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 ADDRESSES 
 
 ■ 
 
 DEATH OF HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS, 
 
 DELIVERED IN TUB 
 
 SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
 
 TUESDAY, JULY 9, 1861. 
 
 WASHINGTON : 
 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
 
 1861. 
 
m- 
 
 IN THE HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES, 
 
 Tuesday, July 16, 1S6L 
 
 Resolved, That there be printed and bound, under the direction 
 of the Committee on Printing, twenty thousand copies of the 
 Obituary Addresses delivered in the Senate and House on the death 
 of the Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, for the use of the Members of 
 this House. 
 
 Attest : 
 
 EM. ETIIER1DGE, 
 
 Clerk. 
 
i _ — __________ — _ __p 
 
 ADDRESSES 
 
 OX THE 
 
 DEATH OF HON, STEPHEN A, DOUGLAS, 
 
 IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 Tuesday, July 9, 18G1. 
 
 Address of Mr. Trumbull, of Illinois. 
 
 Mr. President : At the close of the last day in the 
 month of May, 18G1, on entering the city of Chicago 
 after a brief visit to this place, I was informed by a 
 friend who met me at the depot that my colleague in 
 this body, Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, was dying, and 
 would not probably survive an hour. As I approached 
 the Tremont House, in which he lay, I found the side- 
 walks and the vestibule of the hotel thronged with 
 people anxiously inquiring after the condition of the 
 dying man. The next morning it was some relief to 
 know that he was still alive, though it was said with 
 little hope of a recovery. He continued in this condi- 
 tion the whole of that day and the next, when the 
 public began to entertain expectations of his restoration 
 to health. The fears and hopes of the immediate 
 attendants, friends, and relatives, who watched over him 
 during those awful hours of suspense, and till nine 
 
 _t- 
 
OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 o'clock on the morning of the 3d day of June, when 
 he expired, I have no disposition, had I the power, to 
 portray. The solemn duty of announcing my late col- 
 league's decease imposes upon me no such obligation; 
 and God grant that the wounds then inflicted may not 
 be opened afresh. 
 
 Mr. Douglas was born at Brandon, Vermont, April 
 23, 1813, being but forty-eight years of age at the time 
 of his decease. He was descended from Puritan ances- 
 tors by both his parents. Of one — his father — he was 
 bereft in infancy. His mother still survives. After 
 acquiring such an education as could be obtained at the 
 common school and the academy, not having the means 
 to perfect it by a collegiate course, at the early age of 
 twenty he emigrated to the State of Illinois, where he 
 taught school for a short time, and, in 1834, was ad- 
 mitted to the bar to practice law. In 1835 he was 
 made State's attorney; and from that day till the day. 
 of his death was almost constantly engaged in the 
 public service of either the State or the Nation. He 
 held the offices of State's attorney, representative in 
 the legislature, secretary of state, and justice of the 
 supreme court in the State of Illinois, and also that of 
 register of the land office at Springfield, in that State, 
 by appointment from Mr. Van Buren, before he entered 
 the Councils of the Nation as a representative in the 
 other branch of Congress, in 1843. 
 
 He was three times elected by the people to the 
 House of Representatives, and thrice by the legislature 
 of his State to a seat in this body; and was continuously 
 a member of one House or the other, from his first 
 entry, in 1843, till his death — four years of his last scna- 
 
JZ? 
 
 9 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 
 
 torial term still remaining unexpired. From this brief 
 history, it appears that Judge Douglas devoted more 
 than half his life, and all the years of his manhood, to 
 the public service; and so prominent was the part he 
 took in public affairs, so intimate the connection between 
 his own rise and fame and the progress and renown of 
 his State and the Nation, that the history of the one 
 would be incomplete without that of the other. No 
 great public movement has taken place since he entered 
 public life which has not felt the influence of his will 
 and his intellect ; perhaps no one man since the govern- 
 ment began ever exercised a greater influence over the f 
 masses of the people than he. No one ever gathered 
 around him more devoted followers or more enthusiastic 
 admirers, who were willing to do and dare more for 
 another, than w r ere his friends for him. 
 
 What this charm was which so linked the popular 
 heart to him that it never faltered even under circum- 
 stances apparently the most discouraging, seems almost, 
 mysterious. This feeling of attachment followed him 
 to the grave, and was never more manifest than after 
 his decease, when he had become alike indifferent to 
 the adulation of friends or the censure of enemies, and 
 when his power had forever departed either to reward 
 the one or punish the other. It was then, if ever, as 
 his body lay lifeless in the city of Chicago, that the 
 true feeling of a people would manifest itself; and it 
 did manifest itself, not only there, but throughout the 
 Nation, to an extent scarcely, if ever, witnessed since 
 the death of the Father of his Country. The badges 
 of mourning were seen displayed not only from the 
 public buildings and the mansions of the rich, but the 
 
 -m 
 
m- 
 
 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 cottages of the poor, the carts of the workmen, and the 
 implements of the laborer, were everywhere to be seen 
 draped with the habiliments of woe, all the more touch- 
 ing as they were simple and plain. The people's favorite 
 in life, he was followed by their lamentations in death. 
 
 But Judge Douglas possessed not only the power of 
 fascinating the masses; he was a marked man wherever 
 he went and with whomsoever he associated. No matter 
 whether as a lawyer at the bar; as a judge on the 
 bench; at an agricultural society, where the skilled in 
 mechanic and industrial pursuits were assembled ; at 
 some college commencement, where the learned were 
 convened ; in the other House of Congress, in the midst 
 of the tumult and commotion of its most excited de- 
 bates ; in this more deliberative body, or before the 
 popular assembly of the people ; wherever he appeared, 
 he always shone conspicuous. He was one of the few 
 men who have proved themselves equal to .every emer- 
 gency in which they have been called upon to act. I 
 remember well when he was transferred from the House 
 of Representatives to the Senate; his enemies predicted 
 and his friends feared that his talents were not fitted 
 for this body, and that he would be unable to sustain 
 the reputation he had acquired in the more popular < 
 branch. He entered here when the great men whose 
 talents and learning and eloquence have shed an undying 
 lustre on the American Senate — when Clay, Webster, 
 Benton, and Calhoun, in the vigor of manhood, full of 
 wisdom and experience — were still here, and proved 
 himself no mean compeer of either. His speech of 
 1850, wherein he met and refuted the positions of the 
 great Carolinian, upon the very points which have been 
 
 Wr 
 
J/9 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 
 
 made the pretexts of the southern rebellion, was per- 
 haps the greatest effort of his life. 
 
 The distinguishing characteristics of Judge Douglas, 
 which enabled him to cope successfully with the greatest 
 intellects of the age, were fearlessness, quickness of 
 apprehension, a strong will, and indomitable energy. 
 He knew no such word as fail. He had full c onfidenc e 
 in himself, and of his ability to accomplish whatever he 
 undertook. In controversy he was unsurpassed, and 
 without pretension either to accomplished scholarship 
 or eloquence, there was a fullness in his voice, an 
 earnestness in his maimer, a directness in his argument, 
 and a determination in his every look and action, which 
 never failed to command attention ; and, often electri- 
 fying the multitude, would elicit unbounded applause. 
 This crowded Chamber has often been witness of the 
 delight with which the multitude hung upon his words. 
 
 Of the political course of Judge Douglas, and its 
 effect on the country, it does not become me to speak ; 
 but I may be permitted to say, that when a portion of 
 the Opposition to his Administration assumed the posi- 
 tion of armed resistance to its authority, and attempted 
 by force to dismember the Republic, he at once took 
 sides with his country. His course had much to do in 
 producing that unanimity in support of the government 
 which is now seen throughout the loyal States. The 
 sublime spectacle of twenty million people rising as 
 one man in vindication of constitutional liberty and free 
 government, when assailed by misguided rebels and 
 plotting traitors, is to a considerable extent due to his 
 eiforts. His magnanimous and patriotic course in this 
 trying hour of his country's destiny was the crowning 
 
•m 
 
 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 act of his life. All his life-long a devoted partisan of 
 the Democratic faith, he did not hesitate, when his 
 country was in peril chiefly from those who had formerly 
 been his political associates, to give his powerful support 
 and the aid of his great influence to the government, 
 though controlled by political adversaries. If in thus 
 discharging his duty Judge Douglas manifested a dis- 
 interestedness, a magnanimity, and a patriotism which 
 entitle him to credit, it is but just to say that he was 
 met by his political opponents in a similar spirit. Per- 
 haps the highest compliment ever paid him, and one 
 which few statesmen have ever received, was that ex- 
 tended to him by the legislature of Illinois on his return 
 to the State after the close of the last session of the 
 Senate. That body, controlled in both its branches by 
 his political adversaries, unanimously invited him to ad- 
 dress them on the condition of the country ; and nobly 
 did he respond to the invitation. His address delivered 
 on that occasion, which, by order of the legislature, was 
 extensively circulated through the State, will ever re- 
 main an enduring monument to his fame, and an example 
 worthy of all imitation of the sacrifice of pride to prin- 
 ciple, of self to country, and of party to patriotism. 
 
 In social life Judge Douglas was genial and attractive. 
 Open, frank, and generous almost to a fault, he never 
 failed to exercise a large influence over all with whom 
 he came in contact ; and few men have ever had more 
 numerous or more devoted personal friends. 
 
 Such were some of the characteristics of our departed 
 brother. Inheriting neither wealth nor position from 
 an illustrious ancestry, he acquired both by the active, 
 energetic, laborious, and never-ceasing use of those 
 
 m- 
 
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 9 
 
 I noble faculties with which he was endowed by the 
 Great Author of all ; and if the wealth he at one time 
 possessed does not remain to those who were dependent 
 on him, it is because the energies of his great mind 
 were devoted rather to the country and to the whole 
 people than to providing for his own. Laboring under 
 the defects of an imperfect education in early life, his 
 
 (industry and his energy supplied the want. He was 
 emphatically a self-made man ; and the history of his 
 . life affords a striking illustration of what industry and 
 1 energy, united with a strong will, can accomplish. 
 
 But that iron will which had so often met and over- 
 come obstacles was compelled to yield at last to the 
 King of Terrors; for it is appointed unto man once to 
 die. Only a few months ago Judge Douglas, in vigor- 
 orous health, went forth from this Chamber to rally his 
 countrymen to the support of the Constitution and the 
 laws, and then to die — to die at the very zenith of his 
 fame, when a whole loyal people, forgetting past political 
 ties, stood ready to do him honor. His death, in the 
 full vigor of manhood, should admonish us who are left 
 that here we have no abiding place ; it may be not even 
 for the brief periods for which we are chosen members 
 of this body. 
 
 Mr. Douglas was not a professor of religion in the 
 sense of being attached to any particular church ; but 
 in his will, executed several years before his decease, 
 after providing for his worldly affairs, he says : " I commit 
 my soul to God, and ask the prayers of the good for 
 His divine blessing;" thus leaving on record the evidence 
 of his trust in the Supreme Ruler of the world. He 
 leaves surviving him a widow, and two children by a 
 
 m 
 
a 
 
 10 
 
 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 former marriage. Into the domestic circle broken by his 
 departure I do not propose to enter, nor to attempt by any 
 poor words of mine to administer consolation to those 
 who were bound to him by the closest of ties. How 
 unutterable must be the anguish of the aged mother, 
 the sister, the children, and the bosom companion of him 
 whose departure has clothed a whole nation in mourn- 
 ing! I can only point them to Him who has promised 
 to be a father to the fatherless and the widow's God. 
 
 On the 17th day of June last all that remained of 
 our departed brother was interred near the city of 
 Chicago, on the shore of Lake Michigan, whose pure 
 waters, often lashed into fury by contending elements, 
 are a fitting memento of the stormy and boisterous 
 political tumults through which the great popular orator 
 so often passed. There the people, whose idol he was, 
 will erect a monument to his memory; and there, in 
 the soil of the State which so long, without interruption, 
 and never to a greater extent than at the moment of 
 his death, gave him her confidence, let his remains re- 
 pose so long as free government shall last, and the 
 Constitution he loved shall endure. 
 
 I offer the following resolutions : 
 
 Resolved, That the members of the Senate, from a sincere desire 
 of showing every mark of respect due to the memory of Hon. 
 Stephen A. Douglas, deceased, late a Senator from the State of 
 Illinois, will go into mourning by wearing crape on the left arm for 
 thirty days. 
 
 Resolved, unanimously, That, as an additional mark of respect 
 for the memory of Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, the Senate do now 
 adjourn. 
 
 Ordered, That the Secretary communicate these resolutions to 
 the House of llepresentatives. 
 
 e- 
 
 -m 
 
©r 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 11 
 
 Address of Mr. McDougall, of California. 
 
 Mr. President : I received the first intelligence of 
 the decease of the late Senator from Illinois as the pilot 
 came on board our ship on my recent arrival off the 
 harbor of New York. The universal and solemn exhi- 
 bition of the profoundest sorrow on the part of all the 
 companions of my voyage, embracing men of all classes, 
 all opinions, and all sections, fully showed that the dead 
 Senator had filled a large place in the heart of the 
 American people. All seemed deeply to feel that 
 another of our great men — one of those who had most 
 and best illustrated our republican institutions — had left 
 us forever for the companionship of his fathers; gone, 
 too, at a time when his great qualities for counsel and 
 conduct were most needed by his country. 
 
 But as, powerless for the moment to resist the tide of 
 emotions I bowed my head in silent grief, it came to 
 me that the Senator had lived to witness the opening of 
 the present unholy war upon our government; that, 
 witnessing it from the capitol of his State, as his highest 
 and best position, he had sent forth a war cry worthy 
 of that Douglass who, as ancient legends tell, with the 
 welcome of the knightly Andalusian king, was told: 
 
 "Take thou the leading of the van, 
 And charge the Moors amain; 
 There is not such a lance as thine 
 In all the hosts of Spain." 
 
 Those trumpet notes, with a continuous swell, are 
 sounding still throughout all the borders of our land. 
 
 ID- 
 
m — — ■ _____ _g 
 
 12 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 I heard them upon the mountains and in the valleys of 
 the far State from whence I come. They have commu- 
 nicated faith and strength to millions. 
 
 He lived to witness his great appeal to a nation of 
 freemen answered by unnumbered legions of patriotic 
 men, and to feel and understand, with a confident assur- 
 ance, that the mad assault made by misguided men upon 
 the integrity of our Union, instead of resulting in dis- 
 union and anarchy, would establish our institutions upon 
 deeper and firmer foundations, and leave a certain guar- 
 antee of peace, liberty, and unity to our children and 
 children's children to remote generations. He lived to 
 have, by the majesty and power of his last great effort, 
 risen above the reach of malice or detraction, and to 
 have secured for his memory the love and admiration 
 of all men who love freedom here, everywhere, and 
 forever. I ceased to grieve for Douglas. The last 
 voice of the dead Douglas I felt to be stronger than 
 the voice of multitudes of living men. 
 
 While paying the tribute of my respect to the 
 memory of Mr. Douglas, I prefer speaking simply of 
 the man as I knew him. The record of his public life 
 is a part of the written history of our country. 
 
 It is now twenty-four years since I first met Mr. 
 Douglas ; he then a young lawyer of established repu- 
 tation for ability; I about attempting success in the 
 same profession. Of the same political opinions, en- 
 gaged in the same pursuits, and of similar social rela- 
 tions, from the first we became friends. It is to me a 
 matter of sincere satisfaction that I am able to reflect 
 that that friendship continued, without a single interrup- 
 tion, for near a quarter of a century, and until the Great 
 
 — -— — — .(jap 
 
■?3 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 13 
 
 Ruler severed it, to be renewed, I trust, in the laud of 
 spirits. 
 
 At a very early period Mr. Douglas turned his 
 attention to public affairs; and I soon learned to place 
 great reliance upon his sagacity and judgment. As 
 years passed by that confidence increased ; and if 
 among the men I have known in public life I have 
 trusted him most, I can at the same time say I knew 
 him best. 
 
 That he possessed commanding talents is now every- 
 where admitted. In my judgment, he was in his time 
 the greatest living master of forensic discourse. Scorn- 
 ing ornament, simple, vigorous, and correct in language 
 and in manner, he was a powerful as well as just 
 reasoner, from the very necessities of his intellectual 
 and moral organization. He possessed a true as well 
 as a large and powerful mind. 
 
 His enemies have charged him with ambition — with 
 excess of ambition. He was ambitious ; but it was a 
 great and a just ambition. He was ambitious in this, 
 that he loved to engage in and to achieve great enter- 
 prises. If he aspired to places of power, the position 
 of power was never the goal with him. He sought 
 power that he might accomplish great things for his 
 country and his age. 
 
 The architect of his own fortunes, as well as the 
 architect of his own opinions, the surroundings and 
 discipline of his early life, together with his naturally 
 bold and self-reliant character, gave to him progressive 
 rather than conservative proclivities, and led him, from 
 the outstart of life, to espouse the opinions and policies 
 of that great Democratic party, in the councils and 
 
. , — — ___ __ , — m 
 
 14 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 movements of wliich lie ever aiterward acted so large 
 a part. 
 
