In March, 1856, Douglas, speaking in the Senate upon an article published, apparently by authority, in the Washington Union, the organ of the Administration, charged a conspiracy between the President, his cabinet and the Lecompton Convention to establish the proposition that all State laws and Constitutions, which prohibited the citizens of one State from settling in another with their slave property, were violations of the Constitution of the United States. He declared that a fatal blow was being struck at the sovereignty of the States. Charges of conspiracy were not entirely unheard of when the one was made at Springfield so sharply condemned by Douglas. "But his eye is farther South now than it was last March. His hope then rested on the idea of visiting the great black Republican party and making it the tail of his new kite. He was then expected from day to day to turn Republican and place himself at the head of our organization. He has found that these despised black Republicans estimate him, by a standard which he has taught them, none to well. Hence he is crawling back into the old camp and you will find him eventually installed in full fellowship among those whom he was then battling and with whom he still pretends to be at such fearful variance." There is an interesting and well authenticated tradition, perhaps too strongly established to be questioned, that Lincoln's second interrogatory was designed as a snare for Douglas and that he was forced by it to proclaim his unfortunate doctrine of unfriendly legislation, which gave such deep offense to the South. It is related on the highest authority that on the night before the Freeport debate, "Lincoln was catching a few hours' rest at a railroad center named Mendota, to which place the converging trains brought, after midnight, a number of excited Republican leaders on their way to attend the great meeting at the neighboring town of Freeport. * * * * Lincoln's bedroom was invaded by an improvised caucus, and the ominous question was once more brought under consideration. The whole drift of advice ran against putting the interrogatory (number two) to Douglas, but Lincoln persisted in his determination to force him to answer it. Finally his friends in a chorus cried: 'If you do, you can never be Senator.' "'Gentlemen,' replied Lincoln, 'I am killing larger game. If Douglas answers, he can never be President, and the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this.'"