upon honest men to put an end to this “Quaker policy.”  “The time has come for strong, sturdy, clear-headed and honest men to act; and the Republic must have them, should it be compelled, as the colonies were in 1776, to drag the hero of the time out of a hole in a wild forest, [sic] whether in Virginia or the illimitable West.”  To inaugurate such an era, the presidential chair must be filled by a man, not of the last generation, but of this.  He must not be “trammeled with ideas belonging to an anterior era, or a man of merely local fame and local affections, but a statesman who can bring young blood, young ideas, and young hearts to the councils of the Republic.  He must not be a mere general, a mere lawyer, a mere wire-puller.  “Your beaten horse, whether he ran for a previous presidential cup as first or second,” will not do.  He must be ‘a tried civilian, not a second and third rate general.’  “Withal, a practical statesman, not to be discomfited in argument, or led wild by theory, but one who has already, in the councils and tribunals of the nation, reared his front to the dismay of the shallow conservative, to the exposure of the humanitarian incendiary, and the discomfiture of the antiquated rhetorician.”

If anyone was so dense as not to recognize the portrait here painted, he had only to turn to an article entitled “Intervention,” to find the name of the hero who was to usher in the new era.  The author of this paper finds his sentiments so nearly identical with those of Stephen A. Douglas, that he resorts to copious extracts from his speech delivered in the Senate on the welcome of Kossuth, “entertaining no doubt that the American people, the democracy of the country will endorse these doctrines by an overwhelming majority.”  Still another article in this formidable broadside from the editors of the Democratic Review, deprecated Foote’s efforts to thrust the slavery issue again upon Congress, and expressed the pious wish that Southern delegates might join with Northern in the Baltimore convention, to nominate a candidate who would in future “evince the most profound ignorance as to the topographical bearing of that line of discord known as ‘Mason and Dixon’s.’”

If all this was really the work of Douglas’s friends,—­and it is more than likely,—­he had reason to pray to be delivered from them.  At best the whole manoeuvre was clumsily planned and wretchedly executed; it probably did him irreparable harm.  His strength was not sufficient to confront all his rivals; yet the almost inevitable consequence of the odious comparisons in the Review was combinations against him.  The leading article gave mortal offense in quarters where he stood most in need of support.[384] Douglas was quick to detect the blunder and appreciate its dangers to his prospects.  His friends now began sedulously to spread the report that the article was a ruse of the enemy, for the especial purpose of spoiling his chances at Baltimore.