Chapter 13

THE TESTING OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY

The author of the Kansas-Nebraska bill doubtless anticipated a gradual and natural occupation of the new Territories by settlers like those home-seekers who had taken up government lands in Iowa and other States of the Northwest. In the course of time, it was to be expected, such communities would form their own social and political institutions, and so determine whether they would permit or forbid slave-labor. By that rapid, and yet on the whole strangely conservative, American process the people of the Territories would become politically self-conscious and ready for statehood. Not all at once, but gradually, a politically self-sufficient entity would come into being. Such had been the history of American colonization; it seemed the part of wise statesmanship to follow the trend of that history.

Theoretically popular sovereignty, as applied in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, was not an advance over the doctrine of Cass and Dickinson. It professed to be the same which had governed Congress in organizing Utah and New Mexico. Nevertheless, popular sovereignty had an artificial quality which squatter sovereignty lacked. The relation between Congress and the people of the Territories, in the matter of slavery, was now to be determined not so much by actual conditions as by an abstract principle. Federal policy was indoctrinated.

There was, too, this vital difference between squatter sovereignty in Utah and New Mexico and popular sovereignty in Nebraska and Kansas: the former were at least partially inhabited and enjoyed some degree of social and political order; the latter were practically uninhabited. It was one thing to grant control over all domestic concerns to a population _in esse_, and another and quite different thing to grant control to a people _in posse_. In the Kansas-Nebraska Act hypothetical communities were endowed with the capacity of self-government, and told to decide for themselves a question which would become a burning issue the very moment that the first settlers set foot in the Territories. Congress attempted thus to solve an equation without a single known quantity.

Moreover, slavery was no longer a matter of local concern. Doubtless it was once so regarded; but the time had passed when the conscience of the North would acquiesce in a _laissez faire_ policy. By force of circumstances slavery had become a national issue. Ardent haters of the institution were not willing that its extension or restriction should be left to a fraction of the nation, artificially organized as a Territory. The Kansas-Nebraska Act prejudiced the minds of many against the doctrine, however sound in theory it may have seemed, by unsettling what the North regarded as its vested right in the free territory north of the line of the Missouri Compromise. The Act made the political atmosphere electric. The conditions for obtaining a calm, dispassionate judgment on the domestic concern of chief interest, were altogether lacking.

It was everywhere conceded that Nebraska would be a free Territory. The eyes of the nation were focused upon Kansas, which was from the first debatable ground. A rush of settlers from the Northwest joined by pioneers from Kentucky and Missouri followed the opening up of the new lands. As Douglas had foretold, the tide of immigration held back by Indian treaties now poured in. The characteristic features of American colonization seemed about to repeat themselves. So far the movement of population was for the most part spontaneous. Land-hunger, not the political destiny of the West, drove men to locate their claims on the Kansas and the Missouri. By midsummer colonists of a somewhat different stripe appeared. Sent out under the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Company, they were to win Kansas for freedom at the same time that they subdued the wilderness. It was a species of assisted emigration which was new in the history of American colonization, outside the annals of missionary effort. The chief promoter of this enterprise was a thrifty, Massachusetts Yankee, who saw no reason why crusading and business should not go hand in hand. Kansas might be wrested from the slave-power at the same time that returns on invested funds were secured.

The effect of these developments upon the aggressive pro-slavery people of Missouri is not easy to describe. Hitherto they had assumed that Kansas would become a slave Territory in the natural order of events. This was the prevailing Southern opinion. At once the people of western Missouri were put upon the defensive. Blue lodges were formed for the purpose of carrying slavery into Kansas. Appeals were circulated in the slave-holding States for colonists and funds. Passions were inflamed by rumors which grew as they stalked abroad. The peaceful occupation of Kansas was at an end. Popular sovereignty was to be tested under abnormal conditions.

When the election of territorial delegates to Congress occurred, in the late fall, a fatal defect in the organic law was disclosed, to which many of the untoward incidents of succeeding months may be ascribed. The territorial act conferred the right of voting at the first elections upon all free, white, male inhabitants, twenty-one years of age and actually resident in the Territory.[536] Here was an unfortunate ambiguity. What was actual residence? Every other act organizing a territorial government was definite on this point, permitting only those to vote who were living in the proposed Territory, at the time of the passage of the act. The omission in the case of Kansas and Nebraska is easily accounted for. Neither had legal residents when the act was passed. Indeed, this defect bears witness to the fact that Congress was legislating, not for actual, but for hypothetical communities. The consequences were far-reaching, for at the very first election, it was charged that frauds were practiced by bands of Missourians, who had crossed the border only to aid the pro-slavery cause. Not much was made of these charges, as no particular interest attached to the election.

