THE REVOLT OF DOUGLAS

Had anyone prophesied at the close of the year 1856, that within a twelvemonth Douglas would be denounced as a traitor to Democracy, he would have been thought mad. That Douglas of all men should break with his party under any circumstances was almost unthinkable. His whole public career had been inseparably connected with his party. To be sure, he had never gone so far as to say “my party right or wrong”; but that was because he had never felt obliged to make a moral choice. He was always convinced that his party was right. Within the circumference of party, he had always found ample freedom of movement. He had never lacked the courage of his convictions, but hitherto his convictions had never collided with the dominant opinion of Democracy. He undoubtedly believed profoundly in the mission of his party, as an organization standing above all for popular government and the preservation of the Union. No ordinary circumstances would justify him in weakening the influence or impairing the organization of the Democratic party. Paradoxical as it may seem, his partisanship was dictated by a profound patriotism. He believed the maintenance of the Union to be dependent upon the integrity of his party. So thinking and feeling he entered upon the most memorable controversy of his career.

When President Buchanan asked Robert J. Walker of Mississippi to become governor of Kansas, the choice met with the hearty approval of Douglas. Not all the President’s appointments had been acceptable to the Senator from Illinois. But here was one that he could indorse unreservedly. He used all his influence to persuade Walker to accept the uncoveted mission. With great reluctance Walker consented, but only upon the most explicit understanding with the administration as to the policy to be followed in Kansas. It was well understood on both sides that a true construction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act required the submission to popular vote of any constitution which the prospective convention might adopt. This was emphatically the view of Douglas, whom Governor Walker took pains to consult on his way through Chicago.

The call for an election of delegates to a constitutional convention had already been issued, when Walker reached Kansas. The free-State people were incensed because the appointment of delegates had been made on the basis of a defective census and registration; and even the assurance of the governor, in his inaugural, that the constitution would be submitted to a popular vote, failed to overcome their distrust. They therefore took no part in the election of delegates. This course was unfortunate, for it gave the control of the convention wholly into the hands of the pro-slavery party, with consequences that were far-reaching for Kansas and the nation. But by October the free-State party had abandoned its policy of abstention from territorial politics, so far as to participate in the election of a new territorial legislature. The result was a decisive free-State victory. The next legislature would have an ample majority of free-State men in both chambers. It was with the discomfiting knowledge, then, that they represented only a minority of the community that the delegates of the constitutional convention began their labors. It was clear to the dullest intelligence that any pro-slavery constitution would be voted down, if it were submitted fairly to the people of Kansas. Gloom settled down upon the hopes of the pro-slavery party.

When the document which embodied the labors of the convention was made public, the free-State party awoke from its late complacence to find itself tricked by a desperate game. The constitution was not to be submitted to a full and fair vote; but only the article relating to slavery. The people of Kansas were to vote for the “Constitution with slavery” or for the “Constitution with no slavery.” By either alternative the constitution would be adopted. But should the constitution with no slavery be ratified, a clause of the schedule still guaranteed “the right of property in slaves now in this Territory." The choice offered to an opponent of slavery in Kansas was between a constitution sanctioning and safeguarding all forms of slave property, and a constitution which guaranteed the full possession of slaves then in the Territory, with no assurances as to the status of the natural increase of these slaves. Viewed in the most charitable light, this was a gambler’s device for securing the stakes by hook or crook. Still further to guard existing property rights in slaves, it was provided that if the constitution should be amended after 1864, no alteration should be made to affect “the rights of property in the ownership of slaves."

The news from Lecompton stirred Douglas profoundly. In a peculiar sense he stood sponsor for justice to bleeding Kansas, not only because he had advocated in abstract terms the perfect freedom of the people to form their domestic institutions in their own way, but because he had become personally responsible for the conduct of the leader of the Lecompton party. John Calhoun, president of the convention, had been appointed surveyor general of the Territory upon his recommendation. Governor Walker had retained Calhoun in that office because of Douglas’s assurance that Calhoun would support the policy of submission. Moreover, Governor Walker had gone to his post with the assurance that the leaders of the administration would support this course.

Was it likely that the pro-slavery party in Kansas would take this desperate course, without assurance of some sort from Washington? There were persistent rumors that President Buchanan approved the Lecompton constitution, but Douglas was loth to give credence to them. The press of Illinois and of the Northwest voiced public sentiment in condemning the work of the Lecomptonites. Douglas was soon on his way to Washington, determined to know the President’s mind; his own was made up.

