and the border slave States to Bell, he expressed the firm conviction that he would carry the rest of the Southern States and enough free States to be elected by the people.  Richardson had just returned from New England, equally confident that Douglas would carry Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.  If the election should go to the House of Representatives, Douglas calculated that Lincoln, Bell, and he would be the three candidates.  In any event, he was sure that Breckinridge and Lane had “no show.”  He enjoined his friends everywhere to treat the Bell and Everett men in a friendly way and to cultivate good relations with them, “for they are Union men.”  But, he added, “we can have no partnership with the Bolters.”  “Now organize and rally in Illinois and the Northwest.  The chances in our favor are immense in the East.  Organize the State!”

Buoyed up by these sanguine expectations, Douglas undertook a tour through New England, not to make stump speeches, he declared, but to visit and enhearten his followers.  Yet at every point on the way to Boston, he was greeted with enthusiasm; and whenever time permitted he responded with brief allusions to the political situation.  As the guest of Harvard University, at the alumni dinner, he was called upon to speak—­not, to be sure, as a candidate for the presidency, but as one high in the councils of the nation, and as a generous contributor to the founding of an educational institution in Chicago.[854] A visit to Bunker Hill suggested the great principle for which our Revolutionary fathers fought and for which all good Democrats were now contending.[855] At Springfield, too, he harked back to the Revolution and to the beginnings of the great struggle for control of domestic concerns.[856]

Along the route from Boston to Saratoga, he was given ovations, and his diffidence about making stump speeches lessened perceptibly.[857] At Troy, he made a political speech in his own vigorous style, remarking apologetically that if he did not return home soon, he would “get to making stump speeches before he knew it."[858] Passing through Vermont, he visited the grave of his father and the scenes of his childhood; and here and there, as he told the people of Concord with a twinkle in his eye, he spoke “a little just for exercise.”  Providence recalled the memory of Roger Williams and the principles for which he suffered—­principles so nearly akin to those for which Democrats to-day were laboring.  By this time the true nature of this pilgrimage was apparent to everybody.  It was the first time in our history that a presidential candidate had taken the stump in his own behalf.  There was bitter criticism on the part of those who regretted the departure from decorous precedent.[859] When Douglas reached Newport for a brief sojourn, the expectation was generally entertained that he would continue in retirement for the remainder of the campaign.