Far different was the election of members of the territorial legislature in the following spring. On all hands it was agreed that this legislature would determine whether Kansas should be slave or free soil. It was regrettable that Governor Reeder postponed the taking of the census until February, since by mid-winter many settlers, who had staked their claims, returned home for the cold season, intending to return with their families in the early spring. This again was a characteristic feature of frontier history.[537] In March, the governor issued his proclamation of election, giving only three weeks' notice. Of those who had returned home, only residents of Missouri and Iowa were able to participate in the election of March 30th, by hastily recrossing into Kansas. Governor Reeder did his best to guard against fraud. In his instructions to the judges of election, he warned them that a voter must be "an actual resident"; that is, "must have commenced an active inhabitancy, which he actually intends to continue permanently, and must have made the Territory his dwelling place to the exclusion of any other home."[538] Still, it was not to be expected that _bona fide_ residents could be easily ascertained in communities which had sprung up like mushrooms. A hastily constructed shack served all the purposes of the would-be voter; and, in last analysis, judges of elections had to rest content with declarations of intentions. Those who crossed into Kansas after the governor's proclamation and endeavored to continue actual inhabitancy, were with difficulty distinguished from those who now crossed for the first time, under a similar pretext. As Douglas subsequently contended with much force, the number of votes cast in excess of the census returns did not in itself prove wholesale fraud.[539]

Under such liability to deception and misjudgment, the territorial authorities held the election which was likely to determine the status of Kansas with respect to slavery. Both parties were playing for great stakes; passion and violence were the almost inevitable outcome. Both parties contained desperadoes, who invariably come to the surface in the general mixing which occurs on the frontier. Both parties committed frauds at the polls. But the most serious gravamina have been laid at the door of those Blue Lodges of Missouri which deliberately sought to secure the election of pro-slavery candidates by fair means or foul. The people of western Missouri had come to believe that the fate of slavery in their own Commonwealth hinged upon the future of Kansas. It was commonly believed that after Kansas, Missouri would be abolitionized. It was, therefore, with the fierce, unreasoning energy of defenders of their own institutions, that Blue Lodges organized their crusade for Kansas.[540] On election day armed bands of Missourians crossed into Kansas and polled a heavy vote for the pro-slavery candidates, in the teeth of indignant remonstrances.[541]

The further history of popular sovereignty in Kansas must be lightly touched upon, for it is the reflex action in the halls of Congress that interests the student of Douglas's career. Twenty-eight of the thirty-nine members of the first territorial legislature were men of pronounced pro-slavery views; eleven were anti-slavery candidates. In seven districts, where protests had been filed, the governor ordered new elections. Three of those first elected were returned, six were new men of anti-slavery proclivities. But when the legislature met, these new elections were set aside and I the first elections were declared valid.[542]

In complete control of the legislature, the pro-slavery party proceeded to write slavery into the law of the Territory. In their eagerness to establish slavery permanently, these legislative Hotspurs quite overshot the mark, creating offenses and affixing penalties of doubtful constitutionality.[543] Meanwhile the census of February reported but one hundred ninety-two slaves in a total population of eight thousand six hundred.[544] Those who had migrated from the South, were not as a rule of the slave-holding class. Those who possessed slaves shrank from risking their property in Kansas, until its future were settled.[545] Eventually, the climate was to prove an even greater obstacle to the transplantation of the slave-labor system into Kansas.

