In Congress, distinction does not always, or usually, imply power; but Douglas was consummately fit for the sort of struggling by which things are in fact accomplished at Washington. Whatever the matter in hand, his mind always moved with lightning rapidity to positive views. He was never without a clear purpose, and he had the skill and the temper to manage men. He knew how to conciliate opponents, to impress the thoughtful, to threaten the timid, to button-hole and flatter and cajole. He breathed freely the heated air of lobbies and committee rooms. Fast as his reputation grew, his actual importance in legislation grew faster still. At the beginning of his second term he was appointed chairman of the House Committee on Territories, and so was charged in an especial way with the affairs of the remoter West. In the course of that service, he framed many laws which have affected very notably the development of our younger commonwealths. He was particularly opposed to the policy of massing the Indians in reservations west of the Mississippi, fearing that the new Northwest, the Oregon country, over which we were still in controversy with Great Britain, would thus be isolated. To prevent this, he introduced during his first term a bill to organize into a territory that part of the Louisiana Purchase which lay north and west of Missouri. As yet, however, there were scarcely any white settlers in the region, and no interest could be enlisted in support of the bill. But he renewed his motion year after year until finally, as we shall see, he made it the most celebrated measure of his time. His advocacy of the internal improvements needed for the development of the West brought him in opposition to a powerful element in his own party. Adams, writing in his diary under date of April 17, 1844, says: "The Western harbor bill was taken up, and the previous question was withdrawn for the _homunculus_ Douglas to poke out a speech in favor of the constitutionality of appropriations for the improvement of Western rivers and harbors. The debate was continued between the conflicting absurdities of the Southern Democracy, which is slavery, and the Western Democracy, which is knavery." Under the leadership of Jackson and other Southerners, the Democrats, notwithstanding their long ascendency, had adhered to their position on internal improvements more consistently, perhaps, than to any other of the contentions which they had made before they came into power. Douglas did not, indeed, commit himself to that interpretation of the Constitution which justified appropriations for any enterprise which could be considered a contribution to the "general welfare," and he protested against various items in river and harbor bills. But as a rule he voted for the bills.