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.[[651]] 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.[[652]]
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."[[653]] 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."[[654]] 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."[[655]] 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.[[656]] "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."[[657]] 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.[[658]] 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.'"[[659]]
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.[[660]] 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."[[661]] 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.[[662]] 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.[[663]]