s with the deliberate wish
and intent to keep the Kansas issue alive. "All these gentlemen want,"
he declared, "is to get up murder and bloodshed in Kansas for
political effect. They do not mean that there shall be peace until
after the presidential election.... Their capital for the presidential
election is blood. We may as well talk plainly. An angel from Heaven
could not write a bill to restore peace in Kansas that would be
acceptable to the Abolition Republican party previous to the
presidential election."[586]

"Bleeding Kansas" was, indeed, a most effective campaign cry. Before
Congress adjourned, the Republicans had found other campaign material
in the majority report of the Kansas investigating committee. The
Democrats issued the minority report as a counter-blast, and also
circulated three hundred thousand copies of Douglas's 12th of March
report, which was held to be campaign material of the first order.
Douglas himself paid for one-third of these out of his own
pocket.[587] No one could accuse him of sulking in his tent. Whatever
personal pique he may have felt at losing the nomination, he was
thoroughly loyal to his party. He gave unsparingly of his time and
strength to the cause of Democracy, speaking most effectively in the
doubtful States. And when Pennsylvania became the pivotal State, as
election day drew near, Douglas gave liberally to the campaign fund
which his friend Forney was collecting to carry the State for
Buchanan.[588]

Illinois, too, was now reckoned as a doubtful State. Douglas had
forced the issues clearly to the fore by pressing the nomination of
Richardson for governor.[589] Next to himself, there was no man in the
State so closely identified with Kansas-Nebraska legislation. The
anti-Nebraska forces accepted the gage of battle by nominating
Bissell, a conspicuous figure among those Democrats who could not
sanction the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Only the nomination of
a Know-Nothing candidate complicated the issues which were thus drawn.
Shortly before the October State elections, Douglas saw that he had
committed a tactical blunder. Richardson was doomed to defeat. "Would
it not be well," wrote Douglas to James W. Sheahan, who had come from
Washington to edit the Chicago _Times_, "to prepare the minds of your
readers for losing the State elections on the 14th of October?
Buchanan's friends expect to lose it then, but carry the State by
20,000 in November. We may have to fight