 His promptness in judgment and boldness and energy 
 in conduct would have made him a leader of men in 
 any age or nation ; and while he possessed the prompti- 
 tude and courage of a great leader, he united with it a 
 capacity for counsel ecpial to his capacity for action. 
 
 Considered opinion will, I have no doubt, yield to him 
 a place second to that of no man of his immediate 
 time. 
 
 The great feature of the public policies of Mr. 
 Douglas is to be found in his devotion to the organiza- 
 tion and development of the States and Territories of 
 the West — that great country, which, by its marvelous 
 progress, has given the best assurance of the vital power 
 of our republic. Indeed, from the period when as a 
 youth he stood on the green hills of his native Vermont, 
 it would seem as if, obedient to some rudimcutal law 
 related to the motion of the sun in heaven or the earth 
 upon its axis, his look was westward ; and although he 
 knew nothing of the fabled islands of the western sea 
 which ancient songs and golden sunsets gilded, he saw 
 in the new land yet unconquered from the wilderness 
 the theatre in which to realize his young hopes and 
 indulge the aspirations of his young ambition. During 
 all his life his earnest eye was on the great West, while 
 others of our statesmen knew more of the intrigues of 
 the courts of Europe than of the important interests 
 springing up beyond the Alleghanies. To those inter- 
 ests — their comprehension and advancement — he de- 
 voted himself with an unwavering zeal. Nor were his 
 labors and interests confined by the valley of the Illinois 
 
 (3- 
 
s^ 
 
 or the great basin of the Mississippi. I have known no 
 man in public or private life who was so thoroughly 
 conversant with or who interested himself so much in 
 our possessions on the Pacific. He was the first person 
 within my knowledge to earnestly advocate the con- 
 struction of a railway from the Mississippi river to the 
 bay of San Francisco. This was a favorite enterprise 
 with him years before we had acquired California from 
 Mexico. 
 
 But the relations of Mr. Douglas to the States and 
 Territories of the West — his labors for their material 
 and political interest — are part of the history of the 
 country. On the shores of the Pacific the intelligence 
 of his decease will put a whole people in mourning. 
 
 Mr. Douglas was a courageous, magnanimous, true, 
 and great man. I loved and honored him while living ; 
 I love and honor his memory dead. 
 
 Mr. President, I second the resolutions by the honor- 
 able Senator from Illinois. 
 
 Address of Mr. Collamer, of Vermont. 
 
 Mr. President: Stephen A. Douglas was a native 
 of Vermont, and she claims to utter a word on the 
 occasion of this solemn announcement of his decease. 
 However much a majority of her people may have 
 often, and perhaps generally, disagreed with his political 
 positions and measures, yet they duly appreciate the 
 strong points of his character, the elevated position he 
 
m ^ — — - — ^ ■ f 
 
 1G OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 has occupied, and the extensive influence he has wielded 
 in this nation, and cherish pride in him as one of their 
 sons. That a poor orphan boy from the Green moun- 
 tains could peaceably accomplish all this, is to that people 
 not merely a matter of wonder or admiration of his 
 personal resolution and ability, but an inspiring and 
 brilliant manifestation of the generous liberality of our 
 free institutions, opening the avenues of enterprise to 
 success and elevation to the effort and energy of all, 
 however humble. 
 
 Brilliant and commanding as have been the positions 
 and parts which he has performed on the political 
 theatre of this nation, it is strikingly observable in how 
 short a time it was accomplished. His whole course 
 in the national councils was confined to a period of less 
 than twenty years. In that short period, laboring in 
 the Democratic party, he succeeded in securing to him- 
 self the sympathy and affection of the great body of the 
 masses of that long-dominant party, and held their hearts 
 in his hand. How generous and cordial must have 
 been the spirit of the man to secure to himself so 
 extensive, so confiding, and devoted attachments ! 
 
 The first great ingredient in the composition of his 
 success was, that he was not merely with the masses 
 of the people, but was of them. The p eople submit with 
 cheerfulness to leadership and control if it is of their 
 own creation: ;m<l Mr. Douglas was not great by adven- 
 titious circumstances beyond their control. This, his 
 normal character, was never essentially modified by any 
 sophistications of education, which with him was very 
 limited; and he fully appreciated through life, as an 
 element of his strength, and often proudly alluded to, 
 
 -:□ 
 
-a 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 17 
 
 his earl}- mechanic service as fixing his identity with 
 the masses of the people. 
 
 Another element of his success is found in his indomi- 
 table energy and perseverance. This is too universally 
 understood to require remark. It was said of old that 
 the gods help those who help themselves, and men 
 generally concur in like conduct. 
 
 It has been truly said that "much study makes a wise 
 man, much writing a correct man, and much speaking a 
 ready man." The last of these propositions is most 
 true of controversial speaking; and of that Mr. Douglas 
 was both an example and an illustration. Much has been 
 said of his power of debate as a point in his superiority 
 and an instrument of his elevation. As a public speaker, 
 he was almost exclusively practiced as an advocate and 
 champion of the Democratic party, whose principles 
 and doctrines he never questioned. He thus became 
 disciplined in occupying and defending positions rather 
 than in selecting them. In this he became dexterous 
 and adroit to an unusual and almost wonderful degree 
 in all the skill of forensic gladiatorship. As the posi- 
 tions of his party were, with him, unquestionable and 
 axiomatic truths, he regarded everything opposed to 
 them as false and unfounded. With this habit of mind, 
 it became to him almost impossible ever to receive or 
 appreciate, believe or present, the statement or argument 
 of his opponent in any other light but the one which 
 would destroy their force or enable himself to answer 
 them. His persistence was unrelenting, very seldom 
 convinced of error, and never betraying a consciousness 
 of being vanquished. 
 
 In contributing to the repeal of the Missouri compro- 
 
 o- 
 
Gi- 
 
 lS OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 mise — that prolific source of vast political complications 
 and consequences — it was sanctified to him by his cher- 
 ished principle that the people were to be left " perfectly 
 free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in 
 their own way ;" and though too slow to believe the bor- 
 der-ruffian violence by which the people of Kansas were 
 subjugated, yet, when violence and fraud culminated in 
 that great national swindle, the Lecompton constitution, 
 he met and exposed it with the frankness and decision 
 of a just and high-minded patriot. 
 
 Mr. Douglas supported the Democratic party as a 
 national party. His attachments and sympathies were 
 with the nation and its institutions which cherished him; 
 and his ambition or aspiration was to be President of 
 the United States, not of only a part of it. His defeat 
 was not by the body of his party, but by the conspiracy 
 of men long leaders in that party, no less ambitious 
 than himself, but enemies of the nation, its institutions, 
 and its flag. 
 
 He became what he was, mainly through his own 
 exertions ; and the fact that they enabled him to acquire 
 the distinction he possessed was due to the liberal 
 institutions of this government: as to all which he was 
 neither insensible nor ungrateful. When the southern 
 traitors proceeded to the dismemberment of this govern- 
 ment by open war, he, laying aside the party differences 
 which separated him from the Executive, promptly, and 
 with frank, patriotic devotion, tendered to the Executive 
 his services and influence to sustain the government in 
 the hour of its peril. I say "its peril," as it has long \ 
 since outgrown all apprehension of foreign invasion ; and 
 domestic convulsions and internal war is its last trial. 
 
— — — — ■ — — — m 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 19 
 
 Into this service lie entered with his usual devotion, 
 activity, and eloquence, until arrested by fatal disease. 
 
 He has departed to his long home in the meridian of 
 his manhood, and at a juncture in which he might have 
 been of more than ordinary service to the country. 
 Human judgment might say his death was untimely 
 and premature. Human judgment is quite too feeble 
 for such a subject ; but how can we, even in human 
 judgment, regard his departure as premature whose 
 last public act was the crowning glory of his earthly 
 career. 
 
 Address of Mr. Nesmith, of Oregon. 
 
 Mr. President: Though my personal acquaintance 
 with Mr. Douglas was brief, it was of a nature to 
 inspire me with admiration of his character, and fill 
 my heart with gratitude for acts of personal kindness 
 extended to me when I arrived in this capitol for the 
 first time in January last. 
 
 My silence on this occasion would not only do violence 
 to my own feelings, but would be in sad contrast with 
 the sorrowful emotions of the people whom I, in part, 
 represent, and who have just cause to mourn the loss 
 of a friend and benefactor. 
 
 By the side of Illinois, Oregon claims the position of 
 chief mourner at the portals of the tomb of the great 
 Douglas. From the commencement of his congressional 
 career to the day of his death we had no such devoted 
 friend and able advocate. In the contest growing out of 
 our boundary question, in 1846, he was a strenuous 
 
 _ , , — _ , — d 
 
20 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 advocate of our territorial integrity; and in the same 
 year he reported a bill in the House of Representatives 
 to give us a territorial organization. Again, in 1847, in 
 tliis body, he rported another bill for the same purpose. 
 He was also an efficient advocate of our admission as a 
 State of the Union. His voice was always raised in our 
 behalf, and in behalf of humanity, when we called upon 
 Congress for protection against the savages who sur- 
 rounded us, or for indemnification for losses suffered at 
 their hands. During the long period that he was chair- 
 man of the Committee on Territories, Oregon Territory 
 never appealed to him in vain; while your records show 
 that we have been the constant recipients of his aid since 
 our admission as a State. 
 
 In addition to the debt of gratitude which we owe 
 for his public services in our behalf, his memory will 
 long be cherished in the • hearts of many of the early 
 settlers in Oregon, who were his neighbors, friends, and 
 constituents in Illinois. 
 
 These considerations, Mr. President, cause us to 
 appreciate the melancholy fact that we have been 
 deprived of a patron, friend, and benefactor. We are 
 sadly conscious that our friend has fallen, and those of 
 us who recognised him as our party chieftain, and were 
 proud to award him the position in politics and states- 
 manship which his great Scottish namesake once held 
 as the gallant leader of his clansmen in war, can hardly 
 realize that we have listened to his slogan for the last 
 time. 
 
 Inexorable death has paralyzed that gigantic intellect, 
 but the memory of its noble achievements will never 
 die; and millions yet unborn, while struggling with 
 
 ®— ■ i 
 
n- 
 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 21 
 
 adversity, will be pointed to his noble career as a beacon 
 light to guide them in the pathway of honorable useful- 
 ness and patriotic renown. 
 
 "In stilly thought, and in bewildering fight, 
 A clone! by day, a pillar'd flame by night, 
 He'll point us onward, onward to the goal; 
 Leading on legions with his vast control ; 
 Implanting truth, the idol of his soul." 
 
 In our present unfortunate difficulties Mr. Douglas 
 rose above the partisan; and early in the last session, 
 just after a heated political contest, he voluntarily de- 
 clared that bygones with him should be forgotten, while 
 his energies were devoted to the preservation of the 
 Union which he loved so well. He resorted to every 
 honorable expedient to avert from his country the 
 horrors of sectional strife, and the shedding of fraternal 
 blood, until forbearance ceased to be a virtue, and until 
 treason, with unparalleled audacity, threatened the very 
 existence of the government. It was then that he 
 appealed in patriotic language to the gallant sons of his 
 own State and the great Northwest to rally in defence 
 of the Union, the Constitution, and the laws, though 
 under the administration of a President whose advent to 
 power he had opposed with all the energy of his mighty 
 intellect. Less patriotic partisans have been known, 
 while smarting under defeat, to contribute to the over- 
 throw of a government which they were not permitted 
 to administer. By his voluntary acts he furnished the 
 strongest possible evidence that with him the preservation 
 of the Union and the Constitution were paramount to 
 all other considerations. His memory will be held in 
 reverence so long as the history of our government is 
 
 & 
 
m — — — — ® 
 
 22 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 preserved, and while a single human mind is imbued 
 with a belief in the capacity of man for self-govern- 
 ment. 
 
 It is a source of gratification to know that the manly 
 courage and heroic fortitude which so eminently charac- 
 terized our friend in life, did not forsake him in the hour 
 of his greatest trial. A consciousness of his own rectitude 
 of purpose during a well spent life inspired him with the 
 courage to meet the invitable fate which awaits us all, 
 and to look with composure upon the valley and shadow 
 of death. 
 
 Mr. President, in common with the people of Oregon, 
 I mourn the loss of our benefactor. As an humble 
 member of a powerful political organization, in common 
 with thousands, I mourn the loss of our gallant chieftain 
 and party leader, under whose proud banner we fought 
 and followed in the forlorn hope. 
 
 I mourn the loss of a kind-hearted, generous, and 
 noble personal friend who gave me counsel and advice. 
 Yet more, I mourn the irreparable loss which the nation 
 and the Union sustain in being deprived of the patriotic 
 counsels of his heart in this the hour of our greatest 
 peril. 
 
 Address of Mr. Browning, of Illinois. 
 
 Mr. President: I appear here as the successor of 
 one who was long a distinguished member of this very 
 distinguished body, and who, since your last adjournment, 
 has finished his course on earth, and crossed the mystic 
 boundary which separates time from eternity. 
 
 Mr 
 

 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 
 
 The melancholy duty of announcing the death of Hon. 
 Stephen A. Douglas has already been impressively 
 performed by my colleague. I desire to say how truly 
 Illinois, the loved State of his adoption, deplores his 
 loss, and how profoundly the nation participates in the 
 bereavement. 
 
 For many years past, the life of Senator Douglas has 
 been intimately and thoroughly identified with the history 
 of the United States. His was a prominent and con- 
 spicuous part in the great drama of human affairs; and 
 he associated his name, for good or evil, with every great 
 measure of the last decade affecting the interests and 
 fortunes of our country. During that time no American 
 statesman filled a larger space in the public mind; 
 none maintained a stronger hold upon the affections of 
 his friends. A vigorous and capacious intellect of great 
 versatility and exhaustless resources ; an indomitable and 
 exacting will, which subordinated, or sought to subordi- 
 nate, all others to its control; a copious elocpience, 
 distinguished more for strength and earnestness than for 
 grace and beauty, addressing itself to the intellect more 
 than to the sentiments ; combined with a physical organ- 
 ization capable of great endurance and unremitting labor, 
 and with a temperament peculiarly ardent and impetuous, 
 qualified him in an eminent degree for a great political 
 leader; and, as such, he eminently acted his part. No 
 cotemporary exercised equal influence with, or held as 
 absolute dominion over, the minds of his followers. 
 
 Without the adventitious aids of fortune or influential 
 friends, but alone by the resources of his own intellect 
 and the energy of his own character, he made his way 
 from an humble but respectable position in private life 
 
 -a 
 
 Hi- 
 
24 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 to the most exalted places of trust and honor known to 
 our government. 
 
 From the moment of commencing his public career 
 his course was onward and upward. Success waited 
 upon his steps. His way was luminous with triumphs 
 seldom dimmed by defeat; and his achievements in the 
 field of politics stopped short only of the highest and 
 most coveted prize in the gift of the American people. 
 
 At present, opinions will be various and diverse as to 
 the influence of his life upon the cause of civilization, 
 the cause of human rights, and the destinies of our own 
 great Republic ; and it will only be after the passions, 
 prejudices, and partialities engendered by the conflicts of 
 his own time shall have faded away, that the faithful, 
 impartial, and inexorable pen of history will truly estimate 
 his character and justly assign him his place. 
 
 But whatever diversities of judgment there may be 
 among his cotemporaries as to the wisdom and benefi- 
 cence of his measures, all will accord to him great 
 talents, great energy, and an ardor and fervency of 
 patriotism capable of sacrifices of personal predilections, 
 prejudices, and antipathies, which a narrow mind and 
 contracted sympathies could never have made. 
 
 He was an extraordinary man, and very distinguished 
 among those who were the most justly and eminently 
 distinguished of his time; and I, in common with those 
 who were his political friends and admirers, claim a 
 share in his fame, as our joint heritage, and a right to 
 participate in their sorrow for his untimely death. 
 
 In common with them, I mourn his loss, and ask the 
 privilege of paying this poor tribute to his memory, and 
 throwing an unworthy garland upon his tomb. 
 
a- 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 25 
 
 I have not risen, Mr. President, for the purpose of 
 eulogy or panegyric; not even to utter approval of the 
 political principles which governed and shaped his public 
 acts; but I would be unjust to my feelings should I fail 
 to declare how deep and sincere was my sorrow for the 
 loss of this distinguished Senator, and especially at a 
 time when he had the power, to a greater extent than 
 any other living man, to render valuable and important 
 services to our perplexed and imperiled country, and the 
 temper and disposition of mind to use that power as it 
 should have been used by a patriot and statesman. 
 
