Not least among the qualities which made Douglas a great, persuasive, popular leader, was his quite extraordinary memory for names and faces, and his unaffected interest in the personal life of those whom he called his friends.  “He gave to every one of those humble and practically nameless followers the impression, the feeling, that he was the frank, personal friend of each one of them."[618] Doubtless he was well aware that there is no subtler form of flattery, than to call individuals by name who believe themselves to be forgotten pawns in a great game; and he may well have cultivated the profitable habit.  Still, the fact remains, that it was an innate temperamental quality which made him frank and ingenuous in his intercourse with all sorts and conditions of men.

Those who judged the man by the senator, often failed to understand his temperament.  He was known as a hard hitter in parliamentary encounters.  He never failed to give a Roland for an Oliver.  In the heat of debate, he was often guilty of harsh, bitter invective.  His manner betrayed a lack of fineness and good-breeding.  But his resentment vanished with the spoken word.  He repented the barbed shaft, the moment it quitted his bow.  He would invite to his table the very men with whom he had been in acrimonious controversy, and perhaps renew the controversy next day.  Greeley testified to this absence of resentment.  On a certain occasion, after the New York Tribune had attacked Douglas savagely, a mutual acquaintance asked Douglas if he objected to meeting the redoubtable Greeley.  “Not at all,” was the good-natured reply, “I always pay that class of political debts as I go along, so as to have no trouble with them in social intercourse and to leave none for my executors to settle."[619]

In the round of social functions which Senator and Mrs. Douglas enjoyed, there was little time for quiet thought and reflection.  Men who met him night after night at receptions and dinners, marvelled at the punctuality with which he returned to the routine work of the Senate next morning.  Yet there was not a member of the Senate who had a readier command of facts germane to the discussions of the hour.  His memory was a willing slave which never failed to do the bidding of master intellect.  Some of his ablest and most effective speeches were made without preparation and with only a few pencilled notes at hand.  Truly Nature had been lavish in her gifts to him.

To nine-tenths of his devoted followers, he was still “Judge” Douglas.  It was odd that the title, so quickly earned and so briefly worn, should have stuck so persistently to him.  In legal attainments he fell far short of many of his colleagues in the Senate.  Had he but chosen to apply himself, he might have been a conspicuous leader of the American bar; but law was ever to him the servant of politics, and he never cared to make the servant greater than his lord.  That he would have developed judicial qualities, may well be doubted; advocate he was and advocate he remained, to the end of his days.  So it was that when a legal question arose, with far-reaching implications for American politics, the lawyer and politician, rather than the judge, laid hold upon the points of political significance.