the past."[981] When the people of the North read the proclamation in the newspapers, on the following morning, a million men were cheered and sustained in their loyalty to the Union by the intelligence that their great leader had subordinated all lesser ends of party to the paramount duty of maintaining the Constitution of the fathers.  To his friends in Washington, Douglas said unhesitatingly, “We must fight for our country and forget all differences.  There can be but two parties—­the party of patriots and the party of traitors.  We belong to the first."[982] And to friends in Missouri where disunion sentiment was rife, he telegraphed, “I deprecate war, but if it must come I am with my country, and for my country, under all circumstances and in every contingency.  Individual policy must be subordinated to the public safety."[983]

From this day on, Douglas was in frequent consultation with the President.  The sorely tried and distressed Lincoln was unutterably grateful for the firm grip which this first of “War Democrats” kept upon the progress of public opinion in the irresolute border States.  It was during one of these interviews, after the attack upon the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment in the streets of Baltimore, that Douglas urged upon the President the possibility of bringing troops by water to Annapolis, thence to Washington, thus avoiding further conflict in the disaffected districts of Maryland.[984] Eventually the Eighth Massachusetts and the Seventh New York reached Washington by this route, to the immense relief of the President and his cabinet.

Before this succor came to the alarmed capital, Douglas had left the city for the West.  He had received intimations that Egypt in his own State showed marked symptoms of disaffection.  The old ties of blood and kinship of the people of southern Illinois with their neighbors in the border States were proving stronger than Northern affiliations.  Douglas wielded an influence in these southern, Democratic counties, such as no other man possessed.  Could he not best serve the administration by bearding disunionism in its den?  Believing that Cairo, at the confluence of the Mississippi and the Ohio, was destined to be a strategic point of immense importance in the coming struggle, and that the fate of the whole valley depended upon the unwavering loyalty of Illinois, Douglas laid the matter before Lincoln.  He would go or stay in Washington, wherever Lincoln thought he could do the most good.  Probably neither then realized the tremendous nature of the struggle upon which the country had entered; yet both knew that the Northwest would be the makeweight in the balance for the Union; and that every nerve must be strained to hold the border States of Kentucky and Missouri.  Who could rouse the latent Unionism of the Northwest and of the border States like Douglas?  Lincoln advised him to go.  There was a quick hand-grasp, a hurried farewell, and they parted never to meet again.[985]