The interview between President Buchanan and Douglas, as recounted by the latter, takes on a dramatic aspect. Douglas found his worst fears realized. The President was clearly under the influence of an aggressive group of Southern statesmen, who were bent upon making Kansas a slave State under the Lecompton constitution. Laboring under intense feeling, Douglas then threw down the gauntlet: he would oppose the policy of the administration publicly to the bitter end. “Mr. Douglas,” said the President rising to his feet excitedly, “I desire you to remember that no Democrat ever yet differed from an administration of his own choice without being crushed. Beware of the fate of Tallmadge and Rives.” “Mr. President” rejoined Douglas also rising, “I wish you to remember that General Jackson is dead.”

The Chicago Times, reporting the interview, intimated that there had been a want of agreement, but no lack of courtesy or regard on either side. Douglas was not yet ready to issue an ultimatum. The situation might be remedied. On the night following this memorable encounter, Douglas was serenaded by friends and responded with a brief speech, but he did not allude to the Kansas question. It was generally expected that he would show his hand on Monday, the opening day of Congress. The President’s message did not reach Congress, however, until Tuesday. Immediately upon its reading, Douglas offered the usual motion to print the message, adding, as he took his seat, that he totally dissented from “that portion of the message which may fairly be construed as approving of the proceedings of the Lecompton convention.” At an early date he would state the reasons for his dissent.

On the following day, December 9th, Douglas took the irrevocable step. For three hours he held the Senate and the audience in the galleries in rapt attention, while with more than his wonted gravity and earnestness he denounced the Lecompton constitution. He began with a conciliatory reference to the President’s message. He was happy to find, after a more careful examination, that the President had refrained from making any recommendation as to the course which Congress should pursue with regard to the constitution. And so, he added adroitly, the Kansas question is not to be treated as an administration measure. He shared the disappointment of the President that the constitution had not been submitted fully and freely to the people of Kansas; but the President, he conceived, had made a fundamental error in supposing that the Nebraska Act provided for the disposition of the slavery question apart from other local matters. The direct opposite was true. The main object of the Act was to remove an odious restriction by which the people had been prevented from deciding the slavery question for themselves, like all other local and domestic concerns. If the President was right in thinking that by the terms of the Nebraska bill the slavery question must be submitted to the people, then every other clause of the constitution should be submitted to them. To do less would be to reduce popular sovereignty to a farce.

But Douglas could not maintain this conciliatory attitude. His sense of justice was too deeply outraged. He recalled facts which every well-informed person knew. “I know that men, high in authority and in the confidence of the territorial and National Government, canvassed every part of Kansas during the election of delegates, and each one of them pledged himself to the people that no snap judgment was to be taken. Up to the time of the meeting of the convention, in October last, the pretense was kept up, the profession was openly made, and believed by me, and I thought believed by them, that the convention intended to submit a constitution to the people, and not to attempt to put a government in operation without such submission." How was this pledge redeemed? All men, forsooth, must vote for the constitution, whether they like it or not, in order to be permitted to vote for or against slavery! This would be like an election under the First Consul, when, so his enemies averred, Napoleon addressed his troops with the words: “Now, my soldiers, you are to go to the election and vote freely just as you please. If you vote for Napoleon, all is well; vote against him, and you are to be instantly shot.” That was a fair election! “This election,” said Douglas with bitter irony, “is to be equally fair! All men in favor of the constitution may vote for it-all men against it shall not vote at all! Why not let them vote against it? I have asked a very large number of the gentlemen who framed the constitution ... and I have received the same answer from every one of them.... They say if they allowed a negative vote the constitution would have been voted down by an overwhelming majority, and hence the fellows shall not be allowed to vote at all.”

“Will you force it on them against their will,” he demanded, “simply because they would have voted it down if you had consulted them? If you will, are you going to force it upon them under the plea of leaving them perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way? Is that the mode in which I am called upon to carry out the principle of self-government and popular sovereignty in the Territories?” It is no answer, he argued, that the constitution is unobjectionable. “You have no right to force an unexceptionable constitution on a people.” The pro-slavery clause was not the offense in the constitution, to his mind. “If Kansas wants a slave-State constitution she has a right to it, if she wants a free-State constitution she has a right to it. It is none of my business which way the slavery clause is decided. I care not whether it is voted up or down.” The whole affair looked to him “like a system of trickery and jugglery to defeat the fair expression of the will of the people."