Foiled in their hope of winning the territorial legislature, the free-State settlers in Kansas resolved upon a hazardous course. Believing the legislature an illegal body, they called a convention to draft a constitution with which they proposed to apply for admission to the Union as a free State. Robinson, the leader of the free-State party, was wise in such matters by reason of his experience in California. Reeder, who had been displaced as governor and had gone over to the opposition, lent his aid to the project; and ex-Congressman Lane, formerly of Indiana, gave liberally of his vehement energy to the cause. After successive conventions in which the various free-State elements were worked into a fairly consistent mixture, the Topeka convention launched a constitution and a free-State government. Unofficially the supporters of the new government took measures for its defense. In the following spring, Governor Robinson sent his first message to the State legislature in session at Topeka; and Reeder and Lane were chosen senators for the inchoate Commonwealth.[546]

Meantime Governor Shannon had succeeded Reeder as executive of the territorial government at Shawnee Mission. The aspect of affairs was ominous. Popular sovereignty had ended in a dangerous dualism. Two governments confronted each other in bitter hostility. There were untamed individuals in either camp, who were not averse to a decision by wager of battle.[547]

Such was the situation in Kansas, when Douglas reached Washington in February, after a protracted illness.[548] The President had already discussed the Kansas imbroglio in a special message; but the Democratic majority in the Senate showed some reluctance to follow the lead of the administration. From the Democrats in the House not much could be expected, because of the strength of the Republicans. The party awaited its leader. Upon his appearance, all matters relating to Kansas were referred to the Committee on Territories. The situation called for unusual qualities of leadership. How would the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act face the palpable breakdown of his policy?

With his customary dispatch, Douglas reported on the 12th of March.[549] The majority report consumed two hours in the reading; Senator Collamer stated the position of the minority in half the time.[550] Evidently the chairman was aware where the burden of proof lay. Douglas took substantially the same ground as that taken by the President in his special message, but he discussed the issues boldly in his own vigorous way. No one doubted that he had reached his conclusions independently.

The report began with a constitutional argument in defense of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. As a contribution to the development of the doctrine of popular sovereignty, the opening paragraphs deserve more than passing notice. The distinct advance in Douglas's thought consisted in this: that he explicitly refused to derive the power to organize Territories from that provision of the Constitution which gave Congress "power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States." The word "territory" here was used in its geographical sense to designate the public domain, not to indicate a political community. Rather was the power to be derived from the authority of Congress to adopt necessary and proper means to admit new States into the Union. But beyond the necessary and proper organization of a territorial government with reference to ultimate statehood, Congress might not go. Clearly, then, Congress might not impose conditions and restrictions upon a Territory which would prevent its entering the Union on an equality with the other States. From the formation of the Union, each State had been left free to decide the question of slavery for itself. Congress, therefore, might not decide the question for prospective States. Recognizing this, the framers of the Kansas-Nebraska Act had relegated the discussion of the slavery question to the people, who were to form a territorial government under cover of the organic act.[551]

This was an ingenious argument. It was in accord with the utterances of some of the weightiest intellects in our constitutional history. But it was not in accord with precedent. There was hardly a territorial act that had emerged from Douglas's committee room, which had not imposed restrictions not binding on the older Commonwealths.

Having given thus a constitutional sanction to the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the report unhesitatingly denounced that "vast moneyed corporation," created for the purpose of controlling the domestic institutions of a distinct political community fifteen hundred miles away.[552] This was as flagrant an act of intervention as though France or England had interfered for a similar purpose in Cuba, for "in respect to everything which affects its domestic policy and internal concerns, each State stands in the relation of a foreign power to every other State." The obvious retort to this extraordinary assertion was, that Kansas was only a Territory, and not a State. Douglas then made this "mammoth moneyed corporation" the scapegoat for all that had happened in Kansas. The Missouri Blue Lodges were defensive organizations, called into existence by the fear that the "abolitionizing" of Kansas was the prelude to a warfare upon slavery in Missouri. The violence and bloodshed in Kansas were "the natural and inevitable consequences of such extraordinary systems of emigration."[553]

Such _ex post facto_ assertions did not mend matters in Kansas, however much they may have relieved the author of the report. It remained to deal with the existing situation. The report took the ground that the legislature of Kansas was a legal body and had been so recognized by Governor Reeder. Neither the alleged irregularity of the elections, nor other objections, could diminish its legislative authority. Pro-tests against the election returns had been filed in only seven out of eighteen districts. Ten out of thirteen councilmen, and seventeen out of twenty-six representatives, held their seats by virtue of the governor's certificate. Even if it were assumed that the second elections in the seven districts were wrongly invalidated by the legislature, its action was still the action of a lawful legislature, possessing in either house a quorum of duly certificated members. This was a lawyer's plea. Technically it was unanswerable.

