But Lincoln's judgment proved correct also: Douglas, by
resorting to the expedient of his "unfriendly legislation doctrine,"
forfeited his last chance of becoming President of the United States. He
might have hoped to win, by sufficient atonement, his pardon from the
South for his opposition to the Lecompton Constitution; but that he
taught the people of the Territories a trick by which they could defeat
what the proslavery men considered a constitutional right, and that he
called that trick lawful, this the slave power would never forgive. The
breach between the Southern and the Northern Democracy was thenceforth
irremediable and fatal.
The Presidential election of 1860 approached. The struggle in Kansas,
and the debates in Congress which accompanied it, and which not
unfrequently provoked violent outbursts, continually stirred the popular
excitement. Within the Democratic party raged the war of factions. The
national Democratic convention met at Charleston on the 23d of April,
1860. After a struggle of ten days between the adherents and the
opponents of Douglas, during which the delegates from the cotton States
had withdrawn, the convention adjourned without having nominated any
candidates, to meet again in Baltimore on the 18th of June.
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