 I desire only to do justice to his memory. For a 
 quarter of a century I knew him well and intimately. 
 Young, ardent, and impetuous, and wedded to the for- 
 tunes of opposing political parties, as widely sundered 
 and as intensely hostile as parties have ever been in this 
 government, we entered together upon our public career 
 in the winter of 1836-'o7, ho as a member of the House 
 of Representatives and I as a member of the Senate of 
 the legislature of Illinois. Passing thence, at a later day, 
 he took his place upon the bench, and I an humble 
 position at the bar in the circuit where he presided. 
 Our intercourse was intimate, and uniformly kind and 
 courteous. 
 
 In the spring of 1843, the State having been 
 redistricted for congressional representation, he and I, 
 residents of the same village — the one a judge, the 
 other a practitioner before him — were nominated by 
 our respective parties as opposing candidates for Congress 
 in the same district. 
 
 In the forenoon of a bright summer day in June, the 
 court was brought to a close for the term in the last 
 
 o> 
 
county in the circuit, and he at once resigned his 
 judgeship. 
 
 In the afternoon of the same day, by previous mutual 
 arrangement, and at the urgent solicitation of both 
 political parties, we addressed a large assemblage of 
 Whigs and Democrats, thus opening one of the most 
 excited, arduous, and earnest political campaigns that 
 was ever made in the State. 
 
 The next day we passed into another county, and 
 again addressed the people; and, from that time forward 
 till the election, we travelled together, often in the same 
 conveyance, and spoke together from the same stand on 
 an average of two hours each per day, and that repeated 
 every day, as my memory now serves me, with the 
 exception only of the Sabbath. The district was one of 
 the largest in the United States, both in population and 
 territory, and the summer unusually warm; and it is 
 perhaps not to be wondered at that the health of both 
 of us gave way under the constant and heavy draught 
 thus made on our physical and intellectual energies: 
 mine a little before, and his on the day of the election. 
 
 Perhaps at no time in our country's history did party 
 spirit run higher or wax warmer than at this time it did 
 in Illinois. Personal rancor was almost universal, and 
 personal conflicts not unfrequent between opposing 
 candidates. Impressed with a sense of how pernicious 
 the influence of such an example was upon the public 
 mind; how adverse to a calm and impartial hearing and 
 fair estimate of discussion of the questions which sepa- 
 rated us, and vitally interested the country; and how 
 incompatible with the dignity which ought to characterize 
 the deportment of gentlemen aspiring to high positions 
 
 £) , , : & 
 
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 27 
 
 of trust and honor, we came to a mutual understanding, 
 before entering upon the canvass, not to violate with 
 each other the courtesies and proprieties of life; and 
 not to permit any ardor or excitement of debate to 
 betray us into coarse and unmanly personalities. And I 
 am proud to say that the compact was well and faithfully 
 kept on both sides. During the entire campaign not 
 one unkind word or discourteous act passed between us; 
 and we closed the canvass with the friendly relations 
 which had previously subsisted undisturbed, and main- 
 tained them, without interruption, to the day of his 
 death. From this time forward our intercourse was 
 less frequent. My path lay through the secluded and 
 little observed walks of life; his was the highway of 
 renown, wherein he attracted the constant attention of 
 the nation, and won the unbounded confidence and 
 approval of his friends. Occasionally, during his sena- 
 torial life, w r e met in debate upon the hustings, and 
 tilted and jousted upon the political arena, without any 
 disturbance of the harmony of our personal relations. 
 
 These details can have no interest for the Senate or 
 the public, save such as they derive from their connection' 
 with the illustrious dead. 
 
 Mr. President, it is proper that I should say that there 
 were but few political acts of his life which met my 
 approval, with the exception of such as were crowded 
 into the interval between the fall of Sumter and his 
 death. 
 
 For the first time in the world's history the astounding 
 spectacle had been exhibited of a government plotting 
 against its own life, and conspiring for its own overthrow. 
 
 For the first time in our nation's history rebel hands 
 
were raised in hostility against our country's flag, to 
 rend its stripes and pluck its bright stars from their 
 field of glory. 
 
 We had then hut recently passed through a fiery 
 political contest, in which Senator Douglas had been 
 the chosen and almost adored standard bearer of a great 
 and renowned party, which was laboring to elevate him 
 to a position equal in dignity, honor, and power to any on 
 earth. Political parties have seldom been more bitterly 
 hostile than were that which marshaled its hosts under 
 his leadership, and that which followed the fortunes of 
 our honored Chief Magistrate. The object of the Sen- 
 ator's most intense and cherished desire, and to the attain- 
 ment of which he had devoted his great energies and 
 his unflagging industry — an object compatible with the 
 purest and loftiest patriotism, and worthy of the most 
 exalted ambition — had eluded his grasp, and was in the 
 possession of his great and distinguished rival. 
 
 The party which he, no doubt conscientiously, believed 
 to be adverse to the best and truest interests of the 
 country — the men who represented that party, and with 
 whom he had maintained a life-long conflict, always 
 earnest, and sometimes bitter — were installed in power, 
 whilst his own friends were scattered and dispersed. 
 Whatever the causes of hostility, whether his fault or 
 ours, or whether the necessary and inevitable concomi- 
 tant of political antagonisms between even just and good 
 men, without fault on the part of anybody, the fact is 
 nevertheless so, that the political alienation between him 
 and those who represented and wielded the power of 
 the government was complete. 
 
 On the other hand, many of the distinguished men of 
 
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 29 
 
 the nation, who in former times stood by him in the 
 same party organization, and labored indefatigably for 
 his advancement and promotion, had embarked in an 
 enterprise which had for its object not the overthrow of 
 a party only, but the dismemberment of the Union, and 
 the utter demolition of the government. His party 
 affinities and his loyalty no longer fully and completely 
 harmonized. He had to break with many of the most 
 trusted and most distinguished of his former friends, 
 and fraternize with his fiercest political foes, or he had 
 to renounce his allegiance to the Constitution he had 
 sworn to maintain, and prostitute his powers in plotting 
 its overthrow. 
 
 Let us do him justice. What his internal conflicts 
 may have been, we cannot know; what our own would 
 be, thus circumstanced, we dare not say; but we do 
 know that, whatever the struggle in his own breast may 
 have been, it was brief. We do know that the patriot 
 triumphed over the partisan, and that he threw the \ 
 entire weight of his great influence on the side of his 
 country in the hour of her greatest need. We do know 
 that the indignity done in Charleston harbor to the stars 
 and stripes, at once the emblem of the power and 
 beneficence of the government, and the venerated me- 
 mento of the sufferings and the sacrifices, the valor, 
 virtue, wisdom, and patriotism of our illustrious sires; 
 that the atrocious assault by the banded cohorts of 
 treason upon a weak, worn, and enfeebled garrison of 
 loyal and incorruptible American soldiers, in the faithful 
 and gallant discharge of the highest and holiest duties, 
 awakened all the enthusiasm, the indignation, and patriot- 
 ism of his ardent nature, and enlisted all his energies, 
 
. , , — , , ,@ 
 
 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 unconditionally, in the service of his endangered country. 
 We do know that the patriot achieved a great but easy 
 conquest over the partisan; and that he heartily, warmly, 
 and with a zeal befitting the momentous cause in which 
 he was engaged, united with those who had heretofore 
 not only opposed but denounced him, in a struggle to 
 uphold the Union, sustain the Constitution, and vindicate 
 the claim of the National Government to the obedience 
 of all its citizens; and who should be foremost, most 
 self-sacrificing, and efficient in the holy cause of the 
 Great Republic, rich in cherished memories of the past, 
 abounding in blessings for the present, and radiant with 
 hope for the future, was the only rivalry between him 
 and them. It was a noble and exalted rivalry, worthy 
 of a great cause and great minds, and fitted to shed 
 lustre upon the most eminent statesmen and patriots. 
 Would that he could have lived to continue the generous 
 strife until this most wicked and causeless revolt was 
 everywhere subdued, and the footprint of a traitor no 
 longer desecrated American soil. 
 
 There was something, Mr. President, heroic in the 
 promptitude, fearlessness, and decision with which lie 
 rent asunder the strong personal and party ties, and 
 dashed from him the fetters which had once bound him 
 to those who were now conspirators, when longer frater- 
 nity with them was disloyalty to the government; and 
 something almost sublime in the terrible energy with 
 which he denounced the treason, and launched his im- 
 precations at the traitors who were warring upon the 
 life of the great and good government under whose 
 fostering care he had made himself what he was ; had 
 struggled laboriously, but successfully, up the rugged 
 
 g)- 
 
-n 
 
 HON. .STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 
 
 steep, and taken his place in a conspicuous niche of the 
 temple of fame. 
 
 In times of peace Senator Douglas was an intense 
 partisan. It was natural he should be so. Indeed, he 
 could not have been otherwise. Espouse what cause he 
 would, it was a necessity of his physical and menial 
 organization that he should do it with all his might. 
 Doubtless he always believed his zeal and his party 
 preferences to be in the line of his duty, and they 
 certainly were in just subordination to his fealty as a 
 citizen. 
 
 He fought the battle of life bravely, but the conflict 
 is over; and now that its turmoil is ended, he reposes 
 quietly beneath the green sod of his adopted State. 
 
 In the full vigor and maturity of his mental and 
 physical energies, and just at the time when his services 
 would seem to have been most needed in the great cause 
 of human rights, he has been cut down by the fiat of 
 that wisdom which never errs. 
 
 That he had extraordinary endowments no one will 
 deny; and whatever contrariety of opinion may exist as 
 to the influence of his political policy and measures upon 
 the destiny of the nation, the verdict of posterity, the 
 judgment of history, will be, that he went down with 
 his patriotism unseduccd, and with no stain upon his 
 loyalty. 
 
 Henceforth his name is indissolubly connected with 
 his country's history. Many will esteem the pages which 
 chronicle his deeds as among the brightest in our annals. 
 All the just and good will bend reverently over the 
 records of his closing career. 
 
Address of Mr. Anthony, of Rhode Island. 
 
 Mr. President : To the affectionate praises of friends, 
 and the magnanimous eulogies of rivals, I hope it will 
 not be deemed presumptuous if I add a few remarks 
 from one who sustained towards the subject of these 
 resolutions the relations of personal friendship and of 
 political antagonism. 
 
 I first met Mr. Douglas soon after he had taken his 
 seat in this body, in whose debates and deliberations he 
 had already begun to hold a leading part, and with whose 
 history his name has since been so closely identified. 
 The frank cordiality of his manners, the unaffected 
 kindness of his heart, the directness of his speech, and 
 the readiness with which he declared himself upon all 
 the questions of the day, made upon me that favorable 
 impression which a more intimate acquaintance strength- 
 ened and confirmed. 
 
 It is not my purpose to follow his public career, or 
 to enlarge upon the qualities of his character. That 
 grateful office has already been performed. But I have 
 often thought that in his indomitable energy and will, 
 in the sturdy self-reliance of his character, in his early 
 development, and in his rapid march to success, he was 
 no unfitting type of the American character. As a 
 debater, Congress has afforded to him very few equals, 
 either in this Chamber, or in the other House, where 
 his earlier honors were won. Inexhaustible in resources, 
 fierce and audacious in attack, skilful and ingenious in 
 defence, he parried every thrust, and he struck, with 
 irresistible fury, at the weak point of his adversary. He 
 
 m ■ ! ' — s 
 
-8 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 33 
 
 was a party man, but lie loved his country better than 
 his party ; and in the crisis which darkened the land in 
 his latter days, he rose to the full height of the occasion, 
 and appeared in the full proportions of an American 
 Senator. His last utterances were for the Union; his 
 last aspiration was for his country; nor is that country 
 unmindful of his renown or ungrateful for his services. 
 Amidst the perils of civil commotion and the shock of 
 fraternal strife, she pauses to weep at his tonb. 
 
 That voice to which we have so ofter- listened with 
 earnest attention, upon which these crowded galleries 
 have hung, hour after hour, with unwearied delight, is 
 hushed forever; and that home, *o late the scene of 
 genial and graceful hospitality, -^ shrouded in gloom; 
 and to those who sit in its chambers of darkness, it 
 seems that joy can never aga^ cross its threshhold. To 
 them I dare not address m/self, for I well know that, at 
 this time, the idea of conflation would seem almost like 
 wrong to the dead; am that upon their ears, words of 
 tenderest sympathy v^uld fall almost with the harshness 
 of insult, But, M* President, you and I know that, in 
 the good providence of God, time, the healer, will come 
 to them, as it c>mes to all, and that what is now a bitter 
 anguish window to be a chastened sorrow, softened by 
 the recollection of his greatness and his fame, consoled 
 by the honors which the American people will pay to 
 his memory. 
 
 The resolutions were adopted nem con.; and the 
 Senate adjourned. 
 
 •a 
 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 
 
 Tuesday, July 9, 1861. 
 
 A mesWe was received from the Senate, by Mr. 
 Hickey, its Acting Secretary, communicating to the 
 House the resolutions passed by the Senate upon the 
 announcement of the death of Hon. Stephen A. 
 Douglas, late a S&iator from the State of Illinois. 
 
 The message from the Senate was read, as follows: 
 
 In Senati of the United States, 
 
 July 9, 1861. 
 
 Resolved, unanimously, That the members of the Senate, from a 
 sincere desire of showing every mark of Wpect due to the memory of 
 Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, deceased, latt a Senator from the State 
 of Illinois, will go into mourning by wearing crape on the left arm 
 for thirty days. 
 
 Resolved, unanimously, That as an additional i^xk of respect for 
 the memory of Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, decease!, the Senate do 
 now adjourn. 
 
 Ordered, That the Secretary communicate these reflations to 
 the House of Representatives. 
 
 Attest : 
 
 W. HICKEY, 
 
 Acting Secretary. 
 
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 35 
 
 Address of Mr. Richardson, of Illinois. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: The resolutions which have been read 
 at your table are the official notice to this House of an 
 event which was known to each of us, and mourned by 
 the country. 
 
 Stephen A. Douglas, late a Senator in Congress 
 from the State of Illinois, died at Chicago, the city of 
 his residence, on the 3d of June last, in the forty-ninth 
 year of his age. 
 
 After suffering for several weeks from sickness, which 
 baffled the skill of the most eminent physicians in the 
 land, he passed away without pain. During his entire 
 sickness, his fond and affectionate wife was present to 
 cheer his hopes and sooth his suffering. Neither skill 
 nor affection could stay the hand of death. The Great 
 Author of our being had " appointed his bounds " that 
 he could " not pass." 
 
 We have, in the time of our need, lost one of our 
 greatest statesmen and purest patriots. In the midday 
 of his manhood, in the midst of his usefulness, Mr. 
 Douglas has descended to the grave. His sun of life 
 has set forever. It fell from its meridian splendor. No 
 twilight obscured its setting. 
 
 As the sun of the physical world — the brightest and 
 grandest of all the luminaries of the firmament — sinks 
 to rest, tinging the clouds that stretch along the horizon 
 with the golden glories of its declining rays, so 
 Douglas, the sun-intellect of the Senate and the nation, 
 has gone to his repose, reflecting the light of his great 
 deeds and acts in the legislation of the country, and 
 
83 ' • — ■ M 
 
 36 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 tinging the dark clouds that now obscure our political 
 horizon with the beauty and effulgence of that patriotism 
 which illumined his descent to the tomb. 
 
 But a short time ago a nation's eyes were turned to 
 him to point the way for his country to escape the 
 dangers which threatened its destruction; and when he 
 was prostrated by sickness a nation's prayers ascended 
 to Heaven that he might be spared to his country. 
 
 Arriving at the age when ardor gives way to prudence, 
 his friends, with cheerful hope, looked to his future with 
 confidence that he would be useful to the nation and 
 the age. 
 
 Of all the men that have gone to the tomb, none have 
 realized in full their own wishes or fulfilled the expecta- 
 tions of their fellow-men; Judge Douglas adds another 
 to the general list. 
 
 It is difficult to realize that we are no more to hear 
 his voice, either in the popular assemblies or in the 
 Senate, with his clear statement and rigid logic, ursrinsr 
 either the masses or enlightened Senators to adopt 
 measures to preserve the government and uphold the 
 Constitution. 
 
 For eighteen years, upon all the questions that agitated 
 the public mind and elicited debate, his voice has been 
 heard — his influence felt. Whatever in his judgment 
 would advance the public good, augment national renown, 
 strengthen the bonds of the Union, secure the rights of 
 all the people, give to future generations the blessings of 
 the Constitution as formed by our fathers, received the 
 support of his untiring will and great intellect. 
 
 This is not the befitting time or appropriate presence 
 to discuss or even allude to disputed political questions. 
 
-m 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 37 
 
 The parts he has borne in them pass into history, and 
 they are safe. 
 
 Mr. Douglas was the architect of his own fame. 
 Penniless, and yet a minor, he came to Illinois, and while 
 teaching a country school he studied and was admitted 
 to the practice of law. He commenced his professional 
 life at Jacksonville, and though the bar at that place was 
 a very able one, numbering among its members gentle- 
 men of great ability and large experience, he soon 
 attained the front rank in their midst. 
 
