remain in the same Union
together?"[899]

No Northern senator had better reason than Douglas to believe that
these were not merely idle threats. The knowledge sobered him. In this
hour of peril, his deep love for the Union welled up within him,
submerging the partisan and the politician. "I trust," he said,
rebuking a Northern senator, "we may lay aside all party grievances,
party feuds, partisan jealousies, and look to our country, and not to
our party, in the consequences of our action. Sir, I am as good a
party man as anyone living, when there are only party issues at stake,
and the fate of political parties to be provided for. But, Sir, if I
know myself, I do not desire to hear the word party, or to listen to
any party appeal, while we are considering and discussing the
questions upon which the fate of the country now hangs."[900]

In this spirit Douglas welcomed from the South the recital of special
grievances. "Give us each charge and each specification.... I hold
that there is no grievance growing out of a nonfulfillment of
constitutional obligations, which cannot be remedied under the
Constitution and within the Union."[901] And when the Personal Liberty
Acts of Northern States were cited as a long-standing grievance, he
heartily denounced them as in direct violation of the letter and the
spirit of the Constitution. At the same time he contended that these
acts existed generally in the States to which few fugitives ever fled,
and that the Fugitive Slave Act was enforced nineteen out of twenty
times. It was the twentieth case that was published abroad through the
press, misleading the South. In fact, the present excitement was, to
his mind, due to the inability of the extremes of North and South to
understand each other. "Those of us that live upon the border, and
have commercial intercourse and social relations across the line, can
live in peace with each other." If the border slave States and the
border free States could arbitrate the question of slavery, the Union
would last forever.[902]

Arbitration and compromise--these were the words with which the
venerable Crittenden of Kentucky, successor to Clay, now endeavored to
rally Union-loving men. He was seconded by his colleague, Senator
Powell, who had already moved the appointment of a special committee
of thirteen, to consider the grievances between the slave-holding and
non-slave-holding States. Douglas put himself unreservedly at the
service of the pa