The first duty he was called to perform was to announce the death of his colleague, Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas had placed himself at Lincoln's service in all efforts to uphold the Constitution and enforce the laws against the disunionists. He returned from Washington early in April and got in touch with his constituents, ready to act promptly as events might turn out. It turned out that the Confederates struck the first blow in the Civil War by bombarding Fort Sumter. This was the signal for Douglas's last and greatest political and oratorical effort. The state legislature, then in session, invited him to address them on the present crisis, and he responded on the 25th of April in a speech which made Illinois solid for the Union. The writer was one of the listeners to that speech and he cannot conceive that any orator of ancient or modern times could have surpassed it. Douglas seized upon his hearers with a kind of titanic grasp and held them captive, enthralled, spellbound for an immortal hour. He was the only man who could have saved southern Illinois from the danger of an internecine war. The southern counties followed him now as faithfully and as unanimously as they had followed him in previous years, and sent their sons into the field to fight for the Union as numerously and bravely as those of any other section of the state or of the country. Douglas had only a few more days to live. He was now forty-eight years of age, but if he had survived forty-eight more he could never have surpassed that eloquence or exceeded that service to the nation, for he never could have found another like occasion for the use of his astounding powers. He died at Chicago, June 3, 1861. Trumbull's eulogy was solemn, sincere, pathetic, and impressive--a model of good taste in every way. He retracted nothing, but, ignoring past differences, he gave an abounding and heartfelt tribute of praise to the dead statesman for his matchless service to his country in the hour of her greatest need. He concluded with these words: On the 17th day of June last, all that remained of our departed brother was interred near the city of Chicago, on the shore of Lake Michigan, whose pure waters, often lashed into fury by contending elements, are a fitting memento of the stormy and boisterous political tumults through which the great popular orator so often passed. There the people, whose idol he was, will erect a monument to his memory; and there, in the soil of the state which so long without interruption, and never to a greater extent than at the moment of his death, gave him her confidence, let his remains repose so long as free government shall last and the Constitution he loved so well endure. FOOTNOTES: [45] _Life of Lincoln_, by Herndon-Weik, 2d edition, III, 172, 181.