National politics made strange bed-fellows in the winter of 1857-8.  Douglas consorting with Republicans and flouting the administration, was a rare spectacle.  There was a moment in this odd alliance when it seemed likely to become more than a temporary fusion of interests.  The need of concerted action brought about frequent conferences, in which the distrust of men like Wilson and Colfax was, in a measure, dispelled by the engaging frankness of their quondam opponent.[669] Douglas intimated that in all probability he could not act with his party in future.[670] He assured Wilson that he was in the fight to stay—­in his own words, “he had checked his baggage and taken a through ticket."[671] There was an odd disposition, too, on the part of some Republicans to indorse popular sovereignty, now that it seemed likely to exclude slavery from the Territories.[672] There was even a rumor afloat that the editor of the New York Tribune favored Douglas for the presidency.[673] On at least two occasions, Greeley was in conference with Senator Douglas at the latter’s residence.  To the gossiping public this was evidence enough that the rumor was correct.  And it may well be that Douglas dallied with the hope that a great Constitutional Union party might be formed.[674] But he could hardly have received much encouragement from the Republicans, with whom he was consorting, for so far from losing their political identity, they calculated upon bringing him eventually within the Republican fold.[675]

A Constitutional Union party, embracing Northern and Southern Unionists of Whig or Democratic antecedents, might have supplied the gap left by the old Whig party.  That such a party would have exercised a profound nationalizing influence can scarcely be doubted.  Events might have put Douglas at the head of such a party.  But, in truth, such an outcome of the political chaos which then reigned, was a remote possibility.

The matter of immediate concern to Douglas was the probable attitude of his allies toward his re-election to the Senate.  There was a wide divergence among Republican leaders; but active politicians like Greeley and Wilson, who were not above fighting the devil with his own weapons, counselled their Illinois brethren not to oppose his return.[676] There was no surer way to disrupt the Democratic party.  In spite of these admonitions, the Republicans of Illinois were bent upon defeating Douglas.  He had been too uncompromising and bitter an opponent of Trumbull and other “Black Republicans” to win their confidence by a few months of conflict against Lecomptonism.  “I see his tracks all over our State,” wrote the editor of the Chicago Tribune, “they point only in one direction; not a single toe is turned toward the Republican camp.  Watch him, use him, but do not trust him—­not an inch."[677] Moreover, a little coterie of Springfield politicians had a candidate of their own for United States senator in the person of Abraham Lincoln.[678]