Some weeks later, Douglas himself presented another protest, signed by over five hundred clergymen of the Northwest and accompanied by resolutions which denounced the Senator from Illinois for his "want of courtesy and reverence toward man and God."[498] His comments upon this protest were not calculated to restore him to favor among these "divinely appointed ministers for the declaration and enforcement of God's will." His public letter to them, however, was much more creditable, for in it he avoided abusive language and appealed frankly to the sober sense of the clergy.[499] Of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, he said again that it was necessary, "in order to recognize the great principle of self-government and State equality. It does not vary the question in any degree, that human slavery, in your opinion, is a great moral wrong. If so, it is not the only wrong upon which the people of each of the States and Territories of this Union are called upon to act.... You think you are abundantly competent to decide this question now and forever. If you should remove to Nebraska, with a view of making it your permanent home, would you be any less competent to decide it when you should have arrived in the country?"[500] The obloquy which Douglas encountered in Washington was mere child's play, as compared with the storm of abuse that met him on his return to Chicago. He afterwards said that he could travel from Boston to Chicago by the light of his own effigies.[501] "Traitor," "Arnold,"--with a suggestion that he had the blood of Benedict Arnold in his veins,--"Judas," were epithets hurled at him from desk and pulpit. He was presented with thirty pieces of silver by some indignant females in an Ohio village.[502] So incensed were the people of Chicago, that his friends advised him not to return, fearing that he would be assaulted.[503] But fear was a sensation that he had never experienced. He went to Chicago confident that he could silence opposition as he had done four years before.[504]