 At the session of the legislature in 1834-35, he was 
 elected attorney for the State. His competitor was the 
 late Colonel John J. Hardin, who was distingished alike 
 for his ability in the councils of the nation, and for his 
 courage on the battle-field. In 1836 Mr. Douglas was 
 elected to the legislature. In 1837 he resigned his seat 
 in the legislature to accept the place of register of the 
 land office at Springfield, to which he had been appointed 
 by Mr. Van Buren. In 1838 he resigned the office of 
 register, having been nominated for Congress. At the 
 election of that year he was defeated by a very small 
 majority against him in a vote of forty-odd thousand — 
 then the largest ever cast in a single district in the 
 United States. 
 
 His successful competitor, after serving four years in 
 this House with great credit, voluntarily retired from 
 public life. Although Mr. Stewart was one of our purest 
 and most sagacious public men, he has resisted the 
 importunities of friends again to enter the political 
 arena. 
 
 In 1841 Mr. Douglas was made Secretary of State. 
 After discharging, for a short time, the duties of that 
 
position, lie resigned, and was elected in the same year 
 a judge of the supreme court of the State of Illinois. 
 In 1843 he resigned the judgeship, and was shortly 
 afterwards elected a member of this House over the 
 gentleman who is now his successor in the Senate. Mr. 
 Douglas was twice reelected from the same district. At 
 the session of the legislature of 1846-47, he was 
 elected to the United States Senate. He resigned his 
 place in this House after serving four years. He was 
 twice reelected a member of the Senate. 
 
 In his last contest for the Senate, which was the most 
 remarkable in the history of the country, his competitor 
 was the present President of the United States. In the 
 contest in Illinois the party in opposition to him at all 
 times presented their ablest man as his competitor. 
 
 In 1860 Judge Douglas was a candidate for the first 
 office in the gift of the American people. And although 
 he received the second highest number of the popular 
 vote, he was the lowest in the electoral college. 
 
 At the bar, in the popular assembly, in the legislature, 
 upon the bench, in this House, in the Senate of the 
 United States, Mr. Douglas had no superior and but 
 few equals. In all the positions he has held he has 
 been found equal to the duties attending them, and 
 adequate to any emergency that arose. He had all the 
 essential elements for the jurist, the statesman, or the 
 general. His intellect was stupendous. His quick 
 perception grasped, his strong memory retained, and his 
 ready logic commanded, immense resources of useful 
 knowledge, gathered from all branches of the arts and 
 sciences, from the history of the past and the active 
 realities of the present. 
 
■m 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 39 
 
 In debate he rejected all rhetorical ornament, all 
 ostentation and show. Stating his premises concisely, 
 his reasoning led to his conclusion as irresistibly as the 
 current of a strong and deep river tends to the sea. 
 But it was when surrounded by friends in the social 
 circle that he most happily and undesignedly exhibited 
 the peculiarities of his great intellect; it was there that 
 the fund of varied information was most drawn upon, 
 and there that his great versatility was most brilliantly 
 displayed. In his contests with political adversaries his 
 boldness and fierceness had no parallel. Never halting 
 in the strife to count losses, when the conflict was 
 over he was ever ready to forget resentments and 
 forgive injuries. 
 
 In his support of measures, he looked only to great 
 principles, and cared nothing for details ; he left them for 
 others. If measures that he supported met the popular 
 approval, he was contented to let others claim and enjoy 
 the honors that resulted from them. If, however, meas- 
 ures which he had favored were distasteful or unpopular, 
 he asked no man to share with him their responsibility. 
 Whenever they were assailed he rushed to their defence, 
 and endured whatever of obloquy attached to them. 
 From his positions, when once assumed, no earthly 
 power could drive him. In the defence of measures 
 which met his approval, he was ready to meet an excited 
 populace, a united Senate, an administration with a 
 nation's patronage at its bid, or any combination, no 
 matter how formidable. No power coidd intimidate 
 him, no patronage corrupt him. More than any man I 
 ever knew, he permitted himself to be assailed by 
 falsehood and slander, when he had the means to refute 
 
 s- 
 
40 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 the one or silence the other. If the slander affected 
 himself alone he was unmindful of it. 
 
 Dying at an age where the usefulness of statesmen 
 usually begins, he leaves a fame that will outlive eulogies 
 and survive monuments. Indissolubly connected with 
 the great events of his time, his name will go down 
 with our history to future generations. 
 
 Born in 1813, during the war between this country 
 and England — a conflict between people speaking the 
 same language and of a common origin, he died when 
 the different sections of his own country were marshaling 
 their armies in hostile array to engage in a fratricidal 
 war. He saw his country advance to the highest 
 elevation any had ever attained. He witnessed more of 
 advancement, improvement, and progress, in all that is 
 calculated to elevate mankind and nations, than has 
 belonged to any one age of the world's history. He 
 contemplated with patriotic pride the happiness of our 
 people, and the grandeur and glory of our country. 
 
 I formed Mr. Douglas's personal acquaintance during 
 his first contest for office. We entered public life 
 together. For more than a quarter of a century we 
 were friends without the slightest interruption. That 
 friendship survives one grave, it will close with two. 
 He was a noble and generous friend. 
 
 But, Mr. Speaker, the language of eulogy fails to 
 furnish a fitting tribute upon this occasion. One word 
 relative to his last days and the family circle so rudely 
 sundered. 
 
 I shall not trust myself with the delicate office of 
 offering consolation within the sacred precincts of that 
 home which is now desolate. God alone can heal the 
 
 -i 
 
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 41 
 
 hearts there wounded. The words of "dying men 
 enforce attention;" but never, among all the great men 
 that have passed to the grave, has one's last words been 
 more impressive, more grandly patriotic, than the last 
 message of Mr. Douglas to his children : " Tell them 
 to support the Constitution and the laws." At the same 
 time, while these eloquent words inculcate the duty of 
 every citizen, they announce in a brief but grand epitome 
 the labors and aspirations of a well-spent lifetime. 
 
 I oner, for the adoption of the House, the following 
 resolutions : 
 
 Resolved, That the House of Representatives of the United 
 States has received, with deepest sensibility, intelligence of the 
 death of Stephen A. Douglas. 
 
 Resolved, That the officers and members of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives will wear the usual badge of mourning for thirty days, as 
 a testimony of the profound respect this House entertains for the 
 memory of the deceased. 
 
 Resolved, That the proceedings of this House in relation to the 
 death of Stephen A. Douglas be communicated to the family of 
 the deceased by the Clerk. 
 
 Resolved, That, as a further mark of respect for the memory of 
 the deceased, the House do now adjourn. 
 
 Address of Me. McClernand, of Illinois. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: I rise with a heavy heart to second 
 the motion of my distinguished colleague. Duty to 
 myself, as well as to my constituents, requires me to do 
 so. Much that I would be pleased to say under other 
 circumstances must be forborne now, in view of what 
 has already been said so well by my colleague, and what 
 
 a- 
 
will probably be said by others more able to do the 
 subject justice than myself. 
 
 Addressing myself to the resolutions offered by my 
 colleague, I feel that they have a deeper and more real 
 significance than any mere ceremony or empty pageant. 
 Their source and their language bespeak them to be a 
 heartfelt effusion. As the official expression of a nation's 
 grief, they are all worthy of the approbation of this 
 House; and will they not receive it? Alas! a great woe 
 broods over the land; a deep gloom veils the social and 
 political sky! What is the cause of this melancholy 
 change'? Why these tokens of sadness and sorrow'? 
 Why these mourning cities and towns; these shrouded 
 busts of one unmistakable man; these solemn knelling 
 bells; these plaintive strains of martial music; these 
 quick-pealing minute guns ; this suspension of a nation's 
 occupations and pursuits; this universal lamentation'? 
 Why all this? What great calamity has occasioned it? 
 The answer comes up from all sides — as well from the 
 shores of the Pacific as from those of the Atlantic and 
 the Mississippi; from mountain and valley; from city 
 and hamlet; from every inhabited spot within the broad 
 limits of the Republic, the universal answer comes — 
 "A great man has Mien; the American Tribune is no 
 more; Stephen A. Douglas, the orator and statesman, 
 is dead." This is the explanation — the explanation 
 of a nation's grief — of the tokens of sorrow which 
 everywhere surround us — of the distress depicted upon 
 the countenances of this assembly. 
 
 How fearfully and wonderfully are we made ! Lately 
 my long-cherished friend, Mr. Douglas, was a strong, 
 robust man, capable of performing almost any amount 
 
 -o! 
 
I 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 43 
 
 of labor, and of enduring almost any amount of hardship. 
 His physical and intellectual powers had just culminated 
 in glorious maturity, and gave as much assurance of long 
 life as almost any of us may justly claim; yet now he 
 has passed away from the earth forever. The ruthless 
 shaft of death, ever seeking a shining mark, has laid him 
 low, and the brave, strong man is committed to the silent 
 tomb. No more will we see his large, dark-gray eye 
 flash with the radiance of genius, and glare with the 
 intensity of fixed and unswerving purpose. No longer 
 will his eloquent voice be heard in the Senate Chamber, 
 or by admiring and captivated multitudes. No more 
 will his strongly-marked Jove-like head, with its lion 
 mane, shake defiance at beleaguering assailants. No 
 more will his restless, fruitful brain invent and forge the 
 terrible weapons with which he was wont to subdue his 
 adversaries. Alas ! the body of the great man has gone 
 to decay; while his immortal spirit, as a spark first 
 radiating from the Divine essence, has returned to its 
 original source. Like the greatest of the Homeric 
 heroes, whom Providence "doomed to early death," so, 
 too, the younger Douglas was cut off in the very vigor 
 of manhood and the meridian of life. Indeed are the 
 ways of Providence "unsearchable and past finding out." 
 Man is here to-day and gone to-morrow ; as the transient 
 grass, " In the morning it springeth up and llourisheth ; 
 in the evening it is cut down and withereth." 
 
 But, sir, we must not confine ourselves entirely to 
 expressions of grief, nor deal in general terms of eulogy, 
 if we would do justice to Mr. Douglas's character. To 
 estimate his merits as one of the first statesmen of his 
 time, we must not forget the many and formidable 
 
 -©J 
 
obstacles lie had to overcome, particularly in his early 
 life. Left an orphan, without fortune or influential 
 friends, in his very infancy — like Jackson, Clay, and 
 other self-made personages — he had to rely upon himself 
 for success. Like Plato, he may have believed that a 
 mechanical as well as a scholastic education was necessary 
 to qualify a ruler of the people to wield political power 
 wisely and beneficently. At aU events, after learning a 
 mechanical trade, and obtaining, as far as his limited 
 means would allow, an imperfect education, he resolved 
 to leap into the great battle of life, and, if possible, to 
 win the laurel of the victor and hero. 
 
 In answer to the interrogatory, Whither he should 
 direct his footsteps'? he could not long hesitate. Such 
 a man rarely hesitates. Looking towards the setting 
 sun, he saw there nature displayed in boundless grandeur. 
 He saw there the great valley of the Mississippi, described 
 by the enthusiastic De Tocqueville as "the most mag- 
 nificent region provided by God for man's abode." He 
 saw there, too, as the most attractive portion of that 
 valley, the "Great West," with her giant forests and 
 verdant prairies — with her turbid rivers and glassy 
 lakes; and grasping by intuition her hidden resources 
 and prospective development, he determined to make it 
 his home. Hence, soon we find him an actual resident 
 of the charming village of Jacksonville, in Illinois. 
 Besides the general attractions of the West, it may be 
 supposed that a congenial affinity between genius and 
 natural beauty attracted him to this spot; for we are 
 informed that it was a vivid picture of it and the surround- 
 ing country delineated by an admiring Scotch tourist 
 that first bent his footsteps thither. 
 
m- 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 45 
 
 Arriving at Jacksonville, in his twentieth year, he 
 was a stranger in a strange land — a wanderer reduced 
 to his last shilling, and with no other resource than his 
 own energies to save him from impending destitution. 
 "What was the result? Did the pale, slight youth 
 despair; or, yielding to tempting want, did he repress 
 the noble aspirations of his soul, and divert his talents 
 to some mean and dependent occupation? Was he 
 content to ignore his destiny? Not so; hut finding 
 himself unable to acquit his unavoidable personal ex- 
 penses at Jacksonville by anything that he could do, he 
 immediately set out on foot for Winchester, a village 
 some seventeen miles distant, and reached there the 
 same day. Here his adverse fortunes ceased to persecute 
 him; and in anticipation of his rising fortune, men said 
 of him: 
 
 "This dawn 
 "Will widen to a clear and boundless day; 
 And when it ripens to a sumptuous west, 
 With a great sunset 'twill be closed and crowned." 
 
 Here he found remunerative employment, both as a 
 lawyer and as a teacher. Henceforth, he becomes a 
 man of mark and note. Henceforth, every obstacle to 
 his advancement pales and vanishes before the glowing 
 fire of his long repressed genius, and as a dazzling orb 
 he courses the political and professional firmaments, 
 drawing after him the wondering gaze of admiring 
 multitudes. 
 
 Filling every office in the gift of his adopted State, 
 from that of district attorney to that of Senator in 
 in Congress, which he chose to ask or accept, he died 
 her boasted and favorite son. Long will his memory 
 
 g @ 
 
— -m 
 
 46 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 be cherished by her as one of the brightest ornaments 
 of her noble escutcheon. Reflecting honor upon him, 
 so he, in turn, reflected honor upon her; and forever 
 will the names of Illinois and Douglas be linked 
 together upon the page of history. Douglas and 
 Hardin, his heroic rival, of all her representative men, 
 are the most endeared to her affection. To both she 
 has given honored graves — to one as the champion of 
 her rights in the councils of the nation, to the other as 
 the champion of her loyalty upon the field of battle. 
 To the fame of both she will proudly continue to point, 
 as the mother of the Gracchi, to her children as her 
 jewels — as the proofs of her wealth. 
 
 As the career of Mr. Douglas as a statesman forms 
 a brilliant and familiar portion of the history of our 
 country, it will be unnecessary to do more than to glance 
 at it. As a public man, he was prompt, enterprising, 
 and persistent. At the very outset of his legislative 
 career, he identified his name with two of the most 
 popular and useful public works in Illinois, by proposing, 
 as a member of her legislature, a series of resolutions 
 recommending their early construction. I refer to the 
 Illinois and Michigan canal, which opens up a com- 
 munication between the waters flowing into the Gulf 
 of Mexico and those flowing into the Gulf St. Lawrence ; 
 and to the Illinois Central railroad, which furnishes an 
 overland connection between the upper Mississippi and 
 Lake Michigan and the main Mississippi at Cairo. 
 And afterwards he materially contributed to the com- 
 pletion of the latter improvement, by his influence as a 
 Senator of the United States, in procuring the grant of 
 land made by Congress for that purpose. This was a 
 
 .3 
 
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 47 
 
 proud triumph of persevering statesmanship, and will 
 long endure as a worthy monument to his fame. Its 
 priceless benefits are, to-day, hailed by all Illinoisans as 
 marking a new and joyous era in the history of their 
 beloved State. 
 
 But, as I have already said, I have not time to dwell 
 upon particulars. It will be enough to say that no man 
 of his time took a more active or conspicuous part in 
 public affairs than he did. His name stands prominently 
 connected with every important question of public 
 policy, whether of a domestic or of foreign character, 
 which has arisen within the last eighteen years. He 
 favored the annexation of Texas; he opposed the dis- 
 memberment of Oregon; he voted for the compromise 
 measures of 1850, looking to the settlement of the 
 slavery question; he advocated the repeal of the 
 Missouri restriction and the uniform organization of all 
 our territorial governments upon the principle of popu- 
 lar sovereignty; he opposed the admission of Kansas 
 into the Union under the Lecompton constitution. 
 
 Again: he urged the compromise of the slavery 
 question and our sectional differences, at the last session 
 of Congress, as the alternative of civil war; and when 
 armed rebellion arose against the government, he ap- 
 pealed to the patriotism of the people to put it down 
 by overwhelming force. Standing upon the "Monroe 
 doctrine," he was ever jealous of monarchical influence 
 upon the American continent; and hence always pro- 
 tested against any colonization of any portion of it by 
 any European or other transmarine Power. In the 
 mean time, not forgetting the material interests of his 
 country, he zealously advocated all those measures of 
 
— ' ' ' — — — — — — -® 
 
 48 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 internal improvement, which lie deemed of a national 
 character and necessary to the welfare of the country. 
 
 The project of a railroad to the shores of the Pacific 
 had no more ardent supporter than himself. He looked 
 upon it as a bond necessary to consolidate the different 
 and distant portions of the Republic as one homogeneous 
 and harmonious social and commercial whole; and the 
 popularity of the measure, at this time, is no doubt as 
 much the result of his commendation as of that of any 
 other man, not excepting even the lamented Benton. 
 
