The repeal, in the judgment of the North, was a great conspiracy against human freedom.

In the Southern States it was viewed as an honest effort to recover rights of which they had been unjustly deprived.

Each section held with firmness to its own belief, and the four years of agitation had separated them so widely that a return to fraternal feeling seemed impossible.

Confidence, the plant of slowest growth, had been destroyed.

Who could restore it to life and strength?
Douglas had, in large degree, redeemed himself in the North from the obloquy to which he had been subjected since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.