Such was the situation in Kansas, when Douglas reached Washington in February, after a protracted illness.[548] The President had already discussed the Kansas imbroglio in a special message; but the Democratic majority in the Senate showed some reluctance to follow the lead of the administration.  From the Democrats in the House not much could be expected, because of the strength of the Republicans.  The party awaited its leader.  Upon his appearance, all matters relating to Kansas were referred to the Committee on Territories.  The situation called for unusual qualities of leadership.  How would the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act face the palpable breakdown of his policy?

With his customary dispatch, Douglas reported on the 12th of March.[549] The majority report consumed two hours in the reading; Senator Collamer stated the position of the minority in half the time.[550] Evidently the chairman was aware where the burden of proof lay.  Douglas took substantially the same ground as that taken by the President in his special message, but he discussed the issues boldly in his own vigorous way.  No one doubted that he had reached his conclusions independently.

The report began with a constitutional argument in defense of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.  As a contribution to the development of the doctrine of popular sovereignty, the opening paragraphs deserve more than passing notice.  The distinct advance in Douglas’s thought consisted in this:  that he explicitly refused to derive the power to organize Territories from that provision of the Constitution which gave Congress “power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States.”  The word “territory” here was used in its geographical sense to designate the public domain, not to indicate a political community.  Rather was the power to be derived from the authority of Congress to adopt necessary and proper means to admit new States into the Union.  But beyond the necessary and proper organization of a territorial government with reference to ultimate statehood, Congress might not go.  Clearly, then, Congress might not impose conditions and restrictions upon a Territory which would prevent its entering the Union on an equality with the other States.  From the formation of the Union, each State had been left free to decide the question of slavery for itself.  Congress, therefore, might not decide the question for prospective States.  Recognizing this, the framers of the Kansas-Nebraska Act had relegated the discussion of the slavery question to the people, who were to form a territorial government under cