbearing to exercise it south of the line. It was equally contrary to a third doctrine which was brought before the convention. William L. Yancey, a delegate from Alabama, offered a resolution to the effect that neither Congress nor any territorial legislature had any right to exclude slave property from the Territories. This was a mild statement of the extreme Southern doctrine that slaves were property, so recognized by the Constitution, and that a slaveholder had the right to take his slaves anywhere but into a State where slavery was forbidden.

The doctrine of Cass seemed to accord best with that democratic theory of the government which Douglas had always professed. It accorded well with his faith in the builders of the West. It alone, of all the doctrines advanced, accorded fully with his attitude of indifference to the moral quality of slavery. He soon embraced it, therefore, and for the rest of his life he was oftenest occupied embodying it in legislation, defending it, restating it to suit new conditions, modifying it to meet fresh exigencies. Cass, though his authorship of the doctrine is disputed, was at first held responsible for it, and he advocated it with great ability. But in the end men well-nigh forgot who the author of the principle was, so preËminent was Douglas as its defender. He made it his, whosesoever it was at first, and his it will always be in history.

During the session of 1848–49, he introduced a bill to admit California as a State, leaving the people to settle the slavery question as they pleased. But his first great opportunity came in the session of 1849–50.

Cass had been beaten in the election. Zachary Taylor, the successful candidate of the Whigs, was a Southerner and a slaveholder, but he was elected on a non-committal platform, and he had never declared, if indeed he had ever formed, any opinions on the questions in dispute. His first message merely notified Congress that California, whither people were rushing from all parts of the country in search of gold, had of her own motion made ready for statehood; he expressed a hope that New Mexico would shortly follow her example, and recommended that both be admitted into the Union with such constitutions as they might present. Immediately, the House, where the free-soilers held a balance of power, fell into a long wrangle over the speakership; and the Senate was soon in fierce debate over certain anti-slavery resolutions presented from the legislature of Vermont. The North seemed to be united on the Wilmot Proviso as it had never before been united on any measure of opposition to slavery, and the South, fearing to lose the fruits of her many victories in statesmanship, in diplomacy, and on Mexican battlefields, was threatening disunion if, by the admission of California as a free State with no slave State to balance, her equality of representation in the Senate should be destroyed. The portents were all of disagreement, struggle, disaster.

But at the end of January, Henry Clay, though he had come back to the scene of his many stirring conflicts in the past minded to be "a calm and quiet looker-on," roused himself to one more essay of that statesmanship of compromise in which he was a master. He made a plan of settlement that covered all the controversies and put it in the form of a series of resolutions. It was to admit California with her free-state constitution; to organize the remainder of the Mexican Cession into Territories, with no restriction as to slavery; to pay Texas a sum of money on condition that she yielded in the dispute over the boundary between her and New Mexico; to prohibit the slave trade, but not slavery, in the District of Columbia; to leave the interstate slave trade alone; and to pass an effective fugitive slave law.

For two days, Clay spoke for his plan. Age, though it had not bereft him of his consummate skill in oratory, added pathos to his genuine fervor of patriotism as in that profound crisis of our affairs he pleaded with his fellow senators and with his divided countrymen. There followed the most notable series of set speeches in the history of Congress. One after another, the old leaders, Calhoun, Webster, Benton, Cass, and the rest,—for all were still there,—rose and solemnly addressed themselves to the state of the country and the plan of settlement. All but Calhoun: now very near his end, he was too weak to stand or speak, and Mason, of Virginia, read for him, while he sat gloomily silent, his last bitter arraignment of the North. He was against the plan. Benton, though on opposite grounds, also found fault with it. Webster, to the rage and sorrow of his own New England, gave it his support. Then the new men spoke. Jefferson Davis, on whom, as Calhoun was borne away to his grave, the mantle of his leadership seemed visibly to fall, steadfastly asserted the Southern claim that slaveholders had a right to go into any Territory with their slaves, but offered, as the extreme concession of the South, to extend the Missouri line to the Pacific if property in slaves were protected below the line. Chase, of Ohio, impressive in appearance but stiff in manner, argued weightily for the constitutionality and rightfulness of the Wilmot Proviso. Seward, of New York, though the shrewdest politician of the anti-slavery forces, enraged the Southerners and startled the country with the announcement that "a higher law than the Constitution" enjoined upon Congress to guard these fresh lands for freedom.

But none of the new men, and none of the old leaders but Clay himself, had such a part as Douglas in the actual settlement. He supported the resolutions, and as chairman of the Committee on Territories he wrote and introduced two bills: one to admit California, and one to organize the Territories of New Mexico and Utah with no restrictions as to slavery and to adjust the dispute with Texas. When Clay was put at the head of a Committee of Thirteen, to which all the subjects of dispute were referred, he was often in consultation with the chairman of the Committee on Territories. Douglas was of opinion that the various measures proposed would have a better chance of passing separately than all in one, but Clay decided to deal with California, the Territories, and the Texas boundary in a single measure. This, with separate bills on the fugitive slave law and the slave trade in the District, he reported early in May. The Omnibus, as the first bill was called, was simply Douglas's two bills joined together with a wafer: the words, "Mr. Clay, from the Committee of Thirteen," were substituted for the words, "Mr. Douglas, from the Committee on Territories." But there was one important change. Douglas's bill gave the territorial legislatures authority over all rightful subjects of legislation, subject to the Constitution, save that they could pass no law interfering with the primary disposal of the soil. Clay's committee, contrary to his wish, added the clause, "nor in respect to African slavery." Douglas moved to strike out the exception. He was voted down, but bided his time, persuaded another senator to renew the motion at a favorable moment, and it passed.