The vehemence of his utterance had now carried Douglas perhaps farther than he had meant to go. He paused to plead for a fair policy which would redeem party pledges:

“Ignore Lecompton, ignore Topeka; treat both those party movements as irregular and void; pass a fair bill-the one that we framed ourselves when we were acting as a unit; have a fair election-and you will have peace in the Democratic party, and peace throughout the country, in ninety days. The people want a fair vote. They never will be satisfied without it. They never should be satisfied without a fair vote on their Constitution....

“Frame any other bill that secures a fair, honest vote, to men of all parties, and carries out the pledge that the people shall be left free to decide on their domestic institutions for themselves, and I will go with you with pleasure, and with all the energy I may possess. But if this Constitution is to be forced down our throats, in violation of the fundamental principle of free government, under a mode of submission that is a mockery and insult, I will resist it to the last. I have no fear of any party associations being severed. I should regret any social or political estrangement, even temporarily; but if it must be, if I can not act with you and preserve my faith and my honor, I will stand on the great principle of popular sovereignty, which declares the right of all people to be left perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way. I will follow that principle wherever its logical consequences may take me, and I will endeavor to defend it against assault from any and all quarters. No mortal man shall be responsible for my action but myself. By my action I will compromit no man."

The speech made a profound impression. No one could mistake its import. The correspondent of the New York Tribune was right in thinking that it “marked an important era in our political history." Douglas had broken with the dominant pro-slavery faction of his party. How far he would carry his party with him, remained to be seen. But that a battle royal was imminent, was believed on all sides. “The struggle of Douglas with the slave-power will be a magnificent spectacle to witness,” wrote one who had hitherto evinced little admiration for the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

Douglas kept himself well in hand throughout his speech. His manner was at times defiant, but his language was restrained. At no time did he disclose the pain which his rupture with the administration cost him, except in his closing words. What he had to expect from the friends of the administration was immediately manifest. Senator Bigler of Pennsylvania sprang to the defense of the President. In an irritating tone he intimated that Douglas himself had changed his position on the question of submission, alluding to certain private conferences at Douglas’s house; but as though bound by a pledge of secrecy, Bigler refrained from making the charge in so many words. Douglas, thoroughly aroused, at once absolved, him from any pledges, and demanded to know when they had agreed not to submit the constitution to the people. The reply of Bigler was still allusive and evasive. “Does he mean to say,” insisted Douglas excitedly, “that I ever was, privately or publicly, in my own house or any other, in favor of a constitution without its being submitted to the people?” “I have made no such allegation,” was the reply. “You have allowed it to be inferred,” exclaimed Douglas in exasperated tones. And then Green reminded him, that in his famous report of January 4, 1854, he had proposed to leave the slavery question to the decision of the people “by their appropriate representatives chosen by them for that purpose,” with no suggestion of a second, popular vote. Truly, his most insidious foes were now those of his own political household.

Anti-slavery men welcomed this revolt of Douglas without crediting him with any but self-seeking motives. They could not bring themselves to believe other than ill of the man who had advocated the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Republicans accepted his aid in their struggle against the Lecompton fraud, but for the most part continued to regard him with distrust. Indeed, Douglas made no effort to placate them. He professed to care nothing for the cause of the slave which was nearest their hearts. Hostile critics, then, were quick to point out the probable motives from which he acted. His senatorial term was drawing to a close. He was of course desirous of a re-election. But his nominee for governor had been defeated at the last election, and the State had been only with difficulty carried for the national candidates of the party. The lesson was plain: the people of Illinois did not approve the Kansas policy of Senator Douglas. Hence the weathercock obeyed the wind.

In all this there was a modicum of truth. Douglas would not have been the power that he was, had he not kept in touch with his constituency. But a sense of honor, a desire for consistency, and an abiding faith in the justice of his great principle, impelled him in the same direction. These were thoroughly honorable motives, even if he professed an indifference as to the fate of the negro. He had pledged his word of honor to his constituents that the people of Kansas should have a fair chance to pronounce upon their constitution. Nothing short of this would have been consistent with popular sovereignty as he had expounded it again and again. And Douglas was personally a man of honor. Yet when all has been said, one cannot but regret that the sense of fair play, which was strong in him, did not assert itself in the early stages of the Kansas conflict and smother that lawyer’s instinct to defend, a client by the technicalities of the law. Could he only have sought absolute justice for the people of Kansas in the winter of 1856, the purity of his motives would not have been questioned in the winter of 1858.