 As a debater, Mr. Douglas was great, truly great, in 
 the dexterous use of passing facts and familiar circum- 
 stances. In this he was probably greater than any of 
 his illustrious cotemporaries. This was the type of his 
 mind — it was his forte. Less eloquent than Clay, less 
 logical than Webster, less versatile than Benton, he was 
 the superior of them all in the readiness of his intellect 
 and the distinctness and clearness of his statements, as 
 a public speaker. More like Silas Wright, the great 
 New York statesman, he was always unostentatious, 
 copious, clear, and forcible. As an extempore speaker, 
 his capabilities were transcendent and amazing, and 
 unquestionably place him in the first rank of debaters 
 of any age or country. 
 
 As an orator, his manner was peculiar to himself. 
 Although possessing but little of the qualities of the 
 rhetorican, and still less of the art of the theatrical 
 declaimer, yet his action was far from ungraceful, while 
 his voice was singularly full and sonorous. What he 
 lacked as a rhetorical declaimer he more than made up 
 by the earnestness and vehemence of his delivery. Like 
 Demosthenes, whose style he appears to have cultivated, 
 
 i- 
 
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 49 
 
 he was always in earnest, ever on fire. His power over 
 his hearers was often demonstrated by his success in 
 swaying Senators and controlling the violence of the 
 populace. 
 
 One of his first efforts as an orator is one of the best 
 he ever made. I refer to his speech, as a member. of 
 this House, in favor of the bill refunding the fine im- 
 posed by Judge Hall on General Jackson, at New 
 Orleans, in 1815, for refusing to produce, in obedience 
 to a writ of habeas corpus, Louallier, who had been 
 arrested under martial law upon a charge of treason 
 against the United States. The theme was a great one, 
 and inspired the speaker with grand and noble thoughts, 
 which he poured forth in rapid and resistless volume. 
 He discussed and distinguished the rights of peace and 
 the rights of war, the law of deliberation, volition, and 
 choice, and the paramount law of necessity. All the 
 fire and enthusiasm of his ardent nature were infused 
 into his impetuous yet logical appeals, until the storm 
 of his eloquence and the accumulated weight of his 
 argument carried the House captive, and thrilled the 
 whole country with generous emotion. 
 
 The success of this effort may be judged by the 
 grateful response that it elicited from General Jackson 
 himself, when afterwards Mr. Douglas, for the first 
 time, met him at the Hermitage. Taking him by the 
 hand, the venerable hero said: 
 
 "I am glad to see you, Mr. Douglas. You comprehended my 
 situation at New Orleans. Martial law was a necessity there, and I 
 took the responsibility of declaring it. If I had shrunk from doing 
 so, and harm had accrued to the country, I would have proved myself 
 unequal to the emergency, and unworthy of the trust reposed in me. 
 
It was upon that ground — the necessity of the case — that you justified 
 my conduct; and I thank you, sincerely thank you, for it." 
 
 Other instances, too, of his oratorical success might 
 be adduced : as his defence of the compromise measures 
 of 1850, at Chicago, amid the blazing effigies of his own 
 person, and regardless of the threats of the enraged 
 populace. Like Mark Anthony, over the dead body of 
 Caesar, he melted the savage fury of the rabble into the 
 softness of contrition and tears. Like the Tribune 
 Bienzi, he appealed to the patriotism and sense of duty 
 of the people through the images and examples of their 
 departed benefactors, which he set before them with all 
 the charms of eloquent and impassioned delineation ; and 
 they heard him and were convinced. Never was there 
 a grander triumph of natural eloquence pleading the 
 cause of truth and justice. Mr. Webster thanked him 
 on behalf of the nation for this noble and heroic effort. 
 I might also refer to the frequent discussions between 
 him and President Lincoln as affording kindred exam- 
 ples of the celebrated contests of the fabled giants of 
 antiquity. As the acknowledged champions of opposing 
 parties, they often met in intellectual combat, while 
 each, by his skill and prowess, won the applause of his 
 admiring friends. 
 
 Defeating Mr. Lincoln in their memorable contest for 
 the Senate, in 1858, yet the latter gained, from defeat 
 by such a man, the distinction which afterwards assisted 
 him to the Presidency. 
 
 Mr. Douglas, as a Democrat of deep and earnest 
 convictions, was not unfrequently an ardent and active 
 partisan, yet he never found it impossible to subordi- 
 nate his party feelings and purposes to the higher 
 
 •@ 
 
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 
 
 dictates of public duty. We have a noble instance of 
 this in the fact that, although defeated by Mr. Lincoln 
 for President, he voluntarily went forward and offered 
 him the assistance of his counsels and co-operation in 
 the interest of the Constitution and the Union. Noble 
 conduct — all worthy of imitation ! How unlike that of 
 the brave but jealous Achilles, who withdrew from the 
 service of Iris country rather than yield to a preferred 
 rival ! 
 
 Before this House or in this city, where all loved and 
 admired him, it were needless to dwell on his remark- 
 able colloquial powers, and his other innumerable social 
 gifts and virtues; on his generosity unostentatiously dis- 
 played in acts of charity; his well-known generous and 
 princely hospitality; the gravity and dignity of his man- 
 ner, ever softened by cordial warmth and urbanity; the 
 goodness of his heart; or his unwavering kindness as a 
 husband, a father, and a friend. All know how fully the 
 greatness of his mind was matched by the elevation of 
 his character, and this knowledge adds immeasurably 
 to the universal grief at the loss of one so endowed. 
 Great intellects mark the epochs of the world. They 
 frequently flourish as cotemporaries and follow each 
 other in quick succession to the grave. As new and 
 shining constellations, they suddenly appear in the moral 
 firmament, and, after burning with a dazzling light for a 
 season, disappear, leaving a gloomy void, and only reap- 
 pear to inspire and illuminate the world again at some 
 remote and uncertain period. Calhoun, Webster, Clay, 
 and Benton flourished together in the same land, and 
 passed away at short intervals of time. Douglas, the 
 champion of American liberty, dies in the New World, 
 
 (& , , m 
 
and Count Cavour, the champion of Italian liberty, dies 
 soon after in the Old. 
 
 The Romans had a generous maxim that nothing but 
 good should be said of the dead. And what else may 
 be truthfully said of the lamented Senator? Never 
 in this or any other country was there a man whose 
 eminent merits were recognised with more striking 
 unanimity, or whose value in such an hour of need was 
 more generally appreciated. Glorious in life, he was 
 also glorious in the extremity of death. Who but those 
 who were present with him during his last days can tell 
 how many sublime expressions fell from his emphatic 
 lips as he lay upon his last bed 1 With what patience 
 and resignation did he bear the torture of a protracted 
 illness ! With what calmness did he hear the warning 
 of his approaching doom ! With what solemnity, as he 
 paused in the shadow of the coming gloom of the grave, 
 did he murmur the awful words, " death ! death ! death ! " 
 With what simple sublimity of natural feeling did he ask 
 to be raised on his pillow, that, like the German poet, 
 he might for the last time admire the face of nature ! 
 What unutterable thoughts must have flashed across his 
 prophetic mind as he thus surveyed the surrounding 
 prospect ! 
 
 Before him lay the great lake, solemn, silent, and 
 calm — like that great ocean on which he must sail so 
 soon, reflecting the sublime serenity of that Heaven on 
 which his soul reposed in trembling hope. There lay 
 the groves and prairies in all their floral beauty and 
 variegated verdure. There, like a young queen viewing 
 her charms in the smooth mirror of the like, rose the 
 city of Chicago, which he had honored as the place of 
 
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 53 
 
 his abode, and which, so young, so full of promise and 
 of hope, in that solemn moment, silently and grate- 
 fully acknowledged the dying patriot as her chief 
 benefactor. 
 
 Who can read without emotion of his last legacy to 
 his dear children, when, like the father of the infant 
 Hannibal, leading him to the altar to swear eternal 
 enmity to his country's foes, he said with his last breath: 
 "Tell them to obey the laws, and defend the Constitu- 
 tion." Oh, what a commentary on his life of patriotic 
 devotion! Love of country, the leading passion of his 
 soul, triumphed even in the embrace of death. The 
 last faint words of Napoleon, " Tete d'Armee," betokened 
 a spirit still busy with the work of ambition; but the 
 last words of Douglas disclosed the exalted principles 
 of the patriot and statesman. 
 
 May his countrymen ever remember his dying coun- 
 sels, and so well maintain the Constitution which he 
 loved, that, by the reunion of the divided members of 
 our Republic, they who drew from his noble life so 
 many political blessings, may receive a great benefit 
 even from his lamented and untimely death ! 
 
 Address of Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: I have only a few words to say. 
 Another of the great men of our country has passed 
 away. Since the last adjournment of Congress, a few 
 months since, the honorable Senator Douglas has fallen 
 into the grave. I do not stand here, sir, in imagination 
 gu 
 
®- m 
 
 54 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 by the side of that grave, to use the language of flattery. 
 I do not rise, sir, for the purpose of lavishing praises 
 to his memory. That will belong to the impartial 
 history of his time. When the history of this country 
 shall be written, recorded honors will cluster around his 
 name. Mr. Speaker, the death of Mr. Douglas struck 
 a heavy blow on the American heart; and his memory 
 is embalmed in the hearts of his countrymen. I have 
 witnessed few occasions, in the course of my life, 
 when there has been any greater exhibition of public 
 sorrow. 
 
 Sir, I was well acquainted with Mr. Douglas. We 
 were kept apart for a long period of the time that we 
 both served in the National Councils by our political 
 differences. But for the last four or five years of Mr. 
 Douglas's life we were associated personally and politi- 
 cally, and I had an opportunity of becoming well ac- 
 quainted with the man; and in all my intercourse of an 
 intimate character with him, while we agreed in politics 
 and acted together, I found him to be an honorable and 
 patriotic man, disinterested and noble in his patriotism, 
 and ready to sacrifice his personal interests for the good 
 of his country. This I can testify from my knowledge 
 of his character. Mr. Douglas was an extraordinary 
 and remarkable man. Not favored by fortune in the 
 earlier periods of his life, belonging, as I understand, to 
 the humble but worthy class of the mechanic, he raised 
 himself by his own exertions to the high position which 
 he occupied. It seemed to me that Mr. Douglas's mind 
 expanded with his increasing elevation; and I know of 
 no man in this country now left who is better entitled to 
 the denomination of statesman than was Mr. Douglas 
 
m — ■ — — . — ___________ p 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 55 
 
 at the time of his death. He was honest, generous, 
 patriotic in all his actions and purposes. He was 
 ambitious, but he sought to attain eminence by public 
 services. There have been times when I thought less 
 favorably of him. But my opportunities of knowing 
 him better enabled me to correct my error in regard 
 to his character; and I speak but what I truly believe 
 when I bear this testimony to his worth. His mind 
 expanded and improved step by step as he advanced 
 in life; and his country sustained a great loss in his 
 death, at a time like this, when it is surrounded by peril 
 and disaster. 
 
 I know of no man who might have been more useful 
 in this crisis. There are few who had so much of the 
 confidence of his countrymen, and who combined with it 
 such a capacity for controlling and leading them. Sir, 
 as a friend, I mourn him; as an American citizen, I mourn 
 him. And it is right that we should give this recorded 
 evidence here, of our sympathy and regret for his early 
 death. He was young when he died; but to the young, 
 death is not always a calamity. In most instances, per- 
 haps, it ought to be regarded philosophically as more of 
 a blessing than the life which is taken. He died young, 
 in the meridian of his life, in his palmy days; leaving 
 his country mourning, and the heart of his agonized 
 widow filled with an incurable sorrow. But, sir, there 
 is a Power above us all, and I trust that that God, who 
 tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, will take care of 
 the widow and the fatherless. 
 
B 
 
 56 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 Address of Mr, Cox, of Ohio. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: Ohio is not separated from Kentucky, 
 eitherin the estimate of Judge Dougi v^ which has been 
 so eloquently pronounced by the distinguished statesman 
 | Mr. Crittenden] who has just taken his seat, or in the 
 grief which has been expressed tor the premature 
 closing of his illustrious career. That career closed 
 with the opening of this eventful summer. It abounded 
 iu friendships, services, and ambitious. It ended while he 
 was enjoying the tumult of universal acclaim, and when 
 all Felt the need of its continuance. Labor paused in its 
 toil, bankers shut their offices and merchants their stores, 
 lawyers ami judges adjourned their courts, minis 
 added now fervor to prayer, partisans united iu hushed 
 regret, and soldiers draped the Bag iu crape, to hoar their 
 part iu the great grief oi the nation, lie died iu the 
 midst of the people who had honored him tor a genera- 
 tion; iu the city whose growth had been Fostered by his 
 vigilance; iu the State whose prairies were familiar to 
 his eye From earliest manhood; ami iu that great North- 
 west, whoso commercial, agricultural, physical, and im- 
 perial greatness was the pride of his heart and the type 
 of his own character. There was iu him a quick 
 maturity of growth, a Fertility o( resource, ami a sturdi- 
 uess of energy, which made his lite the microcosm o( 
 that great section with which he was so closely 
 identified. 
 
 That mind which had tow equals and that will which 
 had uo conqueror, save iu the grave, were at last wrung 
 from his iron frame. It is hard to believe that he lies 
 
 -a 
 
p ■ ' ■ m 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 57 
 
 pulseless ill his sepulchre ai Cottage (J rove. It is sad to 
 feel thai the summer wind which waves the grass and 
 flowers of his loved prairies has, in its low wail, an elegy 
 to the departed statesman. Well might the waters of 
 the lake, just before his death, as if premonitory of some 
 greal sacrifice, swell in mysterious emotion. 'These poor 
 panegyrics, from manuscript and memory, tail to express 
 the loss which those feel who knew him best. One 
 would wish for the eloquence of Bossuet, or the muse of 
 Spenser or Tennyson, to tell, in the poetry of sorrow, 
 the infinite woe which would wreak itself upon ex- 
 pression. 
 
 For weeks the public have mourned him as a loss so 
 grievous as to be irreparable in this trying time of the 
 Republic. The lapse of time only adds to the weight of 
 the bereavement. The tears which fell around his 
 bedside and on his bier still 
 
 "Weep a loss forever new." 
 With every passing day we turn, but turn in vain, to 
 catch his hopeful tone, his discriminating- judgment, his 
 philosophic foresight, and his courageous patriotism. 
 They only come to us in memory and in mourning. His 
 lips are sealed, his eye is dim, his brain is shrouded, his 
 hearl is still; and the nation stands with throbbing heart 
 at his grave. "His virtue is treasured in our hearts; 
 his death in our dispair." It is no mere ceremonial, 
 therefore, that the national legislature, in whose counsels 
 he has taken so prominent a part, should pause, even 
 in extraordinary session, to bestow that homage which 
 friendship, intellect, and patriotism, ever offer to the true 
 man, the gifted soul, and the enlightened statesman. 
 
 Judge Douglas struggled into greatness. He had no 
 
 m 
 
58 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 avenue to honor except that which was open to all. 
 The power and patronage which aided him, he created; 
 and the wealth which he made and spent so freely, came 
 from no ancestral hand. Part teacher and part cabinet 
 maker, he left the East for the ruder collisions of border 
 life. There he grew up under the adversities which 
 strengthened him into a vigorous and early maturity. 
 His own manhood soon made itself felt. He became 
 the political necessity of his State. He filled many of 
 its most important offices before he became nationally 
 known. The Democratic people of the Union were 
 soon attracted to him. As early as 1848 they began to 
 think of him as their candidate for President; while, in 
 1852, the Democratic Review hailed him as the coming 
 man ; a man who had no grandfather or other incident 
 of biographical puffery; as one whose genealogical tree 
 had been sawed up; as a graduate from the university 
 of the lathe; as one with the materials, the mind, and 
 the energy, to shape, fashion, and make enduring, a plat- 
 form of his own. 
 
 No notice of Stephen A. Douglas is complete which 
 does not remark upon the singular magnetism of his 
 personal presence, the talismanic touch of his kindly 
 hand, the gentle amenities of his domestic life, and the 
 ineradicable clasp of his friendships. It may not be 
 improper to refer to the fact, that I was one among 
 the many young men of the west, who were bound to 
 him by a tie of friendship and a spell of enthusiasm 
 which death has no power to break. These are the 
 pearls beneath the rough shell of his political life. 
 There are many here who will understand me, when I 
 recall the gentle tone and the cordial greeting with 
 
m — — 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 59 
 
 which he used to woo and win and hold the young 
 partisans of his faith, and the warm promoters of his 
 success. Ever ready with his counsel, his means, and 
 his energies, he led them as much by the persuasiveness 
 of his heart as the logic of his head. The same gentle 
 demeanor which fondled his children and taught them 
 a beauty of manners beyond all praise, the same pure 
 respect and tenderness with which he treated his noble 
 wife and companion, silvered the cords of attachment 
 which bound his friends to him, and made his home at 
 Washington and his sojourns elsewhere, recollections as 
 sweet as memory can embalm. 
 
