as a courageous little party that left St. Louis for Memphis and
the South. Mrs. Douglas was still with her husband, determined to
share all the hardships that fell to his lot; and besides her, there
was only James B. Sheridan, Douglas's devoted secretary and
stenographer. The Southern press had threatened Douglas with personal
violence, if he should dare to invade the South with his political
heresies.[884] But Luther bound for Worms was not more indifferent to
personal danger than this modern intransigeant. His conduct earned the
hearty admiration of even Republican journals, for no one could now
believe that he courted the South in his own behalf. Nor was there any
foolish bravado in this adventure. He was thoroughly sobered by the
imminence of disunion. When he read, in a newspaper devoted to his
interests, that it was "the deep-seated fixed determination on the
part of the leading Southern States to go out of the Union, peaceably
and quietly," he knew that these words were no cheap rhetoric, for
they were penned by a man of Northern birth and antecedents.[885]

The history of this Southern tour has never been written. It was the
firm belief of Douglas that at least one attempt was made to wreck his
train. At Montgomery, while addressing a public gathering, he was made
the target for nameless missiles.[886] Yet none of these adventures
were permitted to find their way into the Northern press. And only his
intimates learned of them from his own lips after his return.

The news of Mr. Lincoln's election overtook Douglas in Mobile. He was
in the office of the Mobile _Register_, one of the few newspapers
which had held to him and his cause through thick and thin. It now
became a question what policy the paper should pursue. The editor
asked his associate to read aloud an article which he had just
written, advocating a State convention to deliberate upon the course
of Alabama in the approaching crisis. Douglas opposed its publication;
but he was assured that the only way to manage the secession movement
was to appear to go with it, and by electing men opposed to disunion,
to control the convention. With his wonted sagacity, Douglas remarked
that if they could not prevent the calling of a convention, they could
hardly hope to control its action. But the editors determined to
publish the article, "and Douglas returned to his hotel more hopeless
than I had ever seen him before," wrote Sheridan.[887]

On his return to the