part, he was resolved
never to speak again upon the slavery question in the halls of
Congress.

But this was after all a negative programme. Could a campaign be
successfully fought without other weapons than the well-worn
blunderbusses in the Democratic arsenal? This was a do-nothing policy,
difficult to reconcile with the enthusiastic liberalism which Young
America was supposed to cherish. Yet Douglas gauged the situation
accurately. The bulk of the party wished a return to power more than
anything else. To this end, they were willing to toot for old issues
and preserve the old party alignment. For four years, the Democratic
office-hunters had not tasted of the loaves and fishes within the gift
of the executive. They expected liberality in conduct, if not
liberalism in creed, from their next President. Douglas shared this
political hunger. He had always been a believer in rotation in office,
and an exponent of that unhappy, American practice of using public
office as the spoil of party victory. In this very session, he put
himself on record against permanence in office for the clerks of the
Senate, holding that such positions should fall vacant at stated
intervals.[380]

But had Douglas no policy peculiarly his own, to qualify him for the
leadership of his party? Distrustful Whigs accused him of being
willing to offer Cuba for the support of the South.[381] Indeed, he
made no secret of his desire to acquire the Pearl of the Antilles.
Still, this was not the sort of issue which it was well to drag into a
presidential campaign. Like all the other aspirants for the
presidency, Douglas made what capital he could out of the visit of
Kossuth and the question of intervention in behalf of Hungary. When
the matter fell under discussion in the Senate, Douglas formulated
what he considered should be the policy of the government:

"I hold that the principle laid down by Governor Kossuth as the basis
of his action--that each State has a right to dispose of her own
destiny, and regulate her internal affairs in her own way, without the
intervention of any foreign power--is an axiom in the laws of nations
which every State ought to recognize and respect.... It is equally
clear to my mind, that any violation of this principle by one nation,
intervening for the purpose of destroying the liberties of another, is
such an infraction of the international code as would authorize any
State to interpose, which should conceive that it had