nd submitted to the United States
Senate, on February 2, 1860, a series of resolutions designed to
constitute the Administration or Southern party doctrines, which were
afterwards revised and adopted by a caucus of Democratic Senators.
These resolutions expressed the usual party tenets; and on two of the
controverted points asserted dogmatically exactly that which Douglas
had stigmatized as an intolerable heresy. The fourth resolution
declared "That neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature, whether
by direct legislation or legislation of an indirect and unfriendly
character, possesses power to annul or impair the constitutional right
of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into
the common Territories, and there hold and enjoy the same while the
Territorial condition remains." While the fifth resolution declared
"That if experience should at any time prove that the judiciary and
executive authority do not possess means to insure adequate protection
to constitutional rights in a Territory, and if the Territorial
government shall fail or refuse to provide the necessary remedies for
that purpose, it will be the duty of Congress to supply such
deficiency."

Party discipline was so strong among the Democrats that public
expectation looked confidently to at least a temporary agreement or
combination which would enable the factions, by a joint effort, to
make a hopeful Presidential campaign. But no progress whatever was
made in that direction. As the clans gathered at Charleston, the
notable difference developed itself, that while one wing was filled
with unbounded enthusiasm for a candidate, the other was animated by
an earnest and stubborn devotion to an idea.

[Sidenote] Murat Halstead, "Conventions of 1860."

"Douglas was the pivot individual of the Charleston Convention," wrote
an observant journalist; "every delegate was for or against him; every
motion meant to nominate or not nominate him; every parliamentary war
was _pro_ or _con_ Douglas." This was the surface indication, and,
indeed, it may be said with truth, it was the actual feeling of the
Northern faction of the Democratic party. Douglas was a genuinely
popular leader. He had the power to inspire a pure personal
enthusiasm. He had aroused such hero-worship as may be possible in
modern times and in American polities. Beyond this, however, the
Lecompton controversy, and his open persecution by the Buchanan
Administration, made his