 While others bear testimony to his moral heroism, 
 intellectual prowess, fixedness of principle, and unstained 
 patriotism, it seems that his spirit, if it hovers over this 
 scene of his obsequies, would receive with purest delight 
 these tributes of friendly affection. I recall in my own 
 experience, which runs with unbroken association of 
 friendship with him from the first year of my political 
 life, many of his acts of unselfish devotion, many words 
 outspoken to the public, which the mere designing 
 politician would not have uttered, and many tenders of 
 aid and counsel, which were the more grateful because 
 unsought, and the more serviceable because they came 
 from him. It is one of the felicities of my life, that I 
 have been the recipient of his kindness and confidence; 
 and that the people whom I represent were cherished 
 by him, as he was by them, with the steadfastness of 
 unalloyed devotion. 
 
 It was his pleasure very often to sojourn in the capital 
 city of Ohio, where, regardless of party, the people paid 
 him the respect due to his character and services. 
 
 i) -g 
 
Among the last of the associations which he had with 
 Ohio was his address, a few weeks before his death, to 
 the people at its capital, on the invitation of the State 
 legislature. His stirring tones still thrill upon the air, 
 protesting for the right and might of the Great West to 
 egress through our rivers and highways to the sea 
 against all hostile obstruction, and for the maintenance 
 of the government, threatened by the great revolution 
 which yet surrounds us. 
 
 His last utterance was the fit climax of a life devoted 
 to the study of this government, and of a patriotism 
 which never swerved from its love for the Union. It 
 was worth whole* battalions of armed men. A word 
 from him made calm from tempest, and resolved doubt 
 into duty. His thought swayed the tides of public 
 opinion as vassals to his will. After his hot contests in 
 the Senate, during the first session of the last Congress; 
 after his Harper essay in development of his political 
 theories; after his heroic campaign in the South, closing 
 at Norfolk in his courageous reply to the questions of 
 the disunionists; after his struggles of last winter, when 
 he strung his energies to the utmost in pleading for 
 peace and conciliation; after all had failed, and anarchy 
 stalked with haughty head through the land, and even 
 jeopardized this metropolis of the nation, it was the 
 consummate glory of his life to have given his most 
 emphatic utterance for the maintenance of the govern- 
 ment, even though its administration was committed to 
 his old political antagonist, and although he knew that 
 such expression imperiled the lives of a hundred thousand 
 of his friends. 
 
 Scarcely with any of our public men can Douglas 
 
 •m 
 
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 61 
 
 be compared. The people like to compare him to 
 Jackson, for his energy and honesty. He was like the 
 great triumvirate — Clay, "Webster, and Calhoun — but 
 "like in difference." Like them in his gift of political 
 foresight, still he had a power over the masses possessed 
 by neither. Like Clay in his charm to make and hold 
 friends and to lead his party; like Webster in the 
 massive substance of his thought, clothed in apt political 
 words; like Calhoun in the tenacity of his purpose and 
 the subtilty of his dialectics; he yet surpassed them all 
 in the homely sense, the sturdy strength, and indomitable 
 persistence with which he wielded the masses and 
 electrified the Senate. 
 
 In the onslaught of debate he was ever foremost; 
 his crest high and his falchion keen. Whether his 
 antagonists numbered two or ten, whether the whole of 
 the Senate were against him, he could "take a raking 
 fire at the whole group." Like the shrouded Junius, he 
 dared Commons, Lords, and King to the encounter; 
 but unlike that terrible Shadow, he sought no craven 
 covert, but fought in the open lists, with a muscular and 
 mental might which defied the unreasoning cries of the 
 mob, and rolled back the thunders of the Executive 
 anathema ! 
 
 Douglas was no scholar, in the pedantic sense of the 
 term. His reading was neither classical nor varied. 
 Neither was he a sciolist. His researches were ever in 
 the line of his duty, but therein they were thorough. 
 His library was never clear from dust. His favorite 
 volume was the book of human nature, which he con- 
 sulted without much regard to the binding. He was 
 skilled in the contests of the bar; but he was more than 
 
m- ■ u 
 
 62 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 a lawyer. He easily separated the rubbish of the law 
 from its essence. As a jurist, his decisions were not 
 essays; they had in them something decisive, after the 
 manner of the best English judges. As a legislator, his 
 practicalness cut away the entanglements of theoretic 
 learning and ancient precedent, and brought his mind 
 into the presence of the thing to be done or undone. 
 Hence he never criticised a wrong for which he did not 
 provide a remedy. He never discussed a question that 
 he did not propose a measure. 
 
 His style was of that plain and tough fibre which 
 needed no ornament. He had a. felicity in the use of 
 political language never equaled by any public man. He 
 had the right word for the right place. His interroga- 
 tive method, and his ready and fit replies, gave dramatic 
 vivacity to his debates. Hence the newspapers readily 
 copied them and the people retentively remembered 
 them. Gleams of humor were not infrequent in his 
 speeches, as in his conversation. His logic had the 
 reach of the rifled cannon, which annihilated while it 
 silenced the batteries of his opponents. 
 
 Douglas was a partisan ; but he never wore his party 
 uniform when his country was in danger. His zeal, like 
 all excess, may have had its defect; but to him who ob- 
 serves the symmetry and magnanimity of his life, it will 
 appear that he always strove to make his party conserva- 
 tive of his country. „ 
 
 The tenacity with which he clung to his theory of 
 territorial government, and the extension of suffrage, on 
 local questions, from State to Territory, and the absolute 
 non-intervention by Congress for the sake of peace and 
 union, while it made him enemies, increased the admi- 
 
 m ii 
 
m — — — — — ■ ■ — — 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 63 
 
 ration of his friends. His nature shines out with its 
 loftiest grace and courage in his debates on these themes, 
 so nearly connected as he thought them with the stability 
 of the Republic. 
 
 If it be, that every true man is himself a cause, a 
 country, or an age; if the height of a nation is the alti- 
 tude of its best men, then, indeed, are these enlarged 
 liberalities, which are now fixed as American institutions, 
 but the lengthened shadow of Stephen A. Douglas. 
 This is the cause — self-government in State and Terri- 
 tory — with which he would love most to be identified in 
 his country's history. He was ready to follow it to any 
 logical conclusion, having faith in it as a principle of 
 repose, justice, and union. 
 
 Placed at the head of the Territorial Committee, it 
 was his hand which, on this basis, fashioned Territory 
 after Territory, and led State after State into the Union. 
 The latest constellation formed by California, Iowa, 
 Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and I may add Kansas, 
 received their charter to shine and revolve under his 
 hand. These States, faithful to his fostering, will ever 
 remain as monuments of his greatness ! 
 
 His comprehensive forecast was exhibited in his 
 speech on the Clayton and Bulwer treaty, on the 4th 
 of March, 1853; wherein he enforced a continental 
 policy suitable and honorable to the New World and 
 its destiny, now so unhappily obscured. That speech 
 was regarded by Judge Douglas as among the most 
 valuable, as I think it the most finished and cogent 
 speech of his life. His philippic against England, 
 which to-day has its vindication in her selfish conduct 
 towards us, will remind the scholar of Demosthenes, 
 
 ■l@! 
 
while his enlarged philosophy has the sweep and dig- 
 nity of Edmund Burke. It was this speech which 
 gave to Douglas the heart of Young America. He 
 refused to prescribe limits to the area over which 
 Democratic principles might safely spread. "I know 
 not what our destiny may be." "But," he continued, 
 "I try to keep up with the spirit of the age; to keep 
 in view the history of the country; see what we have 
 done, whither we are going, and with what velocity we 
 are moving, in order to be prepared for those events 
 which it is not in the power of man to thwart." He 
 would not then see the limits of this giant Republic fet- 
 tered by treaty; neither would he, in 1861, see them 
 curtailed by treachery. If he were alive to-day, he 
 would repeat with new emphasis his warning against 
 England and her unforgiving spite, wounded pride, and 
 selfish policy. When, in 1847, he advocated the policy 
 of terminating her joint occupation with us of Oregon, 
 he was ready to back it by military force; and if war 
 should result, "we might drive Great Britain and the last 
 vestiges of royal authority from the continent of North 
 America, and make the United States an ocean-bound 
 Republic ! " 
 
 With ready tact and good sense, he brought to the 
 fiscal and commercial problems of the country views 
 suitable to this age of free interchange and scientific 
 advancement. 
 
 His position on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the 
 Senate gave him a scope of view abroad, which was en- 
 riched by European travel and historic research, and 
 which he ever used for the advancement of our flag and 
 honor among the nations. His knowledge of our domes- 
 
m ■ — — ■ — 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. G5 
 
 tic troubles, with their hidden rocks and horrid breakers, 
 and the measures he proposed to remove them, show 
 that he was a statesman of the highest rank, fit for calm 
 or storm. 
 
 Some have lamented his death now as untimely and 
 unfortunate for his own fame, since it has happened just 
 at the moment when the politician was lost in the patriot, 
 and when he had a chance to atone for past error by new 
 devotion. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, men do not change their natures so 
 easily. The Douglas of 1861 was the Douglas of 
 1850, 1854, and 1858. The patriot who denounced this 
 great rebellion was the patriot in every fold and linea- 
 ment of his character. There is not a page of his his- 
 tory that we can afford to blot. The words which 
 escaped him in the delirium of his last days — when he 
 heard the "battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, 
 and the shouting" — were the key note to a harmonious 
 life. 
 
 Observant of the insidious processes North and South 
 which have led us to this civil war, he ever strove, by 
 adjustment, to avoid their disastrous effects. History 
 will be false to her trust, if she does not write that 
 Stephen A. Douglas was a patriot of matchless purity, 
 and a statesman who, foreseeing and warning, tried his 
 utmost to avert the dangers which are now so hard to 
 repress. Nor will she permit those who now praise his 
 last great effort for the Union to qualify it, by sinister 
 reflections upon his former conduct; for thus they tarnish 
 the lustre of a life devoted, in peace and war, to the pre- 
 servation of the Union. His fame never had eclipse. 
 Its disk has been ever bright to the eye of history. It 
 
 -a 
 
sank below the horizon, like the sun of the Morea, full- 
 orbed, and in the full blaze of its splendor. 
 
 How much we shall miss him here ! How can we, 
 his associates, do without his counsel'? No longer does 
 the murmur go round that Douglas is speaking in the 
 Senate ! No longer does the House become quornmless 
 to listen to his voice ! His death is like the dissolution 
 of a political organism. Indeed, we could better afford 
 to lose a sphere of stars from our flag; for these might 
 wander to return. But Douglas cannot be brought 
 back to us. He who had such a defiant power, with 
 the "thews of Anakim and the pulses of a Titan's 
 heart," has gone upon a returnless journey. How much 
 shall we miss him now I We have so long regarded the 
 political, social, geographical, and commercial necessities 
 to which our government was adapted as rendering it 
 eternal, that its present condition calls for new and rare 
 elements of statesmanship. Are we equal to the time 
 and the trust? Oh, for a Clay, a Webster, a Douglas, 
 in this great ordeal of constitutional freedom ! While 
 the country is entangled by these serpents of revolution, 
 we shall miss the giant — the Hercules of the West — 
 whose limbs had grown sinewy in strangling the poisonous 
 brood. 
 
 Who is left to take his place? Alas! he has no 
 successor. His eclipse is painfully palpable, since it 
 makes more obscure the path by which our alienated 
 brethren may return. Many Union men, friends of 
 Douglas in the South, heard of his demise as the death- 
 knell of their loyal hope. Who, who can take his 
 place? The great men of 1850, who were his mates 
 in the Senate, are gone, we trust, to that better Union 
 
 -IB 
 
• r d 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 67 
 
 above, where there are no distracting counsels; all, all 
 gone ! All 1 No ! thank Heaven ! Kentucky still spares 
 to us one of kindred patriotism, fashioned in the better 
 mold of an earlier day — the distinguished statesman who 
 has just spoken, [Mr. Crittenden] — whose praise of 
 Douglas living I loved to quote, and whose praise 
 of Douglas dead, to which we have just listened, 
 laudari a vivo laudato, is praise indeed. Crittenden still 
 stands here, lifting on high his whitened head, like a 
 Pharos in the sea, to guide our storm-tossed and storm- 
 tattered vessel to its haven of rest. His feet tread 
 closely upon the retreating steps of our statesman of 
 the West. In the order of nature, we cannot have him 
 long. Already his hand is outstretched into the other 
 world to grasp the hand of Douglas ! While we have 
 him, let us heed his warning, learn from his lips the 
 lessons of moderation and loyalty of the elder days, and 
 do all, and do it nobly, for our beloved Republic. 
 
 In conclusion, sir, we can only worthily praise kStephen 
 A. Douglas by doing something to carry out the will 
 which he left his children and his country: 
 
 "LOVE AND UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES." 
 
 I speak it all reverently, when I say that this was his 
 religion. He had faith in that 
 
 "creed of creeds, 
 The loveliness of perfect deeds." 
 
 I would not seek to disclose the future to which God 
 has consigned him in the mysterious order of his provi- 
 dence; but such virtue as his cannot die. It begins to 
 live most in death. Of it may be said, as the laureate 
 of England sang, that transplanted human worth will 
 
 -@ 
 
g) , , ■ ffi 
 
 68 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 bloom, to profit, otherwhere. The distinguished gentle- 
 man from Kentucky [Mr. Crittenden] has alluded to 
 the fact, that the mind of Douglas expanded with his 
 public service. It has been my own humble observa- 
 tion, sir, that he was one among the few public men who 
 grew in moral height with mental breadth. Year after 
 year inspired him with more of reverence and charity; 
 while his " psalm of life " found expression in daily duty 
 done. He never shrank from the dust and heat of active 
 life. He most desired to live when dangers were 
 gathering thickest. He would not ask from us to-day 
 tears and plaints, but words which bear the spirit of 
 great deeds — "tremendous and stupendous" efforts to 
 save the government which he loved so well. We may 
 toll the slow bell for his noble spirit; we may crape the 
 arm in token of our woe; we may, while we think of the 
 meannesses of our politics and the distractions of our 
 country, congratulate him that he is wrapped in his 
 shroud, forever safe in the memory of the just; but if 
 we would worthily honor him, let us moderate the heats 
 of party strife; enlarge our view of national affairs; 
 emulate his clear-eyed patriotism, which saw in no 
 section his country, but loved all sections alike; and hold 
 up his life, so fruitful in wisdom beyond his years, for 
 the admiration of the old; and picture him for the 
 imitation of the young as that 
 
 "Divinely gifted man, 
 Whose life in low estate began; 
 Who grasped the skirts of happy chance, 
 Breasted the blows of circumstance, 
 And made by force his merit known ; 
 And lived to clutch the golden keys, 
 To mold a mighty State's decrees, 
 
 — m 
 
II- 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 69 
 
 And shape the whisper of the throne; 
 And moving up from high to higher, 
 Becomes, on fortune's crowning slope, 
 The pillar of a people's hope, 
 The centre of a world's desire!" 
 
 But, sir, no language, either in prose or verse, can 
 portray the greatness of his loss. His fame is printed 
 in the hearts of the people. From the green mountains 
 of his native State to the white tops of the Pacific 
 sierras, while the heavens bend above our land to bless 
 it, the rivers roll and the mountains stand to unite it, or 
 the ceaseless interchange of traffic and thought goes on 
 by sea and rail, by telegraph and post, — the people of 
 America, from whose midst, as a poor boy, by his own 
 self-reliance, he sprung, — will preserve in the Pantheon 
 of their hearts, to an immortal memory, the name of 
 Stephen Arnold Douglas. 
 
 Address of Mr. Diven, of New York. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: I do not rise to pronounce a eulogy 
 upon the distinguished subject of these resolutions. It 
 would ill become me after what has been said to attempt 
 it. But, sir, there was that in the career of Mr. Douglas 
 to which I desire to pay a passing tribute, and from which 
 I believe this Congress can draw profitable instruction. 
 Sir, it was not my privilege to be ranked among his 
 acquaintances. It was my duty, as I thought, to differ 
 with him on the political questions about which the 
 country was divided. That difference, sir, was an honest 
 difference with me, and I doubt not it was with him. 
 
