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."[[638]] 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.[[639]]
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.[[640]] 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.[[641]] 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."[[642]] 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.[[643]] 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.[[644]] His residence, where Mrs. Douglas dispensed a gracious hospitality, was fairly besieged with callers.[[645]] Washington society was never gayer than during this memorable winter.[[646]] 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 Adèle 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.[[647]] 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.[[648]] 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.[[649]]
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.[[650]] 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.