diately raised. It now became
plain that, by refusing to take part in the election, the free-state
Kansans had thrown away a great tactical advantage. Of this blunder in
generalship the Yancey men took instant advantage. It was known that
the proportion of Free-Soilers in Kansas was very great--perhaps a
majority--and the Southerners reasoned that they should not be obliged
to give up the advantage they had won merely to let their enemies
retrieve their mistake. Jefferson Davis formulated this position in
an address to the Mississippi Legislature in which he insisted that
Congress, not the Kansas electorate, was entitled to create the Kansas
constitution, that the Convention was a properly chosen body, and that
its work should stand. What Davis said in a stately way, others said in
a furious way. Buchanan stated afterward that he changed front because
certain Southern States had threatened that, if he did not abandon
Walker, they would secede.

Be that as it may, Buchanan did abandon Walker and threw all the
influence of the Administration in favor of admitting Kansas with the
Lecompton constitution. But would this be true to that principle of
"popular sovereignty" which was the very essence of the Kansas-Nebraska
Act? Would it be true to the principle that each locality should decide
for itself between slavery and freedom? On this issue the Southerners
were fairly generally agreed and maintained that there was no obligation
to go behind the work of the convention. Not so, however, the great
exponent of popular sovereignty, Douglas. Rising in his place in the
Senate, he charged the President with conspiring to defeat the will of
the majority in Kansas. "If Kansas wants a slave state constitution,"
said he, "she has a right to it; if she wants a free state constitution,
she has a right to it. It is none of my business which way the slavery
clause is decided. I care not whether it is voted up or down."

There followed one of those prolonged legislative battles for which the
Congress of the United States is justly celebrated. Furious oratory,
propositions, counter-propositions, projected compromises, other
compromises, and at the end nothing positive. But Douglas had defeated
the attempt to bring in Kansas with the Lecompton constitution. As to
the details of the story, they include such distinguished happenings as
a brawling, all-night session when "thirty men, at least, were engaged
in the fisticuff," and one Representa