Having taken this position, Douglas very properly refused to pass judgment on the laws of the legislature. By the very terms of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Congress had confided the power to enact local laws to the people of the Territories. If the validity of these laws should be doubted, it was for the courts of justice and not for Congress to decide the question.[554]

Throughout the report, the question was not once raised, whether the legislature really reflected the sentiment of a majority of the settlers of Kansas. Douglas assumed that it was truly representative. This attitude is not surprising, when one recalls his predilections and the conflict of evidence on essential points in the controversy. Nevertheless, this attitude was unfortunate, for it made him unfair toward the free-State settlers, with whom by temper and training he had far more in common than with the Missouri emigrants. Could he have cut himself loose from his bias, he would have recognized the free-State men as the really trustworthy builders of a Commonwealth. But having taken his stand on the legality of the territorial legislature, he persisted in regarding the free-State movement as a seditious combination to subvert the territorial government established by Congress. To the free-State men he would not accord any inherent, sovereign right to annul the laws and resist the authority of the territorial government.[555] The right of self-government was derived only from the Constitution through the organic act passed by Congress. And then he used that expression which was used with telling effect against the theory of popular sovereignty: "The sovereignty of a Territory remains in abeyance, suspended in the United States, in trust for the people, until they shall be admitted into the Union as a State."[556] If this was true, then popular sovereignty after all meant nothing more than local self-government, the measure of which was to be determined by Congress. If Congress left slavery to local determination, it was only for expediency's sake, and not by reason of any constitutional obligation.

Douglas found a vindication of his Kansas-Nebraska Act in the peaceful history of Nebraska, "to which the emigrant aid societies did not extend their operations, and into which the stream of emigration was permitted to flow in its usual and natural channels."[557] He fixed the ultimate responsibility for the disorders in Kansas upon those who opposed the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and who, "failing to accomplish their purpose in the halls of Congress, and under the authority of the Constitution, immediately resorted in their respective States to unusual and extraordinary means to control the political destinies and shape the domestic institutions of Kansas, in defiance of the wishes and regardless of the rights of the people of that Territory as guaranteed by their organic law."[558]

A practical recommendation accompanied the report. It was proposed to authorize the territorial legislature to provide for a constitutional convention to frame a State constitution, as soon as a census should indicate that there were ninety-three thousand four hundred and twenty inhabitants.[559] This bill was in substantial accord with the President's recommendations.

The minority report was equally positive as to the cause of the trouble in Kansas and the proper remedy. "Repeal the act of 1854, organize Kansas anew as a free Territory and all will be put right." But if Congress was bent on continuing the experiment, then the Territory must be reorganized with proper safeguards against illegal voting. The only alternative was to admit the Territory as a State with its free constitution.

The issue could not have been more sharply drawn. Popular sovereignty as applied in the Kansas-Nebraska Act was put upon the defensive. Republican senators made haste to press their advantage. Sumner declared that the true issue was smothered in the majority report, but stood forth as a pillar of fire in the report of the minority. Trumbull forced the attack, while Douglas was absent, without waiting for the printing of the reports. It needed only this apparent discourtesy to bring Douglas into the arena. An unseemly wrangle between the Illinois senators followed, in the course of which Douglas challenged his colleague to resign and stand with him for re-election before the next session of the legislature.[560] Trumbull wisely declined to accept the risk.

On the 20th of March, Douglas addressed the Senate in reply to Trumbull.[561] Nothing that he said shed any new light on the controversy. He had not changed his angle of vision. He had only the old arguments with which to combat the assertion that "Kansas had been conquered and a legislature imposed by violence." But the speech differed from the report, just as living speech must differ from the printed page. Every assertion was pointed by his vigorous intonations; every argument was accentuated by his forceful personality. The report was a lawyer's brief; the speech was the flexible utterance of an accomplished debater, bent upon a personal as well as an argumentative victory.

