II, p. 146 note.]

[Footnote 773: Sheahan, Douglas, pp. 439-442; Herndon-Weik, Lincoln,
II, p. 128.]

[Footnote 774: It has not been generally observed that the Democrats
gained more than their opponents over the State contest of 1856. The
election returns were as follows:

Democratic ticket in 1856, 106,643; in 1858, 121,609; gain, 14,966.
Republican ticket in 1856, 111,375; in 1858, 125,430; gain, 14,055.
]

CHAPTER XVII

THE AFTERMATH

Douglas had achieved a great personal triumph. Not even his Republican
opponents could gainsay it. In the East, the Republican newspapers
applauded him undisguisedly, not so much because they admired him or
lacked sympathy with Lincoln, as because they regarded his re-election
as a signal condemnation of the Buchanan administration. Moreover,
there was a general expectation in anti-slavery circles to which
Theodore Parker gave expression when he wrote, "Had Lincoln succeeded,
Douglas would be a ruined man.... But now in place for six years more,
with his own personal power unimpaired and his positional influence
much enhanced, he can do the Democratic party a world of damage."[775]
There was cheer in this expectation even for those who deplored the
defeat of Lincoln.

As Douglas journeyed southward soon after the November elections, he
must have felt the poignant truth of Lincoln's shrewd observation that
he was himself becoming sectional. Though he was received with seeming
cordiality at Memphis and New Orleans, he could not but notice that
his speeches, as Lincoln predicted, "would not go current south of the
Ohio River as they had formerly." Democratic audiences applauded his
bold insistence upon the universality of the principles of the party
creed, but the tone of the Southern press was distinctly unfriendly
to him and his Freeport doctrine.[776] He told his auditors at Memphis
that he indorsed the decision of the Supreme Court; he believed that
the owners of slaves had the same right to take them into the
Territories as they had to take other property; but slaves once in the
Territory were then subject to local laws for protection, on an equal
footing with all other property. If no local laws protecting slave
property were passed, slavery would be practically excluded.
"Non-action is exclusion." It was a matter of soil, climate,
interests, whether a Territory would permit slavery or not. "You come
right back to the principle of dollars and cents ... If