Even those colleagues of Douglas who doubted his motives, could not but admire his courage.  It did, indeed, require something more than audacity to head a revolt against the administration.  No man knew better the thorny road that he must now travel.  No man loved his party more.  No man knew better the hazard to the Union that must follow a rupture in the Democratic party.  But if Douglas nursed the hope that Democratic senators would follow his lead, he was sadly disappointed.  Three only came to his support—­Broderick of California, Pugh of Ohio, and Stuart of Michigan,—­while the lists of the administration were full.  Green, Bigler, Fitch, in turn were set upon him.

Douglas bitterly resented any attempt to read him out of the party by making the Lecompton constitution the touchstone of genuine Democracy; yet each day made it clearer that the administration had just that end in view.  Douglas complained of a tyranny not consistent with free Democratic action.  One might differ with the President on every subject but Kansas, without incurring suspicion.  Every pensioned letter writer, he complained, had been intimating for the last two weeks that he had deserted the Democratic party and gone over to the Black Republicans.  He demanded to know who authorized these tales.[641] Senator Fitch warned him solemnly that the Democratic party was the only political link in the chain which now bound the States together.  “None ... will hold that man guiltless, who abandons it upon a question having in it so little of practical importance ... and by seeking its destruction, thereby admits his not unwillingness that a similar fate should be visited on the Union, perhaps, to subserve his selfish purpose."[642] These attacks roused Douglas to vehement defiance.  More emphatically than ever, he declared the Lecompton constitution “a trick, a fraud upon the rights of the people.”

If Douglas misjudged the temper of his colleagues, he at least gauged correctly the drift of public sentiment in Illinois and the Northwest.  Of fifty-six Democratic newspapers in Illinois, but one ventured to condone the Lecompton fraud.[643] Mass meetings in various cities of the Northwest expressed confidence in the course of Senator Douglas.

He now occupied a unique position at the capital.  Visitors were quite as eager to see the man who had headed the revolt as to greet the chief executive.[644] His residence, where Mrs. Douglas dispensed a gracious hospitality, was fairly besieged with callers.[645] Washington society was never gayer than during this memorable winter.[646] None entertained more lavishly than Senator and Mrs. Douglas.  Whatever unpopularity he incurred at the Capitol, she more than offset by her charming and gracious personality.  Acknowledged as the reigning queen of the circle in which she moved, Mrs. Douglas displayed a social initiative that seconded admirably the independent, self-reliant attitude of her husband.  When Adele Cutts Douglas chose to