Even hostile critics were forced to yield to a certain admiration for "the Little Giant." The author of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ watched him from her seat in the Senate gallery, with intense interest; and though writing for readers, who like herself hated the man for his supposed servility to the South, she said with unwonted objectivity, "This Douglas is the very ideal of vitality. Short, broad, and thick-set, every inch of him has its own alertness and motion. He has a good head and face, thick black hair, heavy black brows and a keen eye. His figure would be an unfortunate one were it not for the animation which constantly pervades it; as it is, it rather gives poignancy to his peculiar appearance; he has a small, handsome hand, moreover, and a graceful as well as forcible mode of using it.... He has two requisites of a debater--a melodious voice and a clear, sharply defined enunciation.... His forte in debating is his power of mystifying the point. With the most off-hand assured airs in the world, and a certain appearance of honest superiority, like one who has a regard for you and wishes to set you right on one or two little matters, he proceeds to set up some point which is _not_ that in question, but only a family connection of it, and this point he attacks with the very best of logic and language; he charges upon it horse and foot, runs it down, tramples it in the dust, and then turns upon you with--'Sir, there is your argument! Did not I tell you so? You see it is all stuff;' and if you have allowed yourself to be so dazzled by his quickness as to forget that the routed point is not, after all, the one in question, you suppose all is over with it. Moreover, he contrives to mingle up so many stinging allusions to so many piquant personalities that by the time he has done his mystification a dozen others are ready and burning to spring on their feet to repel some direct or indirect attack, all equally wide of the point."[562]

Douglas paid dearly for some of these personal shots. He had never forgiven Sumner for his share in "the Appeal of the Independent Democrats." He lost no opportunity to attribute unworthy motives to this man, whose radical views on slavery he never could comprehend. More than once he insinuated that the Senator from Massachusetts and other Black Republicans were fabricating testimony relating to Kansas for political purposes. When Sumner, many weeks later, rose to address the Senate on "the Crime against Kansas," he labored under the double weight of personal wrongs and the wrongs of a people. The veteran Cass pronounced his speech "the most un-American and unpatriotic that ever grated on the ears of the members of this high body."[563] Even Sumner's friends listened to him with surprise and regret. Of Douglas he had this to say:

"As the Senator from South Carolina is the Don Quixote, the Senator from Illinois is the squire of slavery, its very Sancho Panza, ready to do all its humiliating offices. This Senator in his labored address, vindicating his labored report--piling one mass of elaborate error upon another mass--constrained himself, as you will remember, to unfamiliar decencies of speech.... I will not stop to repel the imputations which he cast upon myself.... Standing on this floor, the Senator issued his rescript, requiring submission to the Usurped Power of Kansas; and this was accompanied by a manner--all his own--such as befits the tyrannical threat.... He is bold. He shrinks from nothing. Like Danton, he may cry, _'l'audace! l'audace! tonjours l'audace!'_ but even his audacity cannot compass this work. The Senator copies the British officer, who, with boastful swagger, said that with the hilt of his sword he would cram the 'stamps' down the throats of the American people, and he will meet a similar failure."[564]

The retort of Douglas was not calculated to turn away wrath. He called attention to the fact that these gross insults were not uttered in the heat of indignation, but "conned over, written with cool, deliberate malignity, repeated from night to night in order to catch the appropriate grace." He ridiculed the excessive self-esteem of Sumner in words that moved the Senate to laughter; and then completed his vindictive assault by charging Sumner with perfidy. Had he not sworn to obey the Constitution, and then, forsooth, refused to support the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave law?[565]

Sumner replied in a passion, "Let the Senator remember hereafter that the bowie-knife and bludgeon are not the proper emblems of senatorial debate. Let him remember that the swagger of Bob Acres and the ferocity of the Malay cannot add dignity to this body.... No person with the upright form of a man can be allowed, without violation of all decency, to switch out from his tongue the perpetual stench of offensive personality. Sir, that is not a proper weapon of debate, at least, on this floor. The noisome, squat, and nameless animal, to which I refer, is not a proper model for an American Senator. Will the Senator from Illinois take notice?" And upon Douglas's unworthy retort that he certainly would not imitate the Senator in that capacity, Stunner said insultingly, "Mr. President, again the Senator has switched his tongue, and again he fills the Senate with its offensive odor."[566]

Two days later Brooks made his assault on Sumner in the Senate chamber. Sumner's recollection was, that on recovering consciousness, he recognized among those about him, but offering no assistance, Senators Douglas and Toombs, and between them, his assailant.[567] It was easy for ill-disposed persons to draw unfortunate inferences from this sick-bed testimony. Douglas felt that an explanation was expected from him. In a frank, explicit statement he told his colleagues that he was in the reception room of the Senate when the assault occurred. Hearing what was happening, he rose immediately to his feet to enter the chamber and put an end to the affray. But, on second thought, he realized that his motives would be misconstrued if he entered the hall. When the affair was over, he went in with the crowd. He was not near Brooks at any time, and he was not with Senator Toombs, except perhaps as he passed him on leaving the chamber. He did not know that any attack upon Mr. Sumner was purposed "then or at any other time, here or at any other place."[568] Still, it is to be regretted that Douglas did not act on his first, manly instincts and do all that lay in his power to end this brutal assault, regardless of possible misconstructions.

