The controversy thus precipitated between Douglas and the South threatened the disruption of the Democratic party. That was an event of very serious significance. It would bring the conflict of sections still nearer by sundering a tie which had for so long a period bound together vast numbers from the North and the South in common sympathy and fraternal co-operation. Even those who were most opposed to the Democratic party beheld its peril with a certain feeling of regret not unmixed with apprehension. The Whig party had been destroyed; and its Northern and Southern members, who, but a few years before, had worked harmoniously for Harrison, for Clay, for Taylor, were now enrolled in rival and hostile organizations. A similar dissolution of the Democratic party would sweep away the only common basis of political action still existing for men of the free States and men of the slave States. The separation of the Methodist church into Northern and Southern organizations, a few years before, had been regarded by Mr. Webster as a portent of evil for the Union. The division of the Democratic party would be still more ominous. The possibility of such an event showed how deeply the slavery question had affected all ranks,--social, religious, and political. It showed, too, how the spirit of Calhoun now inspired the party in whose councils the slightest word of Jackson had once been law. This change, beginning with the defeat of Van Buren in 1844, was at first slow; but it had afterwards moved so rapidly and so far, that men in the North, who wished to remain in the ranks of the Democracy, were compelled to trample on the principles, and surrender the prejudices, of a lifetime. Efforts to harmonize proved futile. In Congress the breach was continually widening.
The situation was cause of solicitude, and even grief, with thousands to whom the old party was peculiarly endeared. The traditions of Jefferson, of Madison, of Jackson, were devoutly treasured; and the splendid achievements of the American Democracy were recounted with the pride which attaches to an honorable family inheritance. The fact was recalled that the Republic had grown to its imperial dimensions under Democratic statesmanship. It was remembered that Louisiana had been acquired from France, Florida from Spain, the independent Republic of Texas annexed, and California, with its vast dependencies, and its myriad millions of treasure, ceded by Mexico, all under Democratic administrations, and in spite of the resistance of their opponents. That a party whose history was inwoven with the glory of the Republic should now come to its end in a quarrel over the status of the negro, in a region where his labor was not wanted, was, to many of its members, as incomprehensible as it was sorrowful and exasperating. They protested, but they could not prevent. Anger was aroused, and men refused to listen to reason. They were borne along, they knew not whither or by what force. Time might have restored the party to harmony, but at the very height of the factional contest the representatives of both sections were hurried forward to the National Convention of 1860, with principle subordinated to passion, with judgment displaced by a desire for revenge.