Delegates, constituencies, and leaders had willingly joined in the game of "cheat and be cheated." Availability, harmony, party success, were the paramount objects.
[Sidenote] Douglas, Reply to Black, Pamphlet, Oct., 1859.
No similar ambiguity, concealment, or bargain was possible at Charleston.

There was indeed a whole brood of collateral issues to be left in convenient obscurity, but the central questions must not be shirked.

The Lecompton quarrel, the Freeport doctrine, the property theory, the "slave-State" dogma, the Congressional slave code proposal, must be boldly met and squarely adjusted.

Even if the delegates had been disposed to trifle with their constituents, the leaders themselves would tolerate no evasion on certain cardinal points.

Douglas, in his Dorr letter, had announced that he would suffer no interpolation of new issues into the Democratic creed.