Notwithstanding all this the Democracy might still have elected a president in 1860 had it been united. But it was now desperately at feud with itself, the cause of this, beautifully enough, lying back in that very device of Repeal which was intended to make Kansas a slave State and so to perpetuate the democratic sway. Judge Douglas, and most of the northern Democrats with him, had insisted so long and earnestly upon the doctrine of squatter sovereignty that they could not now possibly recede from it even had they desired to do so. The great majority of them did not so desire, but sincerely believed in that doctrine as part and parcel of the true democratic faith. But it was now obvious that the working out of the Douglas theory was absolutely sure to make free all the western States henceforth to be formed. This would, of course, remove the Senate from the domination of slavery. Hence the South was irrevocably opposed to it, and insisted with all its might upon the Calhoun-Taney contention that the national Government must protect slavery in all the Territories to which it pleased to go. In a passage at arms with Douglas as they were stumping Illinois for the senatorship in 1858, Lincoln keenly forced upon him the question whether under the Dred Scott decision any Territory could possibly be kept free from slavery. "If," said he, "Douglas answers yes, he can never be President; if no, Illinois will not again elect him senator." Douglas replied in the affirmative, and, as his antagonist prophesied, became in the South a doomed man. The schism was fully apparent when, on April 23d, the democratic convention of 1860 began its session in Charleston. A majority of the delegates were for Douglas, voting down the Calhoun-Taney view, though willing that the party should bind itself to obey the Dred Scott decision. When the Douglas platform was adopted the delegations from Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Texas, with parts of those from Louisiana, North and South Carolina, Arkansas, and Delaware, seceded. Douglas had a majority vote as presidential candidate, but not two-thirds. The convention adjourned to meet at Baltimore June 18th, and when it met there Douglas was nominated by the requisite two-thirds vote. The seceders met at Richmond, June 11th, where, imitating some new seceders at Baltimore they nominated Breckenridge and Lane. The so-called Constitutional Union Party also had in the field its ticket, Bell and Everett, which secured votes from a few persistent Whigs and Know-nothings still foolish enough to suppose that further clash between the powers of slavery and freedom could somehow be averted.