Even those colleagues of Douglas who doubted his motives, could not but admire his courage. It did, indeed, require something more than audacity to head a revolt against the administration. No man knew better the thorny road that he must now travel. No man loved his party more. No man knew better the hazard to the Union that must follow a rupture in the Democratic party. But if Douglas nursed the hope that Democratic senators would follow his lead, he was sadly disappointed. Three only came to his support-Broderick of California, Pugh of Ohio, and Stuart of Michigan,-while the lists of the administration were full. Green, Bigler, Fitch, in turn were set upon him.

Douglas bitterly resented any attempt to read him out of the party by making the Lecompton constitution the touchstone of genuine Democracy; yet each day made it clearer that the administration had just that end in view. Douglas complained of a tyranny not consistent with free Democratic action. One might differ with the President on every subject but Kansas, without incurring suspicion. Every pensioned letter writer, he complained, had been intimating for the last two weeks that he had deserted the Democratic party and gone over to the Black Republicans. He demanded to know who authorized these tales. Senator Fitch warned him solemnly that the Democratic party was the only political link in the chain which now bound the States together. “None ... will hold that man guiltless, who abandons it upon a question having in it so little of practical importance ... and by seeking its destruction, thereby admits his not unwillingness that a similar fate should be visited on the Union, perhaps, to subserve his selfish purpose." These attacks roused Douglas to vehement defiance. More emphatically than ever, he declared the Lecompton constitution “a trick, a fraud upon the rights of the people.”

If Douglas misjudged the temper of his colleagues, he at least gauged correctly the drift of public sentiment in Illinois and the Northwest. Of fifty-six Democratic newspapers in Illinois, but one ventured to condone the Lecompton fraud. Mass meetings in various cities of the Northwest expressed confidence in the course of Senator Douglas.

He now occupied a unique position at the capital. Visitors were quite as eager to see the man who had headed the revolt as to greet the chief executive. His residence, where Mrs. Douglas dispensed a gracious hospitality, was fairly besieged with callers. Washington society was never gayer than during this memorable winter. None entertained more lavishly than Senator and Mrs. Douglas. Whatever unpopularity he incurred at the Capitol, she more than offset by her charming and gracious personality. Acknowledged as the reigning queen of the circle in which she moved, Mrs. Douglas displayed a social initiative that seconded admirably the independent, self-reliant attitude of her husband. When Adele Cutts Douglas chose to close the shutters of her house at noon, and hold a reception by artificial light every Saturday afternoon, society followed her lead. There were no more brilliant affairs in Washington than these afternoon receptions and hops at the Douglas residence in Minnesota Block. In contrast to these functions dominated by a thoroughly charming personality, the formal precision of the receptions at the White House was somewhat chilling and forbidding. President Buchanan, bachelor, with his handsome but somewhat self-contained niece, was not equal to this social rivalry. Moreover, the cares of office permitted the perplexed, wearied, and timid executive no respite day or night.

Events in Kansas gave heart to those who were fighting Lecomptonism. At the election appointed by the convention, the “constitution with slavery” was adopted by a large majority, the free-State people refusing to vote; but the legislature, now in the control of the free-State party, had already provided for a fair vote on the whole constitution. On this second vote the majority was overwhelmingly against the constitution. Information from various sources corroborated the deductions which unprejudiced observers drew from the voting. It was as clear as day that the people of Kansas did not regard the Lecompton constitution as a fair expression of their will.

Ignoring the light which made the path of duty plain, President Buchanan sent the Lecompton constitution to Congress with a message recommending the admission of Kansas. To his mind, the Lecompton convention was legally constituted and had exercised its powers faithfully. The organic act did not bind the convention to submit to the people more than the question of slavery. Meantime the Supreme Court had handed down its famous decision in the Dred Scott case. Fortified by this dictum, the President told Congress that slavery existed in Kansas by virtue of the Constitution of the United States. “Kansas is, at this moment, as much a slave State as Georgia or South Carolina”! Slavery, then, could be prohibited only by constitutional provision; and those who desired to do away with slavery would most speedily compass their ends, if they admitted Kansas at once under this constitution.

