[Footnote 665: _Ibid._, p. 1870.]

[Footnote 666: _Globe_, 35 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 1870.]

[Footnote 667: Rhodes, History of the United States, II, p. 300.]

[Footnote 668: Cox, Three Decades of Federal Legislation, p. 58.]




CHAPTER XVI

THE JOINT DEBATES WITH LINCOLN


National politics made strange bed-fellows in the winter of 1857-8.
Douglas consorting with Republicans and flouting the administration,
was a rare spectacle. There was a moment in this odd alliance when it
seemed likely to become more than a temporary fusion of interests. The
need of concerted action brought about frequent conferences, in which
the distrust of men like Wilson and Colfax was, in a measure,
dispelled by the engaging frankness of their quondam opponent.[669]
Douglas intimated that in all probability he could not act with his
party in future.[670] He assured Wilson that he was in the fight to
stay--in his own words, "he had checked his baggage and taken a
through ticket."[671] There was an odd disposition, too, on the part
of some Republicans to indorse popular sovereignty, now that it seemed
likely to exclude slavery from the Territories.[672] There was even a