But the Omnibus could not pass. The death of President Taylor, who would probably have vetoed it, brought Fillmore, a friend of the compromise, into the White House; but there were only a handful of senators who favored every one of the measures so combined. Late in July, after months of debate and negotiation had wearied Clay out and driven him from the scene, all but the part relating to Utah was stricken out, and with that single passenger the Omnibus went through the Senate. Then separately, one after another, as Douglas had advised, the other measures were passed. The House quickly accepted them, Fillmore signed them, and the last of the compromises was complete. Jefferson Davis had opposed it, and had often been pitted against Douglas in debate, for they were champions of contrary theories, but at the end he declared: "If any man has a right to be proud of the success of these measures, it is the senator from Illinois." The enterprise, indeed, was Clay's; his was the idea, the initiative, the general plan. It is rightly called Clay's compromise. But the execution of the plan was quite as much Douglas's work as his. When Clay died, no one had a better right than Douglas to inherit his place as the statesman and orator of compromise and conciliation.

In the defense of the settlement he was no less conspicuous. Though in the South such extremists as Yancey and Quitman declared that the so-called compromise was in fact a surrender of Southern rights and a sufficient reason for abandoning the Union, there were Northern men quite as violently exercised over what seemed to them a base truckling to the slave power. The legislature of Illinois had formally instructed her senators to support the Wilmot Proviso, and Douglas had thus been compelled, all through the session, to vote for motion after motion to prohibit slavery outright in the Territories. At the end of the session, when he returned to his home, he found Chicago wrought up to a furor of protest. The city council actually voted to release officials from all obligation to enforce the fugitive slave law and citizens from all obligation to respect it. A mass meeting was about to pass resolutions approving this extraordinary action of the council and denouncing as traitors the senators and representatives who had voted for the law, when Douglas walked upon the stand, announced that the next evening he would publicly defend the measures of compromise, and demanded to be heard before he was condemned. A great audience, the greatest ever assembled in the city, listened to his defense. It was bold, skilful, successful. He avowed his authorship of three of the compromise measures, his approval of the others. He took them up one by one, explained them, called for objections, and answered every objection effectively. At the end, he proposed and carried resolutions pledging the meeting to stand by the Constitution and the laws, and the meeting voted further, with but eight or ten nays, to repudiate the resolutions of the council. The next night, the council met and repealed them.

It seemed, in fact, that in planting himself on the compromise Douglas had rightly forecast the verdict of the country as a whole. An adjourned meeting of a Southern convention which had been called before the settlement with a view to some united and vigorous action took now a tone so mild that it allayed, instead of exciting, the fears of patriots. Jefferson Davis, an opponent, and Foote, a supporter of the settlement, went before the people of Mississippi as rival candidates for the governorship, and Davis was beaten. Yancey in Alabama was overthrown in his own party. Only South Carolina would not be reconciled. Throughout the North, and particularly in New England, attempts to resist the fugitive slave law were sometimes violent and occasionally successful, and Charles Sumner, from Massachusetts, and Wade, from Ohio, were sent to join Seward and Chase and Hale, the aggressive anti-slavery men in the Senate. With Sumner, whose first important speech was an attack upon the law, Douglas instantly engaged in the first of many bitter controversies. An attack on a law so clearly demanded by the Constitution was, he declared, an attack on the Constitution itself, such as no senator could make without breaking his oath of office. But in little more than a year the lower House of Congress voted by a good majority that the compromise measures should be regarded as a permanent settlement. In 1852, the Democrats, assembled in national conventions at Baltimore, indorsed them in their platform. So did the Whigs; and Rufus Choate, their convention orator, was excusable for his hyperbole when he described "with what instantaneous and mighty charm they calmed the madness and anxiety of the hour."

Cass, in his seventieth year, was the leading candidate before the Democratic convention; so far as the leadership of parties can be determined in America, he was still the leader of the party. But Douglas, in his fortieth year, was pressing to the front. In the preliminary campaign he was put forward as the candidate of young America, and other State conventions than that of Illinois commended him. At Baltimore, his supporters were enthusiastic, aggressive, boisterous. His name in the long list of candidates always aroused an applause which showed that he was classed with Cass and Buchanan in the popular estimation, and not with the lesser men. Beginning with twenty votes on the first ballot, he rose steadily until on the thirty-first he led with ninety-two. But neither he nor Cass had a good following from the South. An expediency candidate, acceptable to the South, was found in Franklin Pierce, who had fought in the war with Mexico. Against him the Whigs pitted the commander-in-chief in the war. But Scott was thought to be tainted with free-soil opinions. The Democrats, more thoroughly united, swept the country, and the new administration came into power with a great majority in both houses of Congress.

In neither branch of that Democratic Congress was there another man so fit to take the lead as Douglas. A new senator, coming to Washington in 1852, found him already risen to the first importance there. "His power as a debater," said this observer, "seemed to me unequaled in the Senate. He was industrious, energetic, bold, and skillful in the management of the affairs of his party. He was the acknowledged leader of the Democratic party in the Senate." It should be added that he never lost touch with the lower House. Neither was he unmindful of the President's part in making laws, but no President could be less disposed than Pierce was to set up his will against any measure which might come to him stamped with the party stamp. Douglas's wife died early in 1853, and in the summer he made his journey to Europe. When he returned, he was in a position the most favorable for original and constructive statesmanship. By virtue of his leadership of the Senate, he was in effect the leader of Congress. He had the power of initiative. He was at the age when men are ripest for enterprises of pith and moment. Unhesitatingly, he advanced to the front and centre of the stage. When the session ended, his name was forever associated with a law that upset precedents and traditions, divided old parties and summoned up new ones, made—and unmade—history.

January 4, 1854, Mr. Douglas, from the Committee on Territories, reported a bill to form the Territory of Nebraska out of that part of the Louisiana Purchase which lay west and north of Missouri.