Disgraceful as these scenes in Congress were, they were less ominous than events which were passing in Kansas. Clashes between pro-slavery and free-State settlers had all but resulted in civil war in the preceding fall. An unusually severe winter had followed, which not only cooled the passions of all for a while, but convinced many a slave-holder of the futility of introducing African slaves into a climate, where on occasion the mercury would freeze in the thermometer. In the spring hostilities were resumed. Under cover of executing certain writs in Lawrence, Sheriff Jones and a posse of ruffians took revenge upon that stronghold of the Emigrant Aid Society, by destroying the newspaper offices, burning some public buildings, and pillaging the town. Three days after the sack of Lawrence, and just two days after the assault upon Sumner in the Senate, John Brown and his sons executed the decree of Almighty God, by slaying in cold blood five pro-slavery settlers on the Pottawatomie. Civil war had begun in Kansas.[569]

If remedial measures for Kansas were needed at the beginning of Congress, much more were they needed now. The bill reported by Douglas for the eventual admission of Kansas had commended itself neither to the leaders, nor to the rank and file, of the party. There was a general disposition to await the outcome of the national party conventions, before legislating for Kansas. Douglas made repeated efforts to expedite his bill, but his failure to secure the Democratic nomination seemed to weaken his leadership. Pressure from without finally spurred the Democratic members of Congress to action. The enthusiasm of the Republicans in convention and their confident expectation of carrying many States at the North, warned the Democrats that they must make some effort to allay the disturbances in Kansas. The initiative was taken by Senator Toombs, who drafted a bill conceding far more to Northern sentiment than any yet proposed. It provided that, after a census had been taken, delegates to a constitutional convention should be chosen on the date of the presidential election in November. Five competent persons, appointed by the President with the consent of the Senate, were to supervise the census and the subsequent registration of voters. The convention thus chosen was to assemble in December to frame a State constitution and government.[570]

The Toombs bill, with several others, and with numerous amendments, was referred to the Committee on Territories. Frequent conferences followed at Douglas's residence, in which the recognized leaders of the party participated.[571] It was decided to support the Toombs bill in a slightly amended form and to make a party measure of it.[572] Prudence warned against attempting to elect Buchanan on a policy of merely negative resistance to the Topeka movement.[573] The Republican members of Congress were to be forced to make a show of hands on a measure which promised substantial relief to the people of Kansas.

In his report of June 30th, Douglas discussed the various measures that had been proposed by Whigs and Republicans, but found the Toombs bill best adapted to "insure a fair and impartial decision of the questions at issue in Kansas, in accordance with the wishes of the _bona fide_ inhabitants." A single paragraph from this report ought to have convinced those who subsequently doubted the sincerity of Douglas's course, that he was partner to no plots against the free expression of public opinion in the Territory. "In the opinion of your committee, whenever a constitution shall be formed in any Territory, preparatory to its admission into the Union as a State, justice, the genius of our institutions, the whole theory of our republican system imperatively demand that the voice of the people shall be fairly expressed, and their will embodied in that fundamental law, without fraud or violence, or intimidation, or any other improper or unlawful influence, and subject to no other restrictions than those imposed by the Constitution of the United States."[574]

The Toombs bill caused Republicans grave misgivings, even while they conceded its ostensible liberality. Could an administration that had condoned the frauds already practiced in Kansas be trusted to appoint disinterested commissioners? Would a census of the present population give a majority in the proposed convention to the free-State party in Kansas? Everyone knew that many free-State people had been driven away by the disorders. Douglas endeavored to reassure his opponents on these points; but his words carried no weight on the other side of the chamber. No better evidence of his good faith in the matter, however, could have been asked than he offered, by an amendment which extended the right of voting at the elections to all who had been _bona fide_ residents and voters, but who had absented themselves from the Territory, provided they should return before October 1st.[575] If, as Republicans asserted, many more free-State settlers than pro-slavery squatters had been driven out, then here was a fair concession. But what they wanted was not merely an equal chance for freedom in Kansas, but precedence. To this end they were ready even to admit Kansas under the Topeka constitution, which, by the most favorable construction, was the work of a faction.[576]

