Meantime Douglas lent his aid to such legislative labors as the exigencies of the hour permitted.  Once again, he found himself acting with the Republicans to do justice to Kansas, for Kansas was now a suppliant for admission into the Union with a free constitution.  Again specious excuses were made for denying simple justice.  Toward the obstructionists, his old enemies, Douglas showed no rancor:  there was no time to lose in personalities.  “The sooner we close up this controversy the better, if we intend to wipe out the excited and irritated feelings that have grown out of it.  It will have a tendency to restore good feelings."[921] But not until the Southern senators had withdrawn, was Kansas admitted to the Union of the States, which was then hanging in the balance.

Whenever senators from the slave States could be induced to name their tangible grievances, and not to dwell merely upon anticipated injuries, they were wont to cite the Personal Liberty Acts.  In spite of his good intentions, Douglas was drawn into an altercation with Mason of Virginia, in which he cited an historic case where Virginia had been the offender.  Recovering himself, he said ingenuously, “I hope we are not to bandy these little cases backwards and forwards for the purpose of sectional irritation.  Let us rather meet the question, and give the Constitution the true construction, and allow all criminals to be surrendered according to the law of the State where the offense was committed."[922]

As evidence of his desire to remove this most tangible of Southern gravamina, Douglas introduced a supplementary fugitive slave bill on January 28th.[923] Its notable features were the provision for jury trial in a Federal court, if after extradition a fugitive should persist in claiming his freedom; and the provisions for the payment of damages to the claimant, if he should lose through violence a fugitive slave to whom he had a valid title.  The Federal government in turn might bring suit against the county where the rescue had occurred, and the county might reimburse itself by suing the offenders to the full amount of the damages paid.[924] Had this bill passed, it would have made good the most obvious defects in the much-defamed legislation of 1850; but the time had long since passed, when such concessions would satisfy the South.

Douglas had to bear many a gibe for his publicly expressed hopes of peace.  Mason denounced his letter to Virginia gentlemen as a “puny, pusillanimous attempt to hoodwink” the people of Virginia.  But Douglas replied with an earnest reiteration of his expectations.  Yet all depended, he admitted, on the action of Virginia and the border States.  For this reason he deprecated the uncompromising attitude of the senator from Virginia, when he said, “We want no concessions.”  Equally deplorable, he thought, was the spirit evinced by the senator from New Hampshire who applauded that regrettable remark.  “I never intend to give up the hope of saving