 -m 
 
70 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 There are questions about which the people of this Re- 
 public can and always will differ, and yet be loyal to 
 their country. The trait in the character and life of Mr. 
 Douglas to which I wish to make particular allusion is 
 this : that after he had gone through a heated contest for 
 political honors — after he, on his part, had fought that 
 contest with more than ordinary zeal — after he was de- 
 feated and his rival had secured the honors for which he 
 had contended; when this country became distracted — 
 when the steel of the conspirator was thrust at the very 
 heart of our Republic — Mr. Douglas was the patriot 
 and the man to sink all party and to call all who would 
 listen to his warning voice around the standard of his 
 country. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, let us imitate his example in that. Our 
 country is assailed by enemies. Its very existence is 
 threatened. Men who have differed politically have 
 united in its defence. Mr. Douglas did all his part 
 towards rallying those of his polititical sentiments to its 
 defence — to sink all party differences ; and to-day, Demo- 
 crats, Republicans, Americans, adopted citizens, are in 
 the field with their muskets, shoulder to shoulder, de- 
 fending the institutions of our country. Let us, until 
 this question of the supremacy of the Constitution be 
 decided, in vindication of that Constitution and of law, 
 like Mr. Douglas, sink party; and let no voice in our 
 national councils, until this question shall be settled, start 
 any of the questions about which the country has been 
 at variance, and about which we have differed. Not till 
 we shall have vindicated the supremacy of our Constitu- 
 tion — not till the efforts of traitors shall be prostrated, 
 and loyalty shall be restored — not till the desecrations of 
 
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 71 
 
 our flag shall have been retrieved, and its folds shall again 
 wave from every standard, from the Gulf to the British 
 possessions — let a single question of political difference 
 ever be revived. 
 
 Address of Mr. Arnold, of Illinois. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: On behalf of the many thousands of 
 citizens of Illinois, who differed in political sentiments 
 from Senator Douglas, I have been selected to express 
 their hearty approbation and concurrence in all the honors 
 which can be paid to his memory. 
 
 The people of Illinois, a State which had been the 
 theatre of his fiercest political contests, gathered with a 
 common feeling of sorrow around his too early grave. 
 Indeed, the sentiment of deep regret caused by his death 
 pervades all classes and parties and divisions of our coun- 
 try, and finds an exception only among the traitors who 
 are in arms against our flag. 
 
 On turning back a few pages of the nation's history, 
 we find recorded the death of many of her distinguished 
 statesmen. Many in this Hall will vividly remember the 
 death of John Quincy Adams, of Henry Clay, of Thomas 
 H. Benton, and Silas Wright. Yet I think the popular 
 heart has responded with a feeling as profound, and as 
 universal, at the death of Douglas, as of either of these 
 distinguished men. 
 
 He was a bold and self-relying man — a leader by 
 nature; and has always been, from the commencement 
 of his career, the prominent figure in Illinois politics. 
 His death has removed from the political horizon a bril- 
 
 ii . ^ 
 
liant star from a singular constellation of prominent 
 men. 
 
 About twenty years ago there practiced at the same 
 bar, in the small town of Springfield, Illinois, a very re- 
 markable combination of men. Among them Abraham 
 Lincoln, President of the United States; Stephen A. 
 Douglas — not less distinguished; Lyman Trumbull, the 
 eminent colleague of Douglas ; James Shields, who won 
 a high reputation on the battle fields of Mexico, and in 
 this Capitol; E. D. Baker, Senator from Oregon; John 
 J. Hardin, who fell upon the bloody field of Buena Vista; 
 James A. McDougall, Senator from California; 0. II. 
 Browning, the successor of Judge Douglas. Besides 
 these, there was the late Governor Bissell, whose elo- 
 quence, in vindication of the bravery of the Illinois vol- 
 unteers against the aspersions of the traitor Davis, is still 
 remembered in this House; and there was also Richard 
 Yates, the present Governor of Illinois, and my distin- 
 guished friends and colleagues, Colonels Richardson and 
 McClernand. Lincoln, Douglas, Shields, Baker, Bissell, 
 Hardin, Trumbull, Browning, McDougall, and others, all 
 cotemporaries, form a combination not often seen around 
 the pine table of a frontier court-house. Among them 
 are names which Illinois will ever cherish — names which 
 will brighten her history. These men, however they may 
 have differed in the past, will be found to-day — those of 
 them who survive — rallying like a band of brothers to 
 sustain their country in this its hour of peril. 
 
 Among the many incidents in the life of Douglas, 
 upon which the people will linger with pleasure, are 
 events growing out of the relations between him and 
 the President of the United States. Those relations 
 
 m- 
 
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 73 
 
 were, in my opinion, alike honorable to the departed 
 Senator and the living President. 
 
 The country knows they had long been rivals, the 
 acknowledged leaders of their respective parties. They 
 passed through the senatorial contest of 1858, (a contest 
 which was really a battle of giants,) with their personal 
 relations cordial and friendly. 
 
 The great presidential contest of 1860, in which 
 victory changed from Douglas to Lincoln, left them 
 still friends. You, Mr. Speaker, and most of the mem- 
 bers of this House, witnessed the graceful courtesies 
 extended by the distinguished Senator to the President 
 elect on his arrival here in February last. The conduct 
 and bearing of Douglas were certainly in the highest 
 degree graceful and magnanimous. 
 
 None who witnessed it can ever forget the scene on the 
 eastern portico of this Capitol, when Mr. Lincoln, in the 
 presence of the Representatives of the people, assumed 
 the sublime prerogatives of Government, and swore by 
 the eternal God that he would faithfully support the Con- 
 stitution and enforce the laws of his country. Douglas, 
 not by accident, stood by his side; and, in the midst of 
 scowling traitors, whispered in the ear of the President 
 that, come what might in the dark and cloudy future 
 darkening before him, he would stand by the Government 
 and strengthen its arm to crush treason and rebellion. 
 
 Nobly did the departed Senator redeem that pledge. 
 He returned to Illinois, and at Springfield and Chicago, 
 in his own bold and direct language, declared that there 
 could be but two parties now — the patriots, who stood 
 by their country and its flag, and the traitors, who were 
 seeking to destroy it. 
 
And it was for this, and because he rose from party 
 to patriotism, that all the people gathered around his 
 grave, and to-day mingle their regrets utterly forgetful 
 of former party divisions. 
 
 Of the services he rendered to his country, I forbear 
 to speak. History will do him justice. But there are 
 two institutions of my own State with which his name 
 will be forever associated. I refer to the Illinois Central 
 Kailroad and the Chicago University. As a representa- 
 tive of Illinois, I desire to express her grateful recognition 
 of his most important aid rendered to these great and 
 beneficent institutions; they will remain monuments to 
 his memory more enduring than marble or brass. 
 
 He loved Illinois, and was filled with *& generous 
 ambition to advance her interests. He had a clear and 
 strong appreciation of the necessity of the Union to 
 secure her future greatness. Living near the great 
 portage which divides the waters which flow into the 
 Atlantic from those which, flowing west and south, find 
 their outlet in the Gulf, he saw that the millions of 
 freemen of the great Northwest could never permit 
 themselves to be cut off either from the East or the 
 South. 
 
 He well knew that Illinois, the fourth State in rank in 
 the Union, the empire State of the Northwest, the young- 
 State that looks back on old Virginia, with her black 
 burden, lagging far behind her — the State that treads 
 hard upon the heels of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and that 
 in the future challenges N^w York to a generous and 
 friendly rivalry for imperial position — he knew, and felt, 
 and expressed, her settled purpose never to permit a 
 foreign nation to intervene between her and the mouth 
 
 -@ 
 
m ■ — — 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 75 
 
 of the great river which washes her western boundary. 
 For this Illinois will cherish his memory as long as Lake 
 Michigan shall roll her blue waves upon the shore where 
 sleep his remains. 
 
 Douglas died at a moment when he had the ability 
 and the disposition to have rendered the greatest services 
 to his country. He died on the eve of this grapple 
 between government and anarchy — between law and 
 lawlessness — between liberty and -slavery — between 
 civilization and barbarism; the result of which is to 
 shape the destiny of this continent. 
 
 Had he lived he would have led this grand, sublime 
 uprising of the people — this majestic popular movement 
 now sweeping onward like the deep and resistless 
 volume of waters of the great lakes over Niagara; he 
 would have led it onward to crush and overthrow this 
 wicked rebellion. 
 
 Yes, Mr. Speaker, had he lived until this day, there 
 would have been heard in these Halls no voice louder, 
 clearer, more emphatic than his, demanding action — 
 action — -prompt, vigorous, decisive action. 
 
 Address of Mr. Walton, of Vermont. 
 
 Mr. Speaker : While many States are to-day assembled, 
 through their representatives in the Senate and this 
 House, as mourners at the loss of one who has achieved 
 far more than ordinary honors in the public service, and 
 a measure of popular admiration and attachment accorded 
 to but few statesmen of his years in any age or nation, 
 
 -@ 
 
76 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 there is one State distinguished from all others — I will 
 not say by the sincerity of her grief, when all alike are 
 sincerely grieved, but I may truly say for the singularity 
 of her grief. A mother weeps for her son. His fame 
 was national; Vermont remembers that hers is the 
 parental share. His death, in the very crisis of a 
 nation's fate, was a national calamity; but Vermont 
 remembers that her loss is much more than the common 
 share. Her son is dead. She clad herself in mourning 
 on the announcement of what was, to human judgment, 
 an untimely death; and all her children murmured the 
 accents of sorrow. It is fit, then, to-day, for Vermont to 
 join in these funereal honors ; and, by my colleagues, it 
 has been deemed most fit that I, as the representative 
 of the district in which the deceased Senator was born, 
 and of the people among whom he was bred, should at 
 least offer a memorial tribute, however humble it 
 may be. 
 
 Stephen Arnold Douglas was born in Brandon, 
 Rutland county, Vermont, on the 23d day of April, 1813. 
 Then, more than now, that was a rural town; and though 
 the father was a physician of good culture and in high 
 repute, by his early death his son was left to those 
 privileges only which the poorest can command, and he 
 spent more than one third of his brief but eventful life 
 attending the winter district school, and laboring steadily 
 during the remainder of his time upon a farm and in a 
 mechanic's shop. A single year of academical studies, 
 being the eighteenth year of his life, and the year in 
 which he received his bent and fixed his future profes- 
 sional career, completed the preparation given according 
 to the then common usage of Vermont. It was no mean 
 
 ■e 
 
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 77 
 
 preparation; for, allowing all that may be due to the 
 peculiar qualities of the man — to his keen and powerful 
 intellect, his unyielding will, and that audacity of bravery 
 which distinguished him in every conflict — it was in his 
 cuse peculiarly true, that "the boy was father to the 
 man;" that the bent acquired in his youth, from the 
 institutions and influences which surrounded him, marked 
 him for life. 
 
 The town in which he was born, like every other in 
 Vermont, and indeed each of the many school districts 
 in the town, was an independent corporation for its 
 appropriate purposes, with what, in strict propriety, may 
 be called legislative powers, such as taxation, and the 
 regulation of various matters of importance to the town 
 and district; and the legislature of each was not a 
 representative body, but a pure democracy, in which all 
 the citizens met on equal terms and with an equal right 
 to free discussion and action. These are privileges which 
 touch the interests of all, and therefore demand intel- 
 ligence, and put to practical and constant use the intel- 
 lectual and moral qualities of the people. The demand 
 stimulates the best supply to be attained, and by books 
 and newspapers, by public discussions and fireside 
 consultations, that supply is had. The fruit is an inde- 
 pendent, intelligent, and energetic community, thoughtful 
 of public affairs and familiar with public duties ; a com- 
 munity, of which every man may tender what he will to 
 the common weal, and he will be sure to be weighed 
 in a just balance and counted for what he is worth. 
 From such a school — the same in kind as those from 
 which Vermont sends her sons and daughters throughout 
 the land — Stephen A. Douglas went out a Democrat, 
 
 ih 
 
®- 
 
 78 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 as every native born and bred Vermonter is a Democrat. 
 I say it in the strictest and purest sense of the word, not 
 in a party sense, though in his case that was true ; and I 
 have sometimes fancied that even then that chord was 
 strung which in late years sounded the rallying cry of 
 his party — " the freedom of the people to regulate their 
 domestic institutions in their own way." At least he 
 went out with no doubt of his own rights ; strong in the 
 habit of self-reliance, with a taste for public affairs, and 
 an aptitude for public service that was speedily and 
 fortunately tested, and bent upon that intellectual culture 
 which he had early learned to esteem as the best 
 foundation for success. Having continued his classical 
 studies until he had completed the usual college course, 
 mingling with them the study of the law, at twenty 
 years of age he found himself in Illinois, a schoolmaster; 
 at twenty-one he was admitted to the bar of the supreme 
 court of that State; at twenty-two he was elected 
 State's attorney ; at twenty-three he entered the legis- 
 lature as a member of the House; at twenty-four he 
 first entered the service of the Federal government, as 
 register of a land office ; in his twenty-seventh year he 
 was appointed secretary of the State of Illinois, but was 
 speedily elevated to the bench of the supreme court; in 
 his thirtieth year he was elected to Congress, where he 
 served until his thirty-third year, when he was transferred 
 from the House to the Senate of the United States ; and 
 he was in his third term in that body when, in his forty- 
 seventh year, he was nominated as the candidate of his 
 party for the highest office within the gift of the nation, 
 and stood second only in the choice of the people. 
 His career has been brilliant beyond all other exam- 
 
 •m 
 
m- 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 79 
 
 pies in our political history. Swift and unbroken was 
 his march from the obscurity of his old rural home to 
 the post of championship in the Senate. Every step 
 was triumphal; and every triumph gave new confidence, 
 courage, and strength, for a larger endeavor and a more 
 brilliant victory. Never but once, and at the last, did 
 he fail, as if in him was to be the proof of the all but 
 divine insight of the greatest poet of our race : 
 
 " Cheeks and disasters 
 Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd." 
 
 No! not at the last. I recall the words. The last 
 trial was indeed his greatest victory. It has been the 
 boast of his friends that he was pre-eminently a party 
 man; and he himself undoubtedly had the fullest faith 
 in both the invincibility and virtue of the party of which 
 he had become the recognised head. More than others, 
 then, he was the idol for party homage, and more than 
 others the target to receive the shafts of party prejudice 
 and malignity. If this be true, sir, his last conflict was 
 with himself — his last victory the noblest for his fame. 
 The patriot conquered the partisan. The last cry from 
 his trumpet tongue announced the supremacy of patriot- 
 ism over party, and summoned the legions of his loyal 
 friends to the rescue of the country; and his dying mes- 
 sage to his children enjoined perpetual fidelity to the 
 Constitution and the Union. We mourn, then, not alone 
 that a great man has fallen — we bring not here alone 
 the cheap offerings of personal or party grief — we mar- 
 shal not ourselves as friends and foes, bound in common 
 decency to suspend the clash of conflict for the burial of 
 the dead; but, bearing the heavy burden of a common 
 woe, we mingle our tears over a patriot's grave. 
 
 -@ 
 
m ' @ 
 
 80 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, it is for others, who have been personal 
 friends of the deceased, to utter the eulogies and sorrows 
 of friendship; for others, who have been his associates 
 in public life, to do justice to his public services; but 
 for Vermont, let me say, that to-day there has been, and 
 there can be, no measure of deserved praise that shall 
 not touch her pride, and no wail of unfeigned sorrow 
 that shall not reach her heart. 
 
 Address of Mr. Law, of Indiana. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: Since the last meeting of Congress 
 another great and good man — a patriot and statesman — 
 has been gathered to his fathers. Year after year, as 
 time rolls on, the country has been called on to mourn 
 the loss of her most eminent men. In a little more 
 than a decade, the Congress of the United States have 
 paid funereal honors to Adams, to Clay, and to Webster — 
 shining and bright lights in our political firmament; and 
 now we are called to pay the last tribute to another, 
 scarcely, if any, less distinguished than those who have 
 gone before him. 
 
 Stephen A. Douglas, Senator from Illinois, departed 
 this life at Chicago on the 3d of June last. Born in 
 Vermont, he emigrated to Illinois in 1833, before he 
 had reached the age of manhood. Emigrating, as I 
 did, a number of years before him, to the State of 
 Indiana, locating on its western borders, at Vinccnnes, 
 and practising in my profession as a lawyer in the border 
 counties of Illinois, I soon made his acquaintance. I 
 have known him long, and known him well, for a quarter 
 
 6- 
 
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 81 
 
 of a century; and during the whole of that period we 
 have sustained towards each other the most intimate 
 and friendly relations. Connected with him personally 
 and politically for many years, I think I have a know- 
 ledge of the man which enables me to speak of him 
 "the words of truth and soberness." 
 
 In the great and exciting political canvass of 1840 
 we were together, and I think his friends from Illinois, 
 who have a recollection of that canvass, will confirm 
 me in saying that the zeal with which Mr. Douglas 
 entered into it, and the spirit and energy with which 
 he carried it on, gave the vote of Illinois — and the only 
 one given in all the Northwestern States — to the Dem- 
 ocratic candidate. 
 
