Elected to the senate at the age of thirty-four, Mr. Douglas took his seat in that august body in December, 1847. On the same day Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office as a member from Illinois in the house of representatives. The senate was presided over by the able and accomplished vice-president, George M. Dallas. Seldom has there been a more imposing list of great names than that which now included the young senator from Illinois.

The one vital and portentous question-in some one of its many phases then under continuous discussion, was that of human slavery. This institution, until its final extinction amid the flames of war, cast its ominous shadow over our nation's pathway from the beginning.

The compromise measures, proposed by Mr. Clay in a genera bill, embraced the establishment of territorial governments for Utah and New Mexico, the settlement of the Texas boundary, an amendment to the Fugitive Slave Law, and the admission of California as a free state. In entire accord with each proposition, Mr. Douglas had, by direction of the Committee on Territories, of which he was the chairman, reported a bill providing for the immediate admission of California under its recently adopted free state constitution. Separate measures embracing the other propositions of the general bill were likewise duly reported. These measures were advocated by the Illinois Senator in a speech that at once won him recognized place among the great debaters of that illustrious assemblage.

Chief in importance of his public services to his state was that of Senator Douglas in procuring from Congress a land grant to aid in the construction of the Illinois Central railroad.

This act ceded to the State of Illinois, subject to the disposal of the legislature thereof, "for the purpose of aiding in the construction of a railroad from the southern terminus of the Illinois and Michigan Canal to a point at or near the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, with a branch of the same to Chicago, and another to Du

buque, Iowa, every alternate section of land designated by even numbers for six sections in width on each side of said road and its branches." It is difficult at this day to realize the importance of this measure to the then sparsely settled state. The grant in aggregate was near three million acres, and was directly to the state. After appropriate action by the State Legislature, the Illinois Central Railroad Company was duly organized, and the road eventually constructed. The provision for the payment by the company to the state of seven per cent of its gross annual earnings, is one, the value of which to this and future generations cannot be overstated. By wise constitutional provision the legislature is forever prohibited from releasing the company from this payment.

The measure now to be mentioned aroused deeper attention, more anxious concern, throughout the entire country than any with which the name of Douglas had yet been closely associated. It pertained directly to slavery, the "bone of contention" between the north and the south, the one dangerous quantity in our national politics, from the establishment of the government. Beginning with its recognition, though not in direct terms, in the Federal Constitution, it had through two generations in the interest of peace been the subject of repeated compromise.

As Chairman of the Senate Committee on territories, Mr. Douglas in the early days of 1854 reported a bill providing for the organization of the territories of Nebraska and Kansas. This measure, which so suddenly arrested public attention, is known in our political history as the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill." Amongst its provisions was one repealing the Missouri Compromise or restriction of 1820. The end sought by the repeal was, as stated by Mr. Douglas, to leave the people of said territories respectively to determine the question of the introduction or exclusion of slavery for themselves; in other words: "To regulate their domestic institutions in their own way subject only to the Constitution of the United States." The principle strenuously contended for was that of "popular sovereignty" or non-intervention by Congress, in the affairs of the territories.

In closing the protracted and exciting debate on it just prior to the passage of the Bill in the Senate, he said:

"There is another reason why I desire to see this principle recognized as a rule of action in all time to come. It will have the effect to destroy all sectional parties and sectional agitation. If you withdraw the slavery question from the halls of Congress and the political arena, and commit it to the arbitrament of those who are immediately interested in, and alone responsible for its consequences, there is nothing left out of which sectional parties can be organized. When the people of the North shall all be rallied under one banner, and the whole South marshalled under another banner, and each section excited to frenzy and madness by hostility to the institutions of the other, then the patriot may well tremble for the perpetuity of the Union. Withdraw the slavery question from the political arena and remove it to the states and territories, each to decide for itself, and such a catastrophe can never happen."

The immediate effect of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill was directly the reverse of that so confidently predicted by Mr. Douglas. The era of concord between the North and the South did not return. The slavery question, instead of being relegated to the recently organized territories for final settlement, at once assumed the dimensions of a great national issue. The country at large, instead of a single territory, became the theater of excited discussion. The final determination was to be not that of a territory, but of the entire people.

One significant effect of the passage of the bill was the immediate disruption of the Whig party.

Upon its ruins, the Republican party at once came into being. Under the leadership of Fremont as its candidate, and opposition by congressional intervention to slavery extension as its chief issue, it was a formidable antagonist to the democratic party in the presidential contest of 1856. Mr. Buchanan had defeated Douglas in the nominating convention of his party that year.

Although Mr. Douglas had met personal defeat in his aspirations to the presidency, the principle of "non-intervention by Congress" in the affairs of the territories, for which he had so earnestly contended, had been triumphant both in the convention of his party, and at the polls. This principle, in its application to Kansas, was soon to be put to the test. From its organization, that territory had been a continuous scene of disorder, often of violence.

The "parting of the ways" between Senator Douglas and President Buchanan was now reached.

A statesman of national reputation, Hon. Robert J. Walker, was at length appointed governor of Kansas. During his brief administration, a convention assembled without his co-operation at Lecompton, and formulated a constitution under which application was soon made for the admission of Kansas into the Union.

When the Lecompton Constitution came before the Senate it at once encountered the formidable opposition of Mr. Douglas. In unmeasured terms he denounced it as fraudulent, as antagonistic to the wishes of the people of Kansas, and subversive of the basic principle upon which the territory had been organized. In the attitude just assumed, Mr. Douglas at once found himself in line with the republicans, and in opposition to the administration he had helped to place in power. The breach thus created was destined to remain unhealed.

In the attempted admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution, Mr. Douglas was triumphant over the administration and his former political associates from the south. Under what was known as the "English Amendment," the obnoxious constitution was referred to the people of Kansas, and by them overwhelmingly rejected.

The close of this controversy in the early months of 1858, left Mr. Douglas in a position of much embarrassment. He had incurred the active hostility of the president, and in large measure of his adherents, without gaining the future aid of his late associates, in the defeat of

the Lecompton Constitution. His senatorial term was nearing its close, and his political life depended upon his re-election.

In his speech at Springfield, June seventeenth, accepting the nomination of his party for the Senate, Mr. Lincoln had uttered the words which have since become historic. They are quoted at length, as they soon furnished the text for his severe arraignment by Mr. Douglas in debate. The words are: "We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this country cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates, old as well as new, north as well as south will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States."

This, at the time, was a bold utterance, and it was believed by many would imperil Mr. Lincoln's chances of election.

The opening speech of Mr. Douglas at Chicago a few days later, sounding the key note of his campaign, was in the main an arraignment of his opponent for an attempt to precipitate an internecine conflict, and array in deadly hostility the north against the south. He said:

"In other words, Mr. Lincoln advocates boldly and clearly a war of sections, a war of the north against the south, of the free states against the slave states, a war of extermination.. to be continued relentessly until the one or the other shall be subdued, and all the states shall either become free or become slave."