Small wonder that even the vigorous health of "the Little Giant" succumbed to these assaults. For a fortnight he was confined to his bed, rising only by sheer force of will to make a final plea for sanity, before his party took its suicidal plunge. He spoke on the 22d of March under exceptional conditions. In the expectation that he would speak in the forenoon, people thronged the galleries at an early hour, and refused to give up their seats, even when it was announced that the Senator from Illinois would not address the Senate until seven o 'clock in the evening. When the hour came, crowds still held possession of the galleries, so that not even standing room was available. The door-keepers wrestled in vain with an impatient throng without, until by motion of Senator Gwin, ladies were admitted to the floor of the chamber. Even then, Douglas was obliged to pause several times, for the confusion around the doors to subside.[658] He spoke with manifest difficulty, but he was more defiant than ever. His speech was at once a protest and a personal vindication. Denial of the right of the administration to force the Lecompton constitution upon the people of Kansas, went hand in hand with a defense of his own Democracy. Sentences culled here and there suggest not unfairly the stinging rebukes and defiant challenges that accentuated the none too coherent course of his speech:
"I am told that this Lecompton constitution is a party test, a party measure; that no man is a Democrat who does not sanction it ... Sir, who made it a party test? Who made it a party measure?... Who has interpolated this Lecompton constitution into the party platform?... Oh! but we are told it is an Administration measure. Because it is an Administration measure, does it therefore follow that it is a party measure?" ... "I do not recognize the right of the President or his Cabinet ... to tell me my duty in the Senate Chamber." "Am I to be told that I must obey the Executive and betray my State, or else be branded as a traitor to the party, and hunted down by all the newspapers that share the patronage of the government, and every man who holds a petty office in any part of my State to have the question put to him, 'Are you Douglas's enemy? if not, your head comes off.'" "I intend to perform my duty in accordance with my own convictions. Neither the frowns of power nor the influence of patronage will change my action, or drive me from my principles. I stand firmly, immovably upon those great principles of self-government and state sovereignty upon which the campaign was fought and the election won.... If, standing firmly by my principles, I shall be driven into private life, it is a fate that has no terrors for me. I prefer private life, preserving my own self-respect and manhood, to abject and servile submission to executive will. If the alternative be private life or servile obedience to executive will, I am prepared to retire. Official position has no charms for me when deprived of that freedom of thought and action which becomes a gentleman and a senator.'"[659]