One additional circumstance had its effect on public opinion. As has been stated, in the opposition to Douglas's repeal the few avowed abolitionists and the many pronounced Free-soilers, displaying unwonted activity, came suddenly into the foreground to rouse and organize public opinion, making it seem for the moment that they had really assumed leadership and control in politics. This class of men had long been held up to public odium. Some of them had, indeed, on previous occasions used intemperate and offensive language; but more generally they were denounced upon a gross misrepresentation of their utterance and purpose. It so happened that they were mostly of Democratic antecedents, which gave them great influence among antislavery Democrats, but made their advice and arguments exceedingly distasteful in strong Whig counties and communities. The fact that they now became more prudent, conciliatory, and practical in their speeches and platforms did not immediately remove existing prejudices against them. A few of these appeared in Illinois. Cassius M. Clay published a letter in which he advocated the fusion of anti-Nebraska voters upon "Benton, Seward, Hale, or any other good citizen," and afterwards made a series of speeches in Illinois. When he came to Springfield, the Democratic officers in charge refused him the use of the rotunda of the House, a circumstance, however, which only served to draw him a larger audience in a neighboring grove. Later in the summer Joshua B. Giddings and Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, made a political tour through the State, and at Springfield the future Secretary and Chief-Justice addressed an unsympathetic audience of a few hundreds in the dingy little court-house, almost unheralded, save by the epithets of the Democratic newspapers. A few local speakers of this class, of superior address and force, now also began to signalize themselves by a new-born zeal and an attractive eloquence. Conspicuous among these was Owen Lovejoy, of northern Illinois, brother of the man who, for opinion's sake, had been murdered at Alton. While thus in the northern half of Illinois the public condemnation of Douglas's repeal was immediate and sweeping, the formation of opposition to it was tentative and slow in the central and southern counties, where, among Whigs of Southern birth, it proceeded rather upon party feeling than upon moral conviction. The new question struck through party lines in such a manner as to confuse and perplex the masses. But the issue would not be postponed. The Congressional elections were to be held in the autumn, and the succession of events rather than the leadership of politicians gradually shaped the campaign.