and dinners, marvelled at
the punctuality with which he returned to the routine work of the
Senate next morning. Yet there was not a member of the Senate who had
a readier command of facts germane to the discussions of the hour. His
memory was a willing slave which never failed to do the bidding of
master intellect. Some of his ablest and most effective speeches were
made without preparation and with only a few pencilled notes at hand.
Truly Nature had been lavish in her gifts to him.

To nine-tenths of his devoted followers, he was still "Judge" Douglas.
It was odd that the title, so quickly earned and so briefly worn,
should have stuck so persistently to him. In legal attainments he fell
far short of many of his colleagues in the Senate. Had he but chosen
to apply himself, he might have been a conspicuous leader of the
American bar; but law was ever to him the servant of politics, and he
never cared to make the servant greater than his lord. That he would
have developed judicial qualities, may well be doubted; advocate he
was and advocate he remained, to the end of his days. So it was that
when a legal question arose, with far-reaching implications for
American politics, the lawyer and politician, rather than the judge,
laid hold upon the points of political significance.

The inauguration of James Buchanan and the Dred Scott decision of the
Supreme Court, two days later, marked a turning point in the career of
Judge Douglas. Of this he was of course unaware. He accepted the
advent of his successful rival with composure, and the opinion of the
Court, with comparative indifference. In a speech before the Grand
Jury of the United States District Court at Springfield, three months
later, he referred publicly for the first time to the Dred Scott case.
Senator, and not Judge, Douglas was much in evidence. He swallowed the
opinion of the majority of the court without wincing--the _obiter
dictum_ and all. Nay, more, he praised the Court for passing, like
honest and conscientious judges, from the technicalities of the case
to the real merits of the questions involved. The material,
controlling points of the case were: first, that a negro descended
from slave parents could not be a citizen of the United States;
second, that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and void
from the beginning, and thus could not extinguish a master's right to
his slave in any Territory. "While the right continues in full force
under ...