For months the controversy was waged in Congress between the friends of the administration and its enemies, and finally resulted in a practical triumph of the Free-soil principle. The Anti-Lecompton coalition of Douglas and the Abolitionists, aided by the defection of a few Southern members, successfully embarrassed the policy of the administration by defeating its recommendations, and eventually carried a measure acceptable to Northern sentiments and interests. Mr. Douglas thus triumphed over a Democratic administration, at the same time giving a shock to the unity of the Democratic party, from which it has never recovered, and effectually neutralized its power as a breakwater of the Union against the waves of sectional dispute. The alienation between himself and his former associates was destined never to be adjusted, as indeed it never should have been, in consideration of his inexcusable recreancy to the immemorial faith of his party. Mr. Douglas simply abandoned the South, at the very first moment when his aid was seriously demanded. Nay, more; he carried with him a quiver of Parthian arrows, which he discharged into her bosom at a most critical moment in her unequal contest. It is not to be denied that Mr. Douglas' new interpretation of the Kansas-Nebraska act was urged by himself and his advocates as having a merit not to be overlooked by the North, in its suggestion of a method of restricting slavery, presenting superior advantages. "Squatter sovereignty," as advocated by Mr. Douglas, proposing the decision of the slavery question by the people of the Territories, while yet unprepared to ask admission as States, was far more effectual in its plans against slavery, and only less prompt and open, than the designs of the Abolitionists. It would enable the "Emigrant Aid Societies," and imported janizaries of Abolition to exclude the institutions of the South from the Territories, the joint possessions of the two sections, acquired by an enormously disproportionate sacrifice on the part of the South, with a certainty not to be realized, for years to come, perhaps, from the Abolition policy of congressional prohibition.[12] According to Mr. Douglas' theory, the existence of slavery in all the Territories was to depend upon the verdict of a few hundred settlers or "squatters" upon the public lands. It practically conceded to Northern interests and ideas every State to be hereafter admitted, and under the operation of such a policy it was not difficult to anticipate the fate of slavery, at last even in the States. From the inception of this controversy until its close Mr. Davis was fully committed to the policy of Mr. Buchanan, and his position was in perfect harmony with that of all the leading statesmen of the South. Less prominent, perhaps, in debate, from his constant ill-health during the first session, than at any other period of his public life, he was still zealous and influential.