that the
Northwest would be the makeweight in the balance for the Union; and
that every nerve must be strained to hold the border States of
Kentucky and Missouri. Who could rouse the latent Unionism of the
Northwest and of the border States like Douglas? Lincoln advised him
to go. There was a quick hand-grasp, a hurried farewell, and they
parted never to meet again.[985]

Rumor gave strange shapes to this "mission" which carried Douglas in
such haste to the Northwest. Most persistent of all is the tradition
that he was authorized to raise a huge army in the States of the upper
Mississippi Valley, and to undertake that vast flanking movement which
subsequently fell to Grant and Sherman to execute. Such a project
would have been thoroughly consonant with Douglas's conviction of the
inevitable unity and importance of the great valley; but evidence is
wanting to corroborate this legend.[986] Its frequent repetition,
then and now, must rather be taken as a popular recognition of the
complete accord between the President and the greatest of War
Democrats. Colonel Forney, who stood very near to Douglas, afterward
stated "by authority," that President Lincoln would eventually have
called Douglas into the administration or have placed him in one of
the highest military commands.[987] Such importance may be given to
this testimony as belongs to statements which have passed unconfirmed
and unchallenged for half a century.

On his way to Illinois, Douglas missed a train and was detained half a
day in the little town of Bellaire, Ohio, a few miles below Wheeling
in Virginia.[988] It was a happy accident, for just across the river
the people of northwestern Virginia were meditating resistance to the
secession movement, which under the guidance of Governor Letcher
threatened to sever them from the Union-loving population of Ohio and
Pennsylvania. It was precisely in this region, nearly a hundred years
before, that popular sovereignty had almost succeeded in forming a
fourteenth State of the Confederacy. There had always been a disparity
between the people of these transmontane counties and the tide-water
region. The intelligence that Douglas was in Bellaire speedily brought
a throng about the hotel in which he was resting. There were clamors
for a speech. In the afternoon he yielded to their importunities. By
this time the countryside was aroused. People came across the river
from Virginia and many came down by train from Wheeling,[