faith.

Two features of this speech commended it to Democrats: its
recognition of the finality of the compromise, and its insistence upon
the necessity of banishing the slavery question from politics. "The
Democratic party," he asseverated, "is as good a Union party as I
want, and I wish to preserve its principles and its organization, and
to triumph upon its old issues. I desire no new tests--no
interpolations into the old creed."[379] For his part, he was resolved
never to speak again upon the slavery question in the halls of
Congress.

But this was after all a negative programme. Could a campaign be
successfully fought without other weapons than the well-worn
blunderbusses in the Democratic arsenal? This was a do-nothing policy,
difficult to reconcile with the enthusiastic liberalism which Young
America was supposed to cherish. Yet Douglas gauged the situation
accurately. The bulk of the party wished a return to power more than
anything else. To this end, they were willing to toot for old issues
and preserve the old party alignment. For four years, the Democratic
office-hunters had not tasted of the loaves and fishes within the gift
of the executive. They expected liberality in conduct, if not
liberalism in creed, from their next President. Douglas shared this
political hunger. He had always been a believer in rotation in office,
and an exponent of that unhappy, American practice of using public
office as the spoil of party victory. In this very session, he put
himself on record against permanence in office for the clerks of the
Senate, holding that such positions should fall vacant at stated
intervals.[380]