The President’s message with the Lecompton constitution was referred to the Committee on Territories and gave rise to three reports: Senator Green of Missouri presented the majority report, recommending the admission of Kansas under this constitution; Senators Collamer and Wade united on a minority report, leaving Douglas to draft another expressing his dissent on other grounds. Taken all in all, this must be regarded as the most satisfactory and convincing of all Douglas’s committee reports. It is strong because it is permeated by a desire for justice, and reinforced at every point by a consummate marshalling of evidence. Barely in his career had his conspicuous qualities as a special pleader been put so unreservedly at the service of simple justice. He planted himself firmly, at the outset, upon the incontrovertible fact that there was no satisfactory evidence that the Lecompton constitution was the act and deed of the people of Kansas.

It had been argued that, because the Lecompton convention had been duly constituted, with full power to ordain a constitution and establish a government, consequently the proceedings of the convention must be presumed to embody the popular will. Douglas immediately challenged this assumption. The convention had no more power than the territorial legislature could confer. By no fair construction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act could it be assumed that the people of the Territory were authorized, “at their own will and pleasure, to resolve themselves into a sovereign power, and to abrogate and annul the organic act and territorial government established by Congress, and to ordain a constitution and State government upon their ruins, without the consent of Congress.” Surely, then, a convention which the territorial legislature called into being could not abrogate or impair the authority of that territorial government established by Congress. Hence, he concluded, the Lecompton constitution, formed without the consent of Congress, must be considered as a memorial or petition, which Congress may accept or reject. The convention was the creature of the territorial legislature. “Such being the case, whenever the legislature ascertained that the convention whose existence depended upon its will, had devised a scheme to force a constitution upon the people without their consent, and without any authority from Congress, ... it became their imperative duty to interpose and exert the authority conferred upon them by Congress in the organic act, and arrest and prevent the consummation of the scheme before it had gone into operation." This was an unanswerable argument.

In the prolonged debate upon the admission of Kansas, Douglas took part only as some taunt or challenge brought him to his feet. While the bill for the admission of Minnesota, also reported by the Committee on Territories, was under fire, Senator Brown of Mississippi elicited from Douglas the significant concession, that he did not deem an enabling act absolutely essential, so long as the constitution clearly embodied the will of the people. Neither did he think a submission of the constitution always essential; it was, however, a fair way of ascertaining the popular will, when that will was disputed.” Satisfy me that the constitution adopted by the people of Minnesota is their will, and I am prepared to adopt it. Satisfy me that the constitution adopted, or said to be adopted, by the people of Kansas, is their will, and I am prepared to take it.... I will never apply one rule to a free State and another to a slave-holding State." Nevertheless, even his Democratic colleagues continued to believe that slavery had something to do with his opposition. In the classic phraseology of Toombs, “there was a ‘nigger’ in it.”

The opposition of Douglas began to cause no little uneasiness. Brown paid tribute to his influence, when he declared that if the Senator from Illinois had stood with the administration, “there would not have been a ripple on the surface.” “Sir, the Senator from Illinois gives life, he gives vitality, he gives energy, he lends the aid of his mighty genius and his powerful will to the Opposition on this question." But Douglas paid a fearful price for this power. Every possible ounce of pressure was brought to bear upon him. The party press was set upon him. His friends were turned out of office. The whole executive patronage was wielded mercilessly against his political following. The Washington Union held him up to execration as a traitor, renegade, and deserter. “We cannot affect indifference at the treachery of Senator Douglas,” said a Richmond paper. “He was a politician of considerable promise. Association with Southern gentlemen had smoothed down the rugged vulgarities of his early education, and he had come to be quite a decent and well-behaved person." To political denunciation was now to be added the sting of mean and contemptible personalities.

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. 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.’"

On the following day, the Senate passed the bill for the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution, having rejected the amendment of Crittenden to submit that constitution to a vote of the people of Kansas. A similar amendment, however, was carried in the House. As neither chamber would recede from its position, a conference committee was appointed to break the deadlock. It was from this committee, controlled by Lecomptonites, that the famous English bill emanated. Stated briefly, the substance of this compromise measure-for such it was intended to be-was as follows: Congress was to offer to Kansas a conditional grant of public lands; if this land ordinance should be accepted by a popular vote, Kansas was to be admitted to the Union with the Lecompton constitution by proclamation of the President; if it should be rejected, Kansas was not to be admitted until the Territory had a population equal to the unit of representation required for the House of Representatives.

