to compel submission. This was denied, and
Walker resigned. The Lecompton, pro-slavery constitution of Kansas was
submitted to the first Congress of Buchanan in December, 1857, and the
Administration urged its adoption. Walker openly condemned Buchanan for
deserting him, and he declared the Lecompton constitution to be a fraud.
Yet the leaders of the South, resentful and angry, supported it, and the
majority of the Senate was on the same side. The judges of the Supreme
Court were known to favor it. The Republicans urged the adoption of the
Topeka constitution of 1855, and the majority of the people seemed to be
of the same view. What was the way out of the dangerous _impasse_?

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Most interesting and trustworthy accounts of subjects discussed in the
chapter are: T. C. Smith's _Parties and Slavery_, in _American Nation_
series; F. Bancroft's _The Life of William H. Seward_ (1900); Allen
Johnson's _The Life of Stephen A. Douglas_ (1908); O. G. Villard's _John
Brown; a Biography_ (1910); L. D. Scisco's _Political Nativism in New
York_ (1901); William Salter's _Life of James W. Grimes_ (1876); George
W. Julian's _Life of Joshua R. Giddings_ (1892). Rhodes, McMaster, and
Schouler treat the period critically. Some special studies of importance
are P. O. Ray's _Repeal of the Missouri Compromise_ (1909); Allen
Johnson's _Genesis of Popular Sovereignty_ (_Iowa Journal of History and
Politics_, _III_); F. H. Hodder's _Douglas and the Kansas-Nebraska Act_
(_Wisconsin Historical Society Proceedings_, 1912); and E. S. Corwin's
_The Dred Scott Decision_ (_American Historical Review_, _XVII_).

Some of the most instructive contemporary narratives will be found in M.
W. Cluskey's _Political Text Book_ (1857), and _Speeches, Messages, and
other Writings of A. G. Brown_ (1859); H. Wilson's _Rise and Fall of the
Slave Power_ (1872-77); Horace Greeley's _The American Conflict_ (1864);
Mrs. Jefferson Davis's _Jefferson Davis; a Memoir_ (1890); J. M. Cutts's
_Constitutional and Party Questions_ (1866); S. J. May's _Recollections
of the Anti-Slavery Conflict_ (1869); _Works of Charles Sumner_
(1874-83), and many other works of a similar character.

William McDonald's _Select Documents_ gives the most important sources
for this whole period. But the _Congressional Globe_, _U.S. Documents,
House Reports_, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., vol. _II_, must be studied in
order to get the spirit of the times.