On February 2nd Buchanan sent to Congress his message, transmitting
the Lecompton Constitution and urging its approval. As apology
for his change of front and excuse for a like change in others he
drew a dark picture of the disturbed condition of affairs in the
Territory, portraying the Topeka free State enterprise as a vast
insurrectionary movement. He told Congress that it was impossible
to submit the whole instrument to a vote because the free State
faction, who were the majority, would vote against any Constitution,
however perfect, except their own. He commended the entire regularity
of the Lecompton Convention and the fairness with which the slavery
question had been submitted to a vote and urged immediate admission.
When the motion to print and refer to the Committee on Territories
was made, Trumbull denounced the message with great energy and
at some length. He asked sneeringly what had become of the once
celebrated principle of popular sovereignty? The people of Kansas
were denied the right of voting on their Constitution at all and the
Dred Scott decision had settled that at no stage had the people of
a Territory power to interfere with slavery. The whole doctrine,
he declared, had been absolutely repudiated.
The message having been referred to the Committee on Territories
after six days' debate, on the 18th of February a bill was reported
by a majority of the Committee for the admission of Kansas into
the Union under the Lecompton Constitution and Douglas presented
a minority report protesting against it. For two weeks he was
confined to his room by sickness, but, as the day for the vote was
near, notice was given that he would speak on the 22nd of March.
On that day the Senate met at the early hour of ten. Already the
galleries were crowded. Long before noon the passages leading to
the Chamber were thronged with men and women vainly seeking admission.
In a moment of graceful gallantry the Senators admitted the ladies
to the floor. Through long hours of debate the crowd waited. The
Senate adjourned until seven o'clock, at which time Douglas was to
speak. The visitors who were lucky enough to have gained admission
waited with patient good humor for the return of the Senators, who
at last began to force their way back into the Chamber through the
dense throngs.
A little before seven the short figure of Douglas was observed at
the door and he was greeted with loud applause from the galleries.
The session resumed and he rose to speak. Cheered as he was by
the sympathy and admiration of the visitors, it was to him a stern
enough hour when he must finally break with his powerful party and
battle with his utmost strength against its cherished program. He
must attack, not Buchanan, but the organized Democracy, now more
powerfully entrenched than ever before. It controlled the President
and the Supreme Court and had bent them to its will in this precise
quarrel. The Senate was Democratic nearly two to one, and but
two of the majority followed him in his revolt. In the House the
Democrats had a majority of twenty-five.
Foreseeing the personal consequences of his act, he opened his speech
with an elaborate review of his course in Congress in relation to
slavery in the Territories, showing that from the beginning he had
favored leaving the whole question fairly to the inhabitants. He
stood on the principle of the Compromise of 1850 as approved and
interpreted by the legislature of Illinois in 1851. That body had
declared that the people of a Territory had a right to form such
government as they chose. But was the Lecompton Constitution the
act and deed of the people of Kansas? Did it embody their will?
If not, Congress had no right to impose it on them. Where was the
evidence that it did embody their will? By a fraudulent vote on
December 12th it was adopted by 5,500 majority. By a fair vote on
January 4th it was defeated by 10,000 majority. The election on
December 21st was ordered by the Lecompton Convention, deriving its
authority from the territorial legislature. The legislature itself
ordered the election on January 4th. Granting the argument that
the organic act was in effect an enabling act, then the territorial
legislature had power to authorize the Lecompton Convention and
also to order it work submitted to a vote. The legislature either
had the full power of Congress over the subject or it had none.
But, it was claimed, the Constitution would have been voted down
if submitted. What right had Congress to force it upon the people?
It was a mockery to call it an embodiment of their will and a crime
to attempt to enforce it. If it ever became the Constitution of
Kansas it would be the act of Congress that made it so and not the
decision of the people. That it could be changed thereafter was no
apology for this outrage. It was as much a violation of fundamental
principle, a violation of popular sovereignty, to force a Constitution
on an unwilling people for a day as for a year or for a longer
time.
If a few thousand Free Soilers had fabricated a Constitution
in this fashion, prohibiting slavery forever, would the gentlemen
from the South have submitted to the outrage? They were asked to
admit Kansas with a State government brought into existence not
only by fraudulent voting but forged returns sustained by perjury.
He paused to comment on certain diatribes in the Washington Union
which had denounced him as a renegade, traitor and deserter, and
read from its columns an article presenting the extreme claims
of the South, arguing that all laws and Constitutions of the free
States forbidding slavery were violations of the Federal Constitution,
and that the emancipation of slaves in the Northern States was
a gross outrage on the rights of property. But this article, he
said, was in harmony with the Lecompton Constitution, which declared
the right of property in a slave to be higher than Constitutions.
This meant that the Constitutions of the free States forbidding
slavery were in conflict with the Constitution of the United States
and of no validity. Hence slavery had right to exist in all the
States. But this was not the authentic Democratic faith, which
left the whole question to the option of the several States. If
each one took care of its own affairs, minded its own business
and let its neighbors alone, there would be peace in the country.