Taken all in all, the bill was as great a concession as could be expected from the administration. Not all were willing to say that the bill provided for a vote on the constitution, but Northern adherents could point to the vote on the land ordinance as an indirect vote upon the constitution. It is not quite true to say that the land grant was a bribe to the voters of Kansas. As a matter of fact, the amount of land granted was only equal to that usually offered to the Territories, and it was considerably less than the area specified in the Lecompton constitution. Moreover, even if the land ordinance were defeated in order to reject the constitution, the Territory was pretty sure to secure as large a grant at some future time. It was rather in the alternative held out, that the English bill was unsatisfactory to those who loved fair play. Still, under the bill, the people of Kansas, by an act of self-denial, could defeat the Lecompton constitution. To that extent, the supporters of the administration yielded to the importunities of the champion of popular sovereignty.

Under these circumstances it would not be strange if Douglas “wavered." Here was an opportunity to close the rift between himself and the administration, to heal party dissensions, perhaps to save the integrity of the Democratic party and the Union. And the price which he would have to pay was small. He could assume, plausibly enough,-as he had done many times before in his career,-that the bill granted all that he had ever asked. He was morally sure that the people of Kansas would reject the land grant to rid themselves of the Lecompton fraud. Why hesitate then as to means, when the desired end was in clear view?

Douglas found himself subjected to a new pressure, harder even to resist than any he had yet felt. Some of his staunch supporters in the anti-Lecompton struggle went over to the administration, covering their retreat by just such excuses as have been suggested. Was he wiser and more conscientious than they? A refusal to accept the proffered olive branch now meant,-he knew it well,-the irreconcilable enmity of the Buchanan faction. And he was not asked to recant, but only to accept what he had always deemed the very essence of statesmanship, a compromise. His Republican allies promptly evinced their distrust. They fully expected him to join his former associates. From them he could expect no sympathy in such a dilemma. His political ambitions, no doubt, added to his perplexity. They were bound up in the fate of the party, the integrity of which was now menaced by his revolt. On the other hand, he was fully conscious that his Illinois constituency approved of his opposition to Lecomptonism and would regard a retreat across this improvised political bridge as both inglorious and treacherous. Agitated by conflicting emotions, Douglas made a decision which probably cost him more anguish than any he ever made; and when all has been said to the contrary, love of fair play would seem to have been his governing motive.

When Douglas rose to address the Senate on the English bill, April 29th, he betrayed some of the emotion under which he had made his decision. He confessed an “anxious desire” to find such provisions as would permit him to support the bill; but he was painfully forced to declare that he could not find the principle for which he had contended, fairly carried out. He was unable to reconcile popular sovereignty with the proposed intervention of Congress in the English bill. “It is intervention with inducements to control the result. It is intervention with a bounty on the one side and a penalty on the other." He frankly admitted that he did not believe there was enough in the bounty nor enough in the penalty to influence materially the vote of the people of Kansas; but it involved “the principle of freedom of election and-the great principle of self-government upon which our institutions rest.” And upon this principle he took his stand. “With all the anxiety that I have had,” said he with deep feeling, “to be able to arrive at a conclusion in harmony with the overwhelming majority of my political friends in Congress, I could not bring my judgment or conscience to the conclusion that this was a fair, impartial, and equal application of the principle."

As though to make reconciliation with the administration impossible, Douglas went on to express his distrust of the provision of the bill for a board of supervisors of elections. Instead of a board of four, two of whom should represent the Territory and two the Federal government, as the Crittenden bill had provided, five were to constitute the board, of whom three were to be United States officials. “Does not this change,” asked Douglas significantly, “give ground for apprehension that you may have the Oxford, the Shawnee, and the Delaware Crossing and Kickapoo frauds re-enacted at this election?" The most suspicions Republican could hardly have dealt an unkinder thrust.

There could be no manner of doubt as to the outcome of the English bill in the Senate. Douglas, Stuart, and Broderick were the only Democrats to oppose its passage, Pugh having joined the majority. The bill passed the House also, nine of Douglas’s associates in the anti-Lecompton fight going over to the administration. Douglas accepted this defection with philosophic equanimity, indulging in no vindictive feelings. Had he not himself felt misgivings as to his own course?

By midsummer the people of Kansas had recorded nearly ten thousand votes against the land ordinance and the Lecompton constitution. The administration had failed to make Kansas a slave State. Yet the Supreme Court had countenanced the view that Kansas was legally a slave Territory. What, then, became of the great fundamental principle of popular sovereignty? This was the question which Douglas was now called upon to answer.