Not less than Davis was Douglas a representative man, yet no two men were more essentially dissimilar, and no two lives ever actuated by aspirations and instincts more unlike. Douglas was the representative of expediency--Davis the exponent of principles. In his party associations Douglas would tolerate the largest latitude of individual opinion, while Davis was always for a policy clearly defined and unmistakable; and upon a matter of vital principle, like Percy, would reluctantly surrender even the "ninth part of a hair." To maintain the united action of the Democratic party on election day, to defeat its opponents, to secure the rewards of success, Douglas would allow a thousand different constructions of the party creed by as many factions. Davis, on the other hand, would, and eventually did, approve the dissolution of the party, when it refused an open, manly enunciation of its faith. For mere party success Douglas cared every thing, and Davis nothing, save as it ensured the triumph of Constitutional principles. Both loved the Union and sought its perpetuity, but by different methods; Douglas by never-ending compromises of a quarrel, which he should have known that the North would never permit to be amicably settled; by staving off and ignoring issues which were to be solved only by being squarely met. Davis, too, was not unwilling to compromise, but he wearied of perpetual concession by the South, in the meanwhile the North continuing its hostility, both open and insidious, and urged a settlement of all differences upon a basis of simple and exact justice to both sections. Douglas was preëminently the representative politician of his section, and throughout his career was a favorite with that boastful, bloated, and mongrel element, which is violently called the "American people," and which is the ruling element in elections in the Northern cities. In character and conduct he embodied many of its materialistic and socialistic ideas, its false conception of liberty, its pernicious dogmas of equality, and not a little of its rowdyism. Davis was the champion of the South, her civilization, lights, honor, and dignity. He was the fitting and adequate exponent of a civilization which rested upon an intellectual and æsthetical development, upon lofty and generous sentiments of manhood, a dignified conservatism, and the proud associations of ancestral distinction in the history of the Union. Always the Senator in the sense of the ideal of dignity and courtesy which is suggested by that title, he was also the _gentleman_ upon all occasions; never condescending to flatter or soothe the mob, or to court popular favor, he lost none of that polished and distinguished manner, in the presence of a "fierce Democracie," which made him the ornament of the highest school of oratory and statesmanship of his country.