But Kansas would not sell her birthright for a mess of pottage. She had fought too long for freedom to be bribed to the support of slavery. She had at last a free vote, and rejected the Lecompton Constitution, land grant and all, by a majority of more than ten thousand. The struggle was over. The pro-slavery men were defeated. The North was victorious. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise had not brought profit or honor to those who planned it. It had only produced strife, anger, heart-burning, hatred. It had added many drops to the cup of bitterness between North and South, and had filled it to overflowing. It produced evil only, and that continually. The repeal, in the judgment of the North, was a great conspiracy against human freedom. In the Southern States it was viewed as an honest effort to recover rights of which they had been unjustly deprived. Each section held with firmness to its own belief, and the four years of agitation had separated them so widely that a return to fraternal feeling seemed impossible. Confidence, the plant of slowest growth, had been destroyed. Who could restore it to life and strength? Douglas had, in large degree, redeemed himself in the North from the obloquy to which he had been subjected since the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The victory for free Kansas was perhaps to an undue extent ascribed to him. The completeness of that victory was everywhere recognized, and the lawless intruders who had worked so hard to inflict slavery on the new Territory gradually withdrew. In the South, Douglas was covered with maledictions. But for his influence, Southern men felt that Kansas would have been admitted with a pro-slavery constitution, and the senatorial equality of the South firmly re-established. Northern Republicans, outside of Illinois, were in a forgiving frame of mind toward Douglas; and he had undoubtedly regained a very large share of his old popularity. But Illinois Republicans were less amiable towards him. They would not forget that he had broken down an anti-slavery barrier which had been reared with toil and sanctified by time. He had not, as they alleged, turned back from any test exacted by the South, until he had reached the point where another step forward involved political death to himself. They would not credit his hostility to the Lecompton Constitution to any nobler motive than the instinct of self-preservation. This was a harsh judgment, and yet a most natural one. It inspired the Republicans of Illinois, and they prepared to contest the return of Douglas to the Senate by formally nominating Abraham Lincoln as an opposing candidate.