It was afterwards alleged that Douglas had wittingly suppressed a clause in the original Toombs bill, which provided for a submission of the constitution to a popular vote. The circumstances were such as to make the charge plausible, and Douglas, in his endeavor to clear himself, made hasty and unqualified statements which were manifestly incorrect. In his own bill for the admission of Kansas, Douglas referred explicitly to "the election for the adoption of the Constitution."[577] The wording of the clause indicates that he regarded the popular ratification of the constitution to be a matter of course. The original Toombs bill had also referred explicitly to a ratification of the constitution by the people;[578] but when it was reported from Douglas's committee in an amended form, it had been stripped of this provision. Trumbull noted at the time that this amended bill made no provision for the submission of the constitution to the vote of the people and deplored the omission, though he supposed, as did most men, that such a ratification would be necessary.[579] Subsequently he accused Douglas not only of having intentionally omitted the referendum clause, but of having prevented a popular vote, by adding the clause, "and until the complete execution of this Act, no other election shall be held in said Territory."[580]

Douglas cleared himself from the latter charge, by pointing out that this clause had been struck out upon his own motion, and replaced by the clause which read, "all other elections in said Territory are hereby postponed until such time as said convention shall appoint."[581] As to the other charge, Douglas said in 1857, that he knew the Toombs bill was silent on the matter of submission, but he took the fair construction to be that powers not delegated were reserved, and that of course the constitution would be submitted to the people. "That I was a party, either by private conferences at my house or otherwise, to a plan to force a constitution on the people of Kansas without submission, is not true."[582]

Still, there was the ugly fact that the Toombs bill had gone to his committee with the clause, and had emerged shorn of it. Toombs himself threw some light on the matter by stating that the clause had been stricken out because there was no provision for a second election, and therefore no proper safeguards for such a popular vote.[583] The probability is that Douglas, and in fact most men, deemed it sufficient at that time to provide a fair opportunity for the election of a convention.[584] When Trumbull preferred his charges in detail in the campaign of 1858, Douglas at first flatly denied that there was a submission clause in the original Toombs bill. Both Trumbull and Lincoln then convicted Douglas of error, and thus put him in the light of one who had committed an offense and had sought to save himself by prevaricating.

The Toombs bill passed the Senate over the impotent Republican opposition; but in the House it encountered a hostile majority which would not so much as consider a proposition emanating from Democratic sources.[585] Douglas charged the Republicans with the deliberate wish and intent to keep the Kansas issue alive. "All these gentlemen want," he declared, "is to get up murder and bloodshed in Kansas for political effect. They do not mean that there shall be peace until after the presidential election.... Their capital for the presidential election is blood. We may as well talk plainly. An angel from Heaven could not write a bill to restore peace in Kansas that would be acceptable to the Abolition Republican party previous to the presidential election."[586]

"Bleeding Kansas" was, indeed, a most effective campaign cry. Before Congress adjourned, the Republicans had found other campaign material in the majority report of the Kansas investigating committee. The Democrats issued the minority report as a counter-blast, and also circulated three hundred thousand copies of Douglas's 12th of March report, which was held to be campaign material of the first order. Douglas himself paid for one-third of these out of his own pocket.[587] No one could accuse him of sulking in his tent. Whatever personal pique he may have felt at losing the nomination, he was thoroughly loyal to his party. He gave unsparingly of his time and strength to the cause of Democracy, speaking most effectively in the doubtful States. And when Pennsylvania became the pivotal State, as election day drew near, Douglas gave liberally to the campaign fund which his friend Forney was collecting to carry the State for Buchanan.[588]

Illinois, too, was now reckoned as a doubtful State. Douglas had forced the issues clearly to the fore by pressing the nomination of Richardson for governor.[589] Next to himself, there was no man in the State so closely identified with Kansas-Nebraska legislation. The anti-Nebraska forces accepted the gage of battle by nominating Bissell, a conspicuous figure among those Democrats who could not sanction the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Only the nomination of a Know-Nothing candidate complicated the issues which were thus drawn. Shortly before the October State elections, Douglas saw that he had committed a tactical blunder. Richardson was doomed to defeat. "Would it not be well," wrote Douglas to James W. Sheahan, who had come from Washington to edit the Chicago _Times_, "to prepare the minds of your readers for losing the State elections on the 14th of October? Buchanan's friends expect to lose it then, but carry the State by 20,000 in November. We may have to fight against wind and tide after the 14th. Hence our friends ought to be prepared for the worst. We must carry Illinois at all hazards and in any event."[590]

This forecast proved to be correct. Richardson, with all that he represented, went down to defeat. In November Buchanan carried the State by a narrow margin, the total Democratic vote falling far behind the combined vote for Frémont and Fillmore.[591] The political complexion of Illinois had changed. It behooved the senior senator to take notice.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 536: Section 23, United States Statutes at Large, X, p. 285.]

