er of 1858.

Even those colleagues of Douglas who doubted his motives, could not
but admire his courage. It did, indeed, require something more than
audacity to head a revolt against the administration. No man knew
better the thorny road that he must now travel. No man loved his party
more. No man knew better the hazard to the Union that must follow a
rupture in the Democratic party. But if Douglas nursed the hope that
Democratic senators would follow his lead, he was sadly disappointed.
Three only came to his support--Broderick of California, Pugh of Ohio,
and Stuart of Michigan,--while the lists of the administration were
full. Green, Bigler, Fitch, in turn were set upon him.

Douglas bitterly resented any attempt to read him out of the party by
making the Lecompton constitution the touchstone of genuine Democracy;
yet each day made it clearer that the administration had just that end
in view. Douglas complained of a tyranny not consistent with free
Democratic action. One might differ with the President on every
subject but Kansas, without incurring suspicion. Every pensioned
letter writer, he complained, had been intimating for the last two
weeks that he had deserted the Democratic party and gone over to the
Black Republicans. He demanded to know who authorized these
tales.[641] Senator Fitch warned him solemnly that the Democratic
party was the only political link in the chain which now bound the
States together. "None ... will hold that man guiltless, who abandons
it upon a question having in it so little of practical importance ...
and by seeking its destruction, thereby admits his not unwillingness
that a similar fate should be visited on the Union, perhaps, to
subserve his selfish purpose."[642] These attacks roused Douglas to
vehement defiance. More emphatically than ever, he declared the
Lecompton constitution "a trick, a fraud upon the rights of the
people."

If Douglas misjudged the temper of his colleagues, he at least gauged
correctly the drift of public sentiment in Illinois and the Northwest.
Of fifty-six Democratic newspapers in Illinois, but one ventured to
condone the Lecompton fraud.[643] Mass meetings in various cities of
the Northwest expressed confidence in the course of Senator Douglas.

He now occupied a unique position at the capital. Visitors were quite
as eager to see the man who had headed the revolt as to greet the
chief executive.[644] His residence, where Mrs. Douglas dispensed a
gra