Seward had proclaimed a higher law which forbade slavery everywhere.
this instrument and the Administration paper proclaimed a higher
law which established it in all the States. It was time to quit
this folly and yield obedience to the Constitution and laws of the
land.
It was the most arrant presumption for the Administration to attempt
to make this a party measure. By what right did these accidental
and temporary holders of office prescribe party politics? There had
been no Convention, not even a caucus, since this question arose.
The party was not committed. The President had no right to tell a
Senator his duty and command his allegiance. He had no power to
prescribe tests. A Senator's first duty was to his State. "If
the will of my State is one way and the will of the President is
the other, 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' enemy? If not,
your head comes off.'"
What despotism on earth could equal this? The obedience of Senators
was demanded on this question only. On all else they were free.
The President was evidently guided by the old adage that a man needs
no friends when he knows he is right and only want his friends to
stand by him when he is wrong.
The President regretted that the Constitution was not submitted
to the people, although he knew that if it had been submitted
it would have been rejected. Hence, he regretted that it had not
been rejected. Would he regret that it had not been submitted and
rejected if he did not think it was wrong? And yet, he demanded
their assistance in forcing it on an unwilling people and threatened
vengeance on all who refused.
"For my part," he continued, * * * "come what may, I intend to vote,
speak and act according to my own sense of duty, so long as I hold
a seat in this Chamber. * * * I have no professions to make of
my fidelity. I have no vindication to make of my course. Let it
speak for itself. * * * 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, nor drive me from my
principles. I stand firmly and immovably upon those great principles
of self-government and State sovereignty upon which the campaign
was fought and won. I stand by the time honored principles of the
Democratic party, illustrated by Jefferson and Jackson, those principles
of State rights, of State sovereignty, of strict construction, upon
which the great Democratic party has ever stood. I will stand by
the Constitution of the United States with all its compromises and
perform all my obligations under it. I will stand by the American
Union as it exists under the Constitution. If standing firmly by
my principles I shall be driven into private life, it is a fate
that has no terrors for me. * * * If the alternative be private
life or servile obedience to the Executive will, I am prepared to
retire. Official position has no charm for me when deprived of
that freedom of thought and action which becomes a gentleman and
a Senator."
When he closed, Toombs rose to reply. The speech was offensively
bitter and personal, in one memorable passage of which he announced
that the slave States would take care of themselves and were prepared
to bid defiance to the North and to the world. Green of Missouri
answered in coarser strain, both intimating that Douglas had been
guilty of deliberate perfidy in his change of front.
On the 23rd the vote was taken and the bill passed, 33 being for
it and 25 against it.
The Administration now declared war on him. The patronage
was unsparingly used against his friends and it was better for an
applicant for Federal appointment to be accused of any crime than
suspected of friendship with Douglas. This separation from his
party touched his feelings more deeply than any other event of his
life, and we find surprising evidence of his being shaken by deep
emotions that seem out of harmony with his robust and unsentimental
nature. But when we remember that all his life had been spent
in the activities of politics, that his thoughts, sentiments and
passions had all been political for twenty years, that the Democratic
platform was at once his creed and his philosophy, we can understand
something of the choking emotion that threatened to overpower him
as he announced that he was thenceforth a rebel and a heretic.
After December 9th, the Administration press attacked him bitterly
and he found himself everywhere proclaimed a traitor and deserter.
He told the Senate that he knew the knife would be put to the throats
of his followers. The Administration Senators assailed him. But
he was equal to all emergencies and his new position as the recognized
leader of the anti-Lecompton revolt gave him the enthusiastic
applause of the Northwest.
On March 23rd the bill went to the House. A motion was made to
refer it to a special committee. A contest over this motion arose,
lasted all night, and degenerated into a general brawl, in which
a Member from Pennsylvania knocked down a South Carolina Member,
and many others were engaged in fisticuffs. At last a reference
was agreed to.
On April 1st, while the House had the bill under consideration,
Montgomery of Pennsylvania offered a substitute which had been
offered by Crittenden in the Senate and there rejected, providing
that the Constitution should be submitted to a vote, and, if adopted,
the President should at once proclaim the admission of the State;
if rejected, the inhabitants should hold a new Constitutional
Convention. This substitute passed the House but was rejected by
the Senate. A conference Committee was appointed, which reported
the notorious English bill, providing that a generous grant of land
should be offered to Kansas, and the people at a special election
vote to accept it. If they so voted, they were to be admitted
as a State with the Lecompton Constitution. If they rejected the
grant, they could not be admitted until they numbered 93,000, which
meant indefinite postponement. The bill was merely an offer of a
bribe to the people to accept a Constitution which they abhorred.
Its form was such that men who still believe it well to maintain
the guise of decency could vote for it on the pretence that it was
a land grant.
Douglas, who had now tried the thorny path of rebellion, faltered.
He was tempted to support the bill and seek reconciliation, but
decided to vote against it. It passed the Senate by a majority of
nine and the House by a majority of eight. In the following August
the proposition was submitted and rejected so decisively that the
maddest fanatic must have seen that all hope of making Kansas a
slave State was gone forever.