Douglas had a far more difficult task.  Unforeseen complications rapidly forced him to change his policy, to meet desertion and betrayal in his own ranks.  These were terrible years when fierce events followed one another in quick succession—­the rush of both slave-holders and abolitionists into Kansas; the cruel war along the Wakarusa River; the sack of Lawrence by the pro-slavery party; the massacre by John Brown at Pottawatomie; the diatribes of Sumner in the Senate; the assault on Sumner by Brooks.  In the midst of this carnival of ferocity came the Dred Scott decision, cutting under the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, denying to the people of a Territory the right to legislate on slavery, and giving to all slave-holders the right to settle with their slaves anywhere they pleased outside a Free State.  This famous decision repudiated Douglas’s policy of leaving all such questions to local autonomy and to private enterprise.  For a time Douglas made no move to save his policy.  But when President Buchanan decided to throw the influence of the Administration on the side of the pro-slavery party in Kansas, Douglas was up in arms.  When it was proposed to admit Kansas with a constitution favoring slavery, but which had not received the votes of a majority of the inhabitants, Douglas voted with the Republicans to defeat admission.  Whereupon the Democratic party machine and the Administration turned upon him without mercy.  He stood alone in a circle of enemies.  At no other time did he show so many of the qualities of a great leader.  Battling with Lincoln in the popular forum on the one hand, he was meeting daily on the other assaults by a crowd of brilliant opponents in Congress.  At the same time he was playing a consummate game of political strategy, struggling against immense odds to recover his hold on Illinois.  The crisis would come in 1858 when he would have to go before the Legislature for reelection.  He knew well enough who his opponent would be.  At every turn there fell across his path the shadow of a cool sinister figure, his relentless enemy.  It was Lincoln.  On the struggle with Lincoln his whole battle turned.

Abandoned by his former allies, his one hope was the retention of his constituency.  To discredit Lincoln, to twist and discredit all his arguments, was for Douglas a matter of life and death.  He struck frequently with great force, but sometimes with more fury than wisdom.  Many a time the unruffled coolness of Lincoln brought to nothing what was meant for a deadly thrust.  Douglas took counsel of despair and tried to show that Lincoln was preaching the amalgamation of the white and black races.  “I protest,” Lincoln replied, “against the counterfeit logic which says that because I do not want a black woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife.  I need not have her for either.  I can just leave her alone.  In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave