WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi, working to restore comity after her dispute with four liberal freshmen burst into the open, made an extraordinary closed-door plea for Democratic unity on Wednesday and sharply rebuked those who have made personal attacks against fellow Democrats.

In fiery remarks during the weekly morning meeting of the House Democratic Caucus, Ms. Pelosi defended her decision last month to push through an emergency border aid package that many progressives said lacked sufficient restrictions on the Trump administration. She argued that Democrats should train their ire on Republicans rather than pursuing a family feud that she said only played into the other party’s hands.

Without naming her, Ms. Pelosi appeared to single out Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who has taken to Twitter to criticize the speaker and whose chief of staff has in recent weeks used the social media platform to question the speaker’s leadership and suggest that centrist Democrats were racist.

“You got a complaint? You come and talk to me about it,” she told Democrats, according to two people in the room who described her remarks on the condition of anonymity. “But do not tweet about our members and expect us to think that that is just O.K.”

The speech, which attendees said drew a standing ovation from lawmakers in the room, was a notable moment for Ms. Pelosi and House Democrats who are grappling in real time with how to best use their fractious majority, and whose ties have been tested and strained in debates over impeachment, immigration, climate change and health care policy.

As Ms. Pelosi spoke, Democrats were toiling to reach a consensus on an extensive defense policy measure, which has drawn skepticism from liberal lawmakers who want to include additional conditions on the president’s powers to take unilateral military action and limit his power to keep troops at the southwestern border.

The divides have been dramatized in recent days after Ms. Pelosi gave an interview questioning the legislative clout of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and three other first-term lawmakers who make up what has come to be known as “the squad” — Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. The New York congresswoman then struck back by suggesting that they, not the speaker, were the true leaders in the Democratic Party.

Saikat Chakrabarti, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff, added fuel to the fire with a series of tweets criticizing the speaker, a remarkable breach of protocol for an unelected congressional aide. Late last month, he deleted a tweet comparing Democratic moderates who backed a less-restrictive humanitarian aid bill to segregationists, calling them the “New Southern Democrats,” and adding, “They certainly seem hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s.”

As Ms. Pelosi emerged from the meeting on Wednesday, she did not back down from the spat or the comments that helped to fuel it.

“I have no regrets about anything,” she told reporters. “Regrets is not what I do.”

Both Ms. Pelosi and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez have said the argument is not about them individually or any personal animosity that exists between them — they have not had a one-on-one conversation since January — but about the constituencies they represent.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez says she took offense at the speaker’s remarks because they implied that her constituents, and members of the broader progressive movement who share her views, are irrelevant.

“It’s not about four people,” she said in an interview on Tuesday. “It’s about the millions of people that we were elected to represent. And the idea that we can just dismiss people from the Bronx because they’re from the Bronx is, I think, counter to who we are as a party.”

Ms. Pelosi insisted she did not mind being a lightning rod for criticism, but she wanted to protect the more moderate Democrats in the Blue Dog Coalition and the New Democrat Coalition, many of whom represent Republican-leaning districts. Those members are constantly faced with the possibility that a vote they cast could harm their chances, and the party’s chances, of holding the House, she said.

“Every day some of our members have to fight the fight for their re-election,” she said, according to one of the attendees who described her comments. “You make me the target, but don’t make our Blue Dogs and our New Dems the target in all of this, because we have important fish to fry.”

The conflicts are unlikely to dissipate soon. Many Democrats are privately frustrated with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s tactics, while others concede privately that Ms. Pelosi has made matters worse by appearing to dismiss her and the squad.

“It’s just a strange and bizarre thing, because leadership has never registered any problem with us privately, internally,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said on Tuesday, before the speaker’s closed-door remarks. “We’ve never been pulled aside. No one’s ever had a conversation, never really had a one-on-one on any of these kinds of issues.”

On Wednesday, Ms. Pelosi changed all that in front of the entire Democratic Caucus.

“Some of you are here to make a beautiful pâté,” she told the group. “But we’re making sausage most of the time.”

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