What were the feelings of the individual who had been such a divisive force in the Charleston convention?  The country was not long left in doubt.  Douglas was quite ready to comment upon the outcome; and it needed only the bitter arraignment of his theories by Davis, to bring him armed cap-a-pie into the arena.

Aided by his friend Pugh, who read long extracts from letters and speeches, Douglas made a systematic review of Democratic principles and policy since 1848.  His object, of course, was to demonstrate his own consistency, and at the same time to convict his critics of apostasy from the party creed.  There was, inevitably, much tiresome repetition in all this.  It was when he directed his remarks to the issues at Charleston that Douglas warmed to his subject.  He refused to recognize the right of a caucus of the Senate or of the House, to prescribe new tests, to draft party platforms.  That was a task reserved, under our political system, for national conventions, made up of delegates chosen by the people.  Tried by the standard of the only Democratic organization competent to pronounce upon questions of party faith, he was no longer a heretic, no longer an outlaw from the Democratic party, no longer a rebel against the Democratic organization.  “The party decided at Charleston also, by a majority of the whole electoral college, that I was the choice of the Democratic party of America for the Presidency of the United States, giving me a majority of fifty votes over all other candidates combined; and yet my Democracy is questioned!” “But,” he added, and there is no reason to doubt his sincerity, “my friends who know me best know that I have no personal desire or wish for the nomination;... know that my name never would have been presented at Charleston, except for the attempt to proscribe me as a heretic, too unsound to be the chairman of a committee in this body, where I have held a seat for so many years without a suspicion resting on my political fidelity.  I was forced to allow my name to go there in self-defense; and I will now say that had any gentleman, friend or foe, received a majority of that convention over me, the lightning would have carried a message withdrawing my name from the convention."[835]

Douglas was ready to acquit his colleagues in the Senate of a purpose to dissolve the Union, but he did not hesitate to assert that such principles as Yancey had advocated at Charleston would lead “directly and inevitably” to a dissolution of the Union.  Why was the South so eager to repudiate the principle of non-intervention?  By it they had converted New Mexico into slave Territory; by it, in all probability, they would extend slavery into the northern States of Mexico, when that region should be acquired.  “Why,” he asked, “are you not satisfied with these practical results?  The only difference of opinion is on the judicial question, about which we agreed to differ—­which we never did decide; because, under the Constitution, no tribunal on earth but the Supreme Court could decide it.”  To commit the Democratic party to intervention was to make the party sectional and to invite never-ceasing conflict.  “Intervention, North or South, means disunion; non-intervention promises peace, fraternity, and perpetuity to the Union, and to all our cherished institutions."[836]