feel I approach a forbidden, though a somewhat delicate, theme, when I allude, in passing, to some of his traits as a politician. I am rather invited to this, when I remember that within the last month the citizen, now President of the United States, who was defeated by Douglas for the Senate, in 1858, and who mounted in 1860, to the Presidential chair over the prostrate banner of his former successful competitor, directed that the armies of the Republic should crape their colors in mourning for the loss of his former adversary, and that the Departments of the Government should be closed on the day of his funeral at Chicago. [Great applause.] I am further attracted to the discussion of Douglas as a political leader by the fact that, at the portals of his tomb, the whole people of his own State, irrespective of former differences, paid the sublimest tribute to his memory— that, when he died, his worst opponents elsewhere forgot their animosities, and that the whole body of the loyal States were struck with sudden grief when his death was proclaimed—struck, indeed, as if they had lost their best, and dearest, and most cherished champion. [Applause.]

What a scene is this! When partisans forgot their hostility to Clay, and Jackson, and Webster, they did so over the graves of old men; but here they bury the recent and the bitter Past, from out of sight, in paying voluntary honor to the youngest, and, for a time, the extremest statesman of his school. Let me, therefore, with this free charter to speak my own mind, say something of Douglas as a leader and a Democrat.

He was a very thorough partisan. He belonged to the class. who regarded the Democratic party as incapable of error, and created to rule in the administration of the Federal Government. He was so wedded to this idea as to look upon this organization as almost infallible, and sincerely believed that it was an aggregate of wisdom and experience superior to any political organization

of early or later times. Extending over the whole of the continent, and holding its devotees with almost Masonic attachment, it generally prevailed against all odds, and finally became so strong as to absorb most other organizations. As an oracle of this party, Judge Douglas was frequently severe upon his opponents, and, by his severity, provoked a retaliatory spirit that often bordered upon personal hatred. Yet, I think his faith in what is known as the organization of the Democratic party failed him before his death. When he saw the Southern leaders powerful enough, with the aid of this organization, to drive Mr. Buchanan from the path of duty into the path of depravity; to make measures like Lecompton a party test, and finally to bring to a candidate for the Presidency, whose object was unquestionably the disruption of the Government, hundreds of thousands of Democratic votes, he must have felt that the prestige of the Democracy had gone, never to be restored until its leaders can resurrect the great examples, and reanimate the great truths which they have latterly insanely neglected. [Applause.] If he were now alive, and could see the name of this powerful party flagrantly used as a cloak for treason, even in portions of the Free States, he would, in my opinion, feel that it was time to set aside a machine which has become so potent an engine of individual and general disaster.

This was

He was preeminently and always a national man. one reason of his consistent championship of the Southern people. He shrank instinctively from what he called sectionalism. He was, undoubtedly, ambitious, and he had an undoubted right to be ambitious. He believed that the election of any President by a solid Northern or a solid Southern vote would be the parent of serious internal strife. Born in cold New England, he cultivated from early life the warmest relations with the Slave States, and at one time was their chiefest favorite. The Southern pol

iticians loved him for many things-for his course in the Mexican War, and in the annexation of Texas; for his opposition to the Wilmot Proviso; for his speeches on the Compromise measures, and his subsequent gallant bearing when assailed by the turbulent populace of Chicago; for his aid in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and for his repeated vindications of that measure before the people. No Northern public man, since the commencement of the anti-slavery agitation, has been so steadily and efficiently the friend of the South. It was only when sternly adhering to his reading of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, he refused to stultify himself by accepting the monstrous construction of that measure given to it by ultra Southern men, that he began to lose their confidence. From that hour all his sacrifices and services in their behalf were studiously forgotten. Their compliments were exchanged for curses, their praises for proscriptions; and it is a melancholy comment upon the boasted intelligence of the Southern people, that so many thousands permitted themselves to desert the great leader, only because that leader would not himself desert the truth and degrade his manhood. [Great applause.] Much has been said by heated partisans in regard to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. It is alleged, on the one hand, that we should have had no Republican party, and on the other, that if he had adhered to that Compromise the Union itself would have stood the shock of battle and of time. But, however men may differ, when they come to discuss this portion of the record of our departed friend, all must agree that the agitation which followed the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska bill led to the exposure of the plans of the Disunionists, and enabled the American people to realize that these plans had been many years in course of preparation. If Judge Douglas, following the lead of these men, had accepted their construction of that measure, then the condemnation heaped upon him would

have been just; but when, with heroic fortitude and persistence, he maintained the principle he avowed when discussing the measure itself before it became a law, and, rather than yield it, endured the unparalleled persecution of the Administration of Mr. Buchanan; and when he demanded its recognition and reëndorsement by the National Convention of which he was the nominee in 1860, he gave the highest evidence of his patriotism and his sincerity. In the last Congress of the United States an unconscious tribute was paid to his character by the enactment of three territorial bills in which the doctrine of non-intervention with slavery in the Territories-the vital spirit of the Kansas-Nebraska bill-was recognized by the decided vote of both Houses.

And how did he bear himself when his former familiars and friends in the South turned from him, first with displeasure, and afterwards with indignation and scorn? Did he respond to their criminations? Did he retaliate their misrepresentations? No. Put forward as the regular Democratic candidate for President in 1860, he took the field to save them from the fate which has since overtaken them. Denounced by his assailants as afraid to advocate his opinions in the Slave States, he boldly threw himself among the Southern people, and challenged universal admiration by the dignity, the candor, and the eloquence of his arguments. His replies to the celebrated Norfolk questions were the index of his whole canvass in that never-to-be-forgotten year. Applauded by the Republicans and the Northern Democrats as an extraordinary exhibition of moral courage, and execrated by the Disunionists as a deliberate defiance of their threats, he never abandoned the high position thus assumed, but maintained his onward march. Beginning at Norfolk in August, and pursuing his way through North Carolina, returning to Virginia, thence to Maryland, and so through Pennsylvania, at

every point greeted by thousands, and approached by servile politicians who attempted to turn him from his text and to seduce him from his duty; yet he invariably spoke the same language and advocated the same doctrine. It was not for the South alone, but for the country, that he pleaded. [Applause.] As an evidence of his singular unselfishness, I am authorized to relate an incident by one who accompanied him through all these trying scenes. He never had full confidence in the probability of his election to the Presidency, but he was buoyed up by the faith that was in him, strengthened by the consciousness that if he did not live to enjoy the fruits of his labors, others would do so; and he seemed to be happy in the reflection that he was laboring not for himself, but for the peace, the prosperity, the perpetuity of the Republic. On the morning after the State elections in Pennsylvania and Indiana, in October of this same year, 1860, while at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he received a despatch from the Associated Press, based upon an editorial of my own, announcing that both these States had declared in favor of the Republican party. His friend advised him to pause in his journey, suggesting the long route before them, the labor, and, indeed, the peril of the experiment, and reminding him that his health might fail him before he reached the close of his canvass. His reply is worthy of preservation. "No," he said, "Lincoln is the next President of the United States. I have no hope and no destiny before me, but to do my best to save the Union from overthrow. Now, let us turn our course to the South." [Applause.] And to the South they went. The history of that tour is yet to be written. Every step of his progress was watched with solicitude and surprise by the Northern people of all parties. Although invited by such men as Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, and John Forsyth, of Alabama, then professing to be his warmest friends, admonitions were thrown