The opposition of Douglas began to cause no little uneasiness.  Brown paid tribute to his influence, when he declared that if the Senator from Illinois had stood with the administration, “there would not have been a ripple on the surface.”  “Sir, the Senator from Illinois gives life, he gives vitality, he gives energy, he lends the aid of his mighty genius and his powerful will to the Opposition on this question."[655] But Douglas paid a fearful price for this power.  Every possible ounce of pressure was brought to bear upon him.  The party press was set upon him.  His friends were turned out of office.  The whole executive patronage was wielded mercilessly against his political following.  The Washington Union held him up to execration as a traitor, renegade, and deserter.[656] “We cannot affect indifference at the treachery of Senator Douglas,” said a Richmond paper.  “He was a politician of considerable promise.  Association with Southern gentlemen had smoothed down the rugged vulgarities of his early education, and he had come to be quite a decent and well-behaved person."[657] To political denunciation was now to be added the sting of mean and contemptible personalities.

Small wonder that even the vigorous health of “the Little Giant” succumbed to these assaults.  For a fortnight he was confined to his bed, rising only by sheer force of will to make a final plea for sanity, before his party took its suicidal plunge.  He spoke on the 22d of March under exceptional conditions.  In the expectation that he would speak in the forenoon, people thronged the galleries at an early hour, and refused to give up their seats, even when it was announced that the Senator from Illinois would not address the Senate until seven o ’clock in the evening.  When the hour came, crowds still held possession of the galleries, so that not even standing room was available.  The door-keepers wrestled in vain with an impatient throng without, until by motion of Senator Gwin, ladies were admitted to the floor of the chamber.  Even then, Douglas was obliged to pause several times, for the confusion around the doors to subside.[658] He spoke with manifest difficulty, but he was more defiant than ever.  His speech was at once a protest and a personal vindication.  Denial of the right of the administration to force the Lecompton constitution upon the people of Kansas, went hand in hand with a defense of his own Democracy.  Sentences culled here and there suggest not unfairly the stinging rebukes and defiant challenges that accentuated the none too coherent course of his speech: 

“I am told that this Lecompton constitution is a party test, a party measure; that no man is a Democrat who does not sanction it ...  Sir, who made it a party test?  Who made it a party measure?...  Who has interpolated this Lecompton constitution into the party platform?...  Oh! but we are told it is an Administration measure.  Because it is an Administration measure, does