 It is unnecessary for me to follow his career from 
 that time up to his death; it forms a part, and a large 
 part, of the history of the country. Suffice it to say, 
 that the poor and penniless lad, who made his way, and 
 for the most part on foot, from the workshop in Brandon, 
 Vermont, to the small village of Winchester, in Illinois, 
 where he kept school for a living, and read law in the 
 intervals of teaching, up to the period of his decease, 
 has had and enjoyed a popularity with the masses of 
 the people, not only in his own State, but throughout 
 the Union, that no man, perhaps with one exception, 
 ever possessed in this country. Stephen A. Douglas 
 was emphatically the " Tribune of the people." Elected 
 to the legislature in 1835, Presidential elector in 1840, 
 judge of the supreme court of Illinois in 1841, mem- 
 ber of Congress in 1843, senator in 1847, ^e-elected in 
 1853, and again in 1859, no man, in this ' nitry or any 
 other, without wealth or patronage, ever ran such a 
 
 ■m 
 
career of honor or preferment. What an example to 
 the rising generation of young men ! What a stimulus 
 should it offer to the poor but talented and ambitious 
 lad, in a government like ours, that the path of fame 
 and honor is as open to him as to his more fortunate 
 companion having all the advantages which wealth and 
 position can bestow ! 
 
 Sir, I cannot conclude what little I have to say on 
 this occasion, this national loss, without expressing 
 my deep regret that the providence of God has called 
 him from the midst of us at this most eventful period 
 of our national history. My firm belief and opinion 
 is, that, distracted and divided as we are, broken into 
 separate confederacies, our Union endangered, engaged 
 in a fratricidal war, citizen against citizen, brother 
 against brother; that in the South as well as in the 
 North, in the slave States as well as in the free, in 
 every community where he was known — and where, 
 from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Bay of Fundy 
 to the Gulf of Mexico, was he not known and loved ? — 
 the death of Stephen A. Douglas is mourned and 
 regretted. Why, sir, the very men who are now the 
 leaders in the unhappy contest waging against us; here, 
 sir, in this very Hall, as well as in the other end of the 
 Capitol, so long as they remained true to the Constitu- 
 tion and the Union, so long as they remained true and 
 faithful to the obligations they took as Senators and 
 Representatives of the United States, acknowledged 
 the purity of the man, the geniality of his temper, the 
 goodness of his heart, his high sense of honor, his tal- 
 ents, his eloquence, his entire freedom from sectionality, 
 his patriotism, his love of country. Do you believe, 
 
. , , , . — __ . m 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 83 
 
 sir, docs any man believe, that treason and rebellion 
 have so seared their hearts, so perverted their under- 
 standing and destroyed their feelings of gratitude, that 
 they, even now, amid the clash of arms and the clang 
 of battle, can forget the man who hazarded all — fame, 
 fortune, political distinction, elevation to the first office 
 in the gift of the Republic, loss of political friends, 
 power, popularity — in boldly and manfully and nobly 
 standing up for all the rights which the South could 
 claim constitutionally or legally? 
 
 Sir, he hazarded all, he suffered all, because he 
 believed he was right; and that he was right, all expe- 
 rience has proven. His doctrine of " non-intervention 
 by Congress with slavery in the Territories" was the 
 only safe solution of that exciting question; and I rejoice 
 to know that he lived long enough to see the doctrine 
 practically carried out by a Republican Congress, in the 
 territorial admission of Nevada, Colorado, and Dacotah, 
 at the last session of Congress, without any restrictive 
 clause upon the subject of slavery in the act which ad- 
 mitted them. Sir, like the great patriot and statesman 
 who preceded him, and with whom he might be more 
 justly compared than with any other public man on this 
 continent, Stephen A. Douglas would "rather be right 
 than be President." 
 
 Connected with the Democratic party of the North- 
 west from his very entrance into public life, he was the 
 embodiment of that party — its very type and model. 
 Some of his political friends there, who had been 
 alarmed with the bold, striking, and original doctrines 
 which he promulgated, abandoned him. Nothing daunt- 
 ed, never alarmed, trusting in his own robust strength, 
 
84 OBITUAEY ADDRESSES. 
 
 his native intellectual vigor, his fearlessness, his origi- 
 nality, he battered clown the strongholds of his oppo- 
 nents, either subduing them with the strong power of 
 his logic, or overcoming them with the force of his 
 argument. Discomfited and powerless, they left him 
 master of the field. One of the strongest illustrations 
 of his power on such an occasion was his memorable 
 speech at Chicago, on his return there from Washing- 
 ton, after the passage of the "compromise bill of 
 1850." 
 
 But, sir, above and beyond all his other great quali- 
 ties, his patriotism, his love of country, his devotion to 
 the Constitution, to the Union, to the glorious flag which 
 is its emblem, were the most prominent traits of Sena- 
 tor Douglas's character. In life — ay, even in death — 
 this sentiment, this feeling, was uppermost in his mind ; 
 this idea the most prominent even when death claimed 
 him as his own. The last letter he indited for publica- 
 tion was the letter published about two weeks before 
 his death in the National Intelligencer, addressed to the 
 " chairman of the Democratic committee " in this city. 
 I will read two short extracts, to show you what, at that 
 short period before his death, he thought was the duty 
 of every loyal American citizen in the present crisis. 
 After stating the circumstances which led to the p resent 
 deplorable state of public affairs, he says: 
 
 " In view of this state of facts, there is but one path of duty left 
 to all patriotic men. It is not a party question, nor a c]uestion 
 involving partisan policy; it is a question of government or no 
 government ; country or no country ; and hence it becomes the duty 
 of every Union man, every friend of constitutional liberty, to rally 
 to the support of our common country, its government, and its flag, 
 as the only means of preserving the Union of the States." 
 
SH 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 85 
 
 Again, he says : 
 
 " I know of no mode by which a loyal citizen may so well demon- 
 strate Lis devotion to his country as by sustaining the flag, the Con- 
 stitution, and the Union, under all circumstances and under every 
 Administration, (regardless of party politics;) against all assailants 
 at home and abroad." 
 
 Fellow-democrats of the House of Representatives, 
 friends of Douglas, these are the words of our great 
 leader; the man whom we delighted to honor; whose 
 banner we have borne aloft "in the battle and the 
 breeze ;" with whom we have abided in good and evil 
 report; around whom we have rallied; for whom we 
 have fought the good fight, even under circumstances 
 well calculated to dampen the ardor of the bravest and 
 most devoted. It is the language of one to whom we 
 adhered even unto the end. They are his dying words 
 to us — the last legacy to his friends; and shall we not 
 demonstrate our devotion to him, as well as to our coun- 
 try, by sustaining the "Constitution, the Union, and its 
 flag," regardless of all former differences of political 
 opinions — of party politics? I hope so; I believe so. 
 And if permitted to look down upon our deliberations 
 here from "mansions on high," will he not feel that, in 
 death as in life, he has never found us divided 1 
 
 Mr. Speaker, I have said his devotion to the Union 
 was strong even in death. Could there be a more 
 solemn, a more touching, a more affecting scene, than 
 when the angel of death was flapping his broad wing 
 over the emaciated frame of this intellectual giant, when 
 the grave was opening to receive him, and when, in a 
 moment of apparent consciousness, his lovely and loving 
 and devoted wife asked the dying statesman if he had 
 
m- 
 
 86 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 any message to send to his two sons ? When not hear- 
 ing or not understanding the question, she knelt over 
 him and whispered it once more in that ear so soon to 
 be as deaf to sound as the clod that covers him, rally- 
 ing for a moment, his eye flashing, his whole frame 
 dilated, "Tell them," said he, "to obey the laws, and 
 support the Constitution of the United States." 
 
 Sir, he rests from his labors; his work on earth is 
 ended; his ashes mingle, as they rightly should, with 
 the dust of the prairie, in that great and noble State to 
 which he owed so much, and with whose name the fame 
 of this great statesman will be forever identified. 
 
 Address of Mr. Wickliffe, of Kentucky. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: I had the honor of knowing Judge 
 Douglas. Our acquaintance commenced in 1843. He 
 was a member of the House of Representatives, I a 
 member of the Executive department of this government, 
 and then received from him and witnessed acts of his 
 disinterestedness and support. A friendship was then 
 formed between us which lasted until his death, and I 
 can and do cheerfully concur in all that has been said of 
 him to-day. No eulogy of mine can add to his reputa- 
 tion as a statesman. The records of his country bear 
 evidence to the world of his public services. 
 
 It was my fortune, during a period of ten year's service 
 in the House of Representatives, in the exciting times 
 of 1823 to 1833, when the nation was threatened with 
 the evils of secession by South Carolina, to hear and 
 
 6- 
 
•m 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 87 
 
 witness the contests of the national men of that day. I 
 have heard Mr. Douglas, and can say his power as a 
 debater, and his devotion to the great principles upon 
 which our government is founded, were not surpassed 
 by the greatest of the great men of that day. 
 
 No statesman of the present century, living or dead, 
 has a more consistent record than that of Douglas; 
 consistent in principle, theory, and action. 
 
 I rose only, Mr. Speaker, to add my testimony, that it 
 be placed upon the record. I know I speak the senti- 
 ments of his friends in Kentucky. My colleague has 
 more appropriately spoken the feelings of the whole 
 State. We mourn his death as a national affliction. He 
 emphatically was a national man. At this time more 
 than any period of his life, does the nation need his 
 services. His devotion to the Union and the Constitu- 
 tion was ardent and sincere; and such men the nation 
 now wants, in this hour of her greatest trial. 
 
 Address of Mr. Fouke, of Illinois. 
 
 Mr. Speaker: With the termination of my remarks 
 will, I presume, close the solemn ceremonies of the 
 present occasion. Our thoughts are sad, our hearts are 
 full of mourning. " Death seeks a shining mark." A 
 brilliant sun has gone down at noon. In the meridian 
 of life, in the plentitude of his usefulness and readiness 
 to serve his country in its present great need of the 
 wisest counsels and ready cooporation of its greatest 
 and truest statesman, has Stephen A. Douglas, standing 
 
 -m 
 
g 
 
 88 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 at the head of the column of the true patriots of our 
 laud, been struck down by death's inexorable fiat! The 
 nation deeply mourns his demise in habiliments of 
 sincere woe. The Congress of the United States will 
 see and hear him no more, as it has hitherto for many 
 years been accustomed to greet his cheerful presence, 
 and dwell with profit and instruction upon his words of 
 wisdom. He has passed from our midst, but he has left 
 us a glorious legacy in his last dying words, enjoining 
 upon his two sons, of tender years, and all the friends 
 about his couch, to stand by the Union and the Consti- 
 tution of their country, and help to maintain the laws. 
 
 Judge Douglas died in the clear, full faith that the 
 Union would be maintained and preserved, as he, as well 
 as Washington, Jackson, Clay, and their compeers, before 
 him, believed it ought to be, no matter who might be 
 the constitutionally elected President. 
 
 He had previously, while in health, publicly declared, 
 in view of the crisis which was seriously threatening the 
 destruction of our Union, that he would give up the 
 great party he had all his life clung to, and all hope of 
 future exaltation to power by that, or any other party, 
 to save the Union from destruction. It was a sentiment 
 of patriotic fervor from the bottom of his great American 
 heart. Like the noble sentiment once proclaimed by 
 the immortal Clay, Judge Douglas would "rather be 
 right than be President." 
 
 The humble individual who, on this solemn occasion, 
 offers up his mite of tribute to the worth and memory 
 of the departed statesman we mourn, was for many 
 years the personal and political friend and admirer of 
 Stephen A. Douglas. I saw him rise rapidly in the 
 
 , fi 
 
HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 89 
 
 affections of the people of my native State, who knew 
 him well — his genial nature, his generosity, his great 
 energy of character, his integrity, and his wisdom and 
 solid worth ; and they soon showered profusely upon him 
 all the honors in their gift — legislative, judicial, and con- 
 gressional. They saw him among them from choice, the 
 architect of his own fortunes ; and with pride they saw 
 him taking and holding a high stand in the councils of 
 the nation — the peer of the mightiest magnates of the 
 Republic. They were anxious to see him, as the true 
 representative man of the people, elevated to the highest 
 office within the gift of American freemen. His friends 
 urged him for the exalted position of President of the 
 United States at the national convention at Baltimore, 
 in 1852. But he knew better than his admiring sup- 
 porters that his nomination could not be made without 
 strife. Hence he urged them to yield to a compromise 
 upon Franklin Pierce, who was nominated and elected. 
 
 In 1856, at the Cincinnati convention, his friends 
 urged him again for the nomination, and he received a 
 large vote; but, ever disinterested and desirous of 
 harmony in his party, he telegraphed his friends in the 
 convention, by all means, as a sound Democratic rule, to 
 vote for Mr. Buchanan as soon as he should receive a bare 
 majority, and nominate him by a two-thirds vote, upon 
 the principle that in party organizations the time had 
 passed for a minority to hold out with a factious oppo- 
 sition to a majority. They did as he requested, and Mr. 
 Buchanan was nominated and elected. 
 
 When he had made a successful campaign of Illinois 
 in 1858, for reelection to the Senate, and was returned 
 for the third time, his name was again urged for the 
 
Presidency; all his intimate friends know full well that 
 he resisted this appeal. Having just been elected for 
 another term of six years to the Senate, he desired for 
 the time being no more exalted position. He at last, 
 however, reluctantly yielded his assent, but it was with 
 the distinct understanding that, if nominated, it must be 
 upon his doctrine of " popular sovereignty," as sanctioned 
 by the Cincinnati convention in 1856. 
 
 Having thus yielded his assent, he laid before the 
 public, through Harper's Magazine, a lucid, logical, 
 convincing, and unanswerable paper, in illustration and 
 advocacy of the right, fairness, and feasibility of his 
 great measure, which secures to the people of the public 
 Territories, as well as to those of each and all the States, 
 the right to settle all their local and domestic questions 
 in their own way, and to decide for themselves, as the 
 majority in each Territory should determine, whether 
 they should have, or not have, slavery in ther midst. 
 This great doctrine of the people's right to decide their 
 own domestic affairs and polity, as the majority might 
 clearly indicate, he held to and advocated to the day of 
 his death. But he lived to realize the proud satisfaction 
 of seeing his cherished jn'inciple ingrafted upon the 
 legislation of the country by the very party that had 
 struggled most to destroy it. 
 
 He was one of the people ; and he labored all his life 
 to promote their best interests. He believed, implicitly, 
 in our free institutions, and ardently desired to have them 
 spread all over this vast continent. Hence he advocated 
 the annexation of Texas, of California, of Cuba, of closing 
 up the Carribean sea against the further colonization of 
 European Powers upon the western hemisphere. 
 
@r 
 
 
 HON. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS. 91 
 
 To the genius, energy, ability, and irresistible influence 
 of Stephen A. Douglas in Congress, were the people 
 of Illinois indebted for the great grant of public land 
 within the borders of their State, for railroad purposes, 
 which caused the building of the Illinois Central rail- 
 road, running seven hundred miles through that great 
 State, and contributing immensely to the population and 
 wealth of its inhabitants, who honor the great states- 
 man's memory for his gigantic work hi behalf of their 
 Commonwealth. 
 
 For his great energy and success in carrying through 
 Congress measures for the establishment of ocean steam 
 mail lines between New York city and San Francisco, 
 and the celebrated Collins line, between New York and 
 Liverpool, the people of our whole country have been 
 greatly indebted. He stood up for those lines, and was 
 mainly instrumental in carrying them through Congress, 
 against much formal and official opposition. They proved 
 a brilliant success, and established the wisdom of his 
 action for their creation. ■ 
 
 On the questions which convulsed the nation in 1850 
 he stood a giant among a race of giants and patriots, and 
 did yeoman's service in the work of restoring peace and 
 tranquillity to a distracted country. 
 
 As a candidate for the Presidency in 1860, Judge 
 Douglas took an exalted position in favor of popular 
 rights — a bold and fearless stand against disunion, and 
 poured forth to the North and the South, without 
 equivocation, his anathemas against the heresies of both 
 sections. . He received upwards of one million three 
 hundred thousand votes for President ; but was defeated. 
 Murmurings and discontent arose in the land; and ere 
 
 G- 
 
m- 
 
 92 OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 
 
 his successful co took the oath office, the work 
 
 of disintegration w rogressing. 
 
 Judge Douglas i q _ ' Senate, and exerted 
 
 his mighty powers of mind to : ;tore peace and har- 
 mony; and never did his great intellect display more 
 lofty statesmanship, or his noble heart more disinter- 
 ested patriotism. It was his last senatorial battle. But 
 the clash of intellect has given way to the clash of arms; 
 the panorama of events predicted by him are passing 
 rapidly before us. It is the broken sword; the war 
 steed without his rider; falling columns and crumbling 
 monuments; prostrate commerce and a bankrupt treas- 
 ury; weeping widows and fatherless children; While 
 the statesman, whose death we so profoundly mourn, 
 believed that the Government would be maintained, yet 
 his great soul was exceedingly sorrowful when he con- 
 templated the horrors of civil strife, which he believed 
 to be inevitable; but he now quietly sleeps in that city 
 peopled by the departed ; his stormy voice is mute ; his 
 patriotic heart, which, when ■ living, was moved by the 
 noblest emotions of our nature, lies calm and motionless 
 in the grave. Douglas is dead! 
 
 The question was taken; and the resolutions were 
 agreed to. 
 
 The House thereupon (at four o'clock, p. m.) ad- 
 journed. 
 
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