The challenge contained in these words was not permitted to pass unanswered.  Davis replied with offensive references to the “swelling manner” and “egregious vanity” of the Senator from Illinois.  He resented such dictation.[837] On the following day, May 17th, an exciting passage-at-arms occurred between these representatives of the Northwest and the Southwest.  Douglas repeated his belief that disunion was the prompting motive which broke up the Charleston convention.  Davis resented the insinuation, with fervent protestations of affection for the Union of the States.  It was the Senator from Illinois, who, in his pursuit of power, had prevented unanimity, by trying to plant his theory upon the party.  The South would have no more to do with the “rickety, double-construed platform” of 1856.  “The fact is,” said Davis, “I have a declining respect for platforms.  I would sooner have an honest man on any sort of a rickety platform you could construct, than to have a man I did not trust on the best platform which could be made.  A good platform and an honest man on it is what we want."[838] Douglas reminded his opponent sharply that the bolters at Charleston seceded, not on the candidate, but on the platform.  “If the platform is not a matter of much consequence, why press that question to the disruption of the party?  Why did you not tell us in the beginning of this debate that the whole fight was against the man, and not upon the platform?"[839]

In the interval between the Charleston and the Baltimore conventions, the Davis resolutions were pressed to a vote in the Senate, with the purpose of shaping party opinion.  They passed by votes which gave a deceptive appearance of Democratic unanimity.  Only Senator Pugh parted company with his Democratic colleagues on the crucial resolution; yet he represented the popular opinion at the North.[840] The futility of these resolutions, so far as practical results were concerned, was demonstrated by the adoption of Clingman’s resolution, that the existing condition of the Territories did not require the intervention of Congress for the protection of property in slaves.[841] In other words, the South was insisting upon rights which were barren of practical significance.  Slave-holders were insisting upon the right to carry their slaves where local conditions were unfavorable, and where therefore they had no intention of going.[842]

The nomination of Lincoln rather than Seward, at the Republican convention in Chicago, was a bitter disappointment to those who felt that the latter was the real leader of the party of moral ideas, and that the rail-splitter was simply an “available” candidate.[843] But Douglas, with keener insight into the character of Lincoln, said to a group of Republicans at the Capitol, “Gentlemen, you have nominated a very able and a very honest man."[844] For the candidate of the new Constitutional Union party, which had rallied the politically unattached of various opinions in a convention at Baltimore, Douglas had no such words of praise, though he recognized John Bell as a Unionist above suspicion and as an estimable gentleman.