n was irresistible and
permanent; if it failed, it served to unite the South for secession
and a slave confederacy.

If any Democrat harbored a doubt that the proposed reconciliation
meant simply a reunion on the Davis-Yancey platform, the doubt was
soon removed. In the Senate of the United States, Jefferson Davis was
pressing to a vote his caucus resolutions, submitted in February, to
serve as a model for the Charleston platform; and this brought on a
final discussion between himself and Douglas.

[Sidenote] "Globe," May 7, 1860, p. 1940.

[Sidenote] Appendix. "Globe," May 15 and 16, 1860, pp. 312, 313,
and 316.

[Sidenote] "Globe," May 17, 1860, p. 2151.

[Sidenote] Ibid., p. 2153.

[Sidenote] Ibid., p. 2155.

Davis had begun the debate on the 7th of May by a savage onslaught on
"Squatter Sovereignty"--a fallacy, he said, fraught with mischief
more deadly than the fatal upas, because it spread its poison over the
whole Union. Douglas took up the gauntlet, and, replying on May 15 and
16, said he could not recognize the right of a caucus of the Senate or
the House to prescribe new tests for the Democratic party. Senators
were not chosen for the purpose of making platforms. That was the duty
of the Charleston Convention, and it had decided in his favor,
platform, organization, and least of all the individual, by giving him
a majority of fifty votes over all the other candidates combined. He
reprobated the Yancey movement as leading to dissolution and a
Southern confederacy. The party rejected this caucus platform. Should
the majority, he asked, surrender to the minority? Davis, replying on
the 17th, contended that Douglas had, on the Kansas policy of the
Administration, put himself outside the Democratic organization. He
desired no divided flag for the party. He preferred that the Senator's
banner should lie in its silken folds to feed the moth; "but if it
impatiently rustles to be unfurled in opposition to ours, we will
plant our own on every hill." Douglas retorted, and again attacked the
caucus dictation. "Why," he asked, "are all the great measures for the
public good made to give place to the emergency of passing some
abstract resolutions on the subject of politics to reverse the
Democratic platform, under the supposition that the representatives of
the people are men of weak nerve who are going to be frightened by the
thunders of the Senate Chamber?" Davis rejoined, that they wanted a
new arti