Already he aspired to the Presidency and began to jealously guard his reputation against the sinister suspicions which in those days haunted the ambitious statesman. The great problem which then taxed the ingenuity of the aspiring politician was, how to win the South without alienating the North, or how to hold the North without losing the South. Irreconcilable differences of opinion on fundamental questions, deepening ominously into passionate hostility of sentiment, were already manifesting themselves. The task of the politician was to steer his dangerous course between this Scylla and Charybdis. If he gave color to the suspicion that he even tolerated the growing anti-slavery sentiment of the North, the South would reject him with horror. If he espoused too warmly the cause that had become so dear to the heart of the South, the North, goaded by its over-sensitive conscience, would spurn him with disgust. In the existing state of party organization the highest success was not possible without at least partial reconciliation of these irreconcilable forces. Northern statesmen could not hope to succeed by brave appeals to the passions and prejudices of the South, for they would lose their home constituencies, the worst fatality that can befall an American politician. They could not hope to succeed by brave appeals to the earnest convictions of the North, for they had not yet authority as affirmative rules of political conduct. The charge of dodging a vote on the Fugitive Slave bill had annoyed Douglas deeply. Any doubt cast upon his fidelity to the South in its contest with the rising anti-slavery sentiment would be disastrous. It was extremely distrustful of Northern politicians and ready to take alarm on the slightest occasion. When the session was but three weeks old he spoke, defending himself against a series of political charges and boasting his partisan virtues in a way that plainly proclaimed the candidate and savored strongly of the stump. He explained that he had been called to New York on urgent private business on the day of the passage of the law and that on his return he was taken seriously ill and confined to his bed during the latter part of the session and for weeks after adjournment. He claimed credit for having written the original Compromise bills which Clay's Committee joined together with a wafer and reported as its own. He denied vehemently having favored the Wilmot Proviso, excluding slavery from all territory acquired from Mexico, and declared that he had sought to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific. He said that the legislature of Illinois had instructed him to vote for the exclusion of slavery from the Territories, and that, while he had cast the vote of his State according to instructions, he had protested against it, and the vote cast was that of the legislature. He regarded the slavery question as settled forever and had resolved to make no more speeches on it.