my own use, one dollar earned by slave-labor.”  For the first time, he spoke of the will of Colonel Martin and of the property which he had bequeathed to his daughter and to her children.  With very genuine emotion, which touched even his enemies, he added, “God forbid that I should be understood by anyone as being willing to cast from me any responsibility that now does, or has ever attached to any member of my family.  So long as life shall last—­and I shall cherish with religious veneration the memories and virtues of the sainted mother of my children—­so long as my heart shall be filled with parental solicitude for the happiness of those motherless infants, I implore my enemies who so ruthlessly invade the domestic sanctuary, to do me the favor to believe, that I have no wish, no aspiration, to be considered purer or better than she, who was, or they, who are, slaveholders."[522]

When the new Congress met in the fall of 1855, the anti-Nebraska men drew closer together and gradually assumed the name “Republican.”  Their first victory was the election of their candidate for the Speakership.  They were disciplined by astute leaders under the pressure of disorders in Kansas.  Before the session closed, they developed a remarkable degree of cohesion, while the body of their supporters in the Northern States assumed alarming proportions.  The party was not wholly, perhaps not mainly, the product of humanitarian sentiment.  The adherence of old-line Whig politicians like Seward suggests that there was some alloy in the pure gold of Republicanism.  Such leaders were willing to make political capital out of the breakdown of popular sovereignty in Kansas.[523] They were too shrewd to stake the fortune of the nascent party on a bold, constructive policy.  They preferred to play a waiting game.  Events in Kansas came to their aid in ways that they could not have anticipated.

While this re-alignment of parties was in progress, the presidential year drew on apace.  It behooved the Democrats to gather their scattered forces.  The advantage of organization was theirs; but they suffered from desertions.  The morale of the party was weakened.  To check further desertions and to restore confidence, was the aim of the party whips.  No one had more at stake than Douglas.  He was on trial with his party.  Conscious of his responsibilities, he threw himself into the light skirmishing in Congress which always precedes a presidential campaign.  In this partisan warfare he was clever, but not altogether admirable.  One could wish that he had been less uncharitable and less denunciatory; but political victories are seldom won by unaided virtue.