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[Gene C]

Douglas had his shortcommings, but he showed a lot of class after he lost the presidential election to Lincoln.

An incident occurred during the inauguration which has become part of American folklore – except that it was reported at the time by Murat Halstead of the Cincinnati Commercial, “One of the Representatives of this State in Congress reports an interesting and rather funny incident of the Inauguration, which, not having seen in print, we record. On approaching the platform where he was to take his oath and be inducted into the office of Chief Executive, Mr. Lincoln removed his hat and held it in his hand as he took the seat assigned him. The article seemed to be a burden. He changed it awkwardly from one to another, and finally, despairing of finding for it any other easy position, deposited it upon the platform near him. Senators and judges crowded in, and to make room for them removed nearer the front of the stage, carrying his tile with him. Again it was dandled uneasily, and as Senator Edward Baker approached to introduce him to the audience he made a motion to replace the tile on the stage under the seat, when Douglas, who had been looking on quietly, and apparently with some apprehensions of a catastrophe to the hat, said, ‘Permit me, sir,’ and gallantly took the vexatious article, and held it during the entire reading of the Inaugural! Douglas must have reflected pretty seriously during that half hour, that instead of delivering an inaugural address from the portico, he was holding the hat of the man who was doing it.”133

Douglas biographer Robert W. Johannsen wrote: “The fall of Fort Sumter and Douglas’s public avowal of support to the Lincoln administration climaxed several years of struggle during which the Illinois Senator sought to forestall the sectionalization of politics and the disunion he felt would inevitably follow. The breakup of the Democratic party in the spring of 1860, the futility of his campaign for the Presidency, and the secession of the lower South were events of tragic proportions to Douglas. The high office toward which his entire career had pointed had been denied him, his party was a shambles, and disunion had become an accomplished fact. ‘All that in years past he had looked for,’ observed one of Douglas’s close friends, ‘all he had struggled for, seemed put forever beyond his reach; and he was from that hour a different man.’”142

Douglas returned to Illinois, preaching support for the Union before and after he arrived. He met with Governor Richard Yates in Springfield and then proceeded to his home him Chicago where he spoke in the same Wigwam where Abraham Lincoln had been nominated by the Republican Party for President. Illinois editor Jeriah Bonham recalled that Douglas’s speech ‘was an effort worthy of the patriot statesman’s life. It was oracular, prophetic, commanding, beseeching and persuading. Its arguments were unanswerable. It was like the words of the prophets of old, appealing to conscience, the heart, and love of country…”The present secession movement is the result of an enormous conspiracy formed more than a year ago. There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for e the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war; ONLY PATRIOTS – or traitors. I express it as my conviction before God that it is the duty of every American citizen to rally round the flag of his country. Illinois has a proud position, united, firm, determined never to permit the government to be destroyed.”143 Historian Mark E. Neely, Jr., noted that “Douglas rushed to pledge fealty to the Union and to denounce partisanship after the fall of Fort Sumter. ‘There are but two parties,’ he said, ‘the party of patriots and the party of traitors. Democrats belong to the first.’ That rare example of lofty eloquence from the practical Douglas would often be quoted during the war.”144

There is a lot more, these few paragraphs are from - http://abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/abra...a-douglas/