[Footnote 537: See remarks of Douglas, _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., App., pp. 360-361.]

[Footnote 538: Howard Report, pp. 108-109.]

[Footnote 539: _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., App., pp. 360-361.]

[Footnote 540: Spring, Kansas, pp. 39-41.]

[Footnote 541: _Ibid._, pp. 43-49; Rhodes, History of the United States, II, pp. 81-82.]

[Footnote 542: Spring, Kansas, pp. 53-56.]

[Footnote 543: Rhodes, History of the United States, II, p. 99.]

[Footnote 544: _Ibid._, p. 100.]

[Footnote 545: _Ibid._, p. 101.]

[Footnote 546: Spring, Kansas, Chapter V; Rhodes, II, pp. 102-103.]

[Footnote 547: Rhodes, History of the United States, II, p. 103.]

[Footnote 548: Sheahan, Douglas, p. 286.]

[Footnote 549: Senate Reports, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 34.]

[Footnote 550: _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 639.]

[Footnote 551: Senate Report, No. 34, p. 4.]

[Footnote 552: _Ibid._, p. 7.]

[Footnote 553: Senate Report, No. 34, pp. 7-9.]

[Footnote 554: _Ibid._, p. 23.]

[Footnote 555: Senate Report, No. 34, p. 34.]

[Footnote 556: _Ibid._, p. 39.]

[Footnote 557: Senate Report, No. 34, p. 40.]

[Footnote 558: _Ibid._, pp. 39-40.]

[Footnote 559: _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 693.]

[Footnote 560: _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 657.]

[Footnote 561: _Ibid._, App., pp. 280 ff.]

[Footnote 562: New York _Independent_, May 1, 1856; quoted by Rhodes II, p. 128.]

[Footnote 563: _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., App. p. 544.]

[Footnote 564: _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., App., p. 531.]

[Footnote 565: _Ibid._, p. 545.]

[Footnote 566: _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., App., p. 547.]

[Footnote 567: Rhodes, History of the United States, II, p. 148.]

[Footnote 568: _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 1305.]

[Footnote 569: Rhodes, History of the United States, II, pp. 103-106; 154-166.]

[Footnote 570: _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 1439.]

[Footnote 571: _Ibid._, 35 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 22.]

[Footnote 572: _Ibid._, p. 119.]

[Footnote 573: _Ibid._, p. 119.]

[Footnote 574: Senate Report, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 198.]

[Footnote 575: _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., App., p. 795.]

[Footnote 576: Rhodes, History of the United States, II, pp. 194-195.]

[Footnote 577: Senate Bill, No. 172, Section 3.]

[Footnote 578: Senate Bill, No. 356, Section 13.]

[Footnote 579: _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., App., p. 779.]

[Footnote 580: Speech at Alton, Illinois, 1858.]

[Footnote 581: Political Debates between Lincoln and Douglas, pp. 161 ff.]

[Footnote 582: _Globe_, 35 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 22.]

[Footnote 583: _Ibid._, App., p. 127. Toombs also stated that the submission clause had been put in his bill in the first place by accident, and that it had been stricken from the bill at his suggestion.]

[Footnote 584: The submission of State constitutions to a popular vote had not then become a general practice.]

[Footnote 585: Rhodes, History of the United States, II, p. 195.]

[Footnote 586: _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., App., p. 844.]

[Footnote 587: _Globe_, 35 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 21.]

[Footnote 588: Sheahan, Douglas, p. 443.]

[Footnote 589: Davidson and Stuvé, History of Illinois, p. 650.]

[Footnote 590: MS. Letter, Douglas to Sheahan, October 6, 1856.]

[Footnote 591: _Tribune Almanac_, 1857. The vote was as follows:

Buchanan 105,348 Frémont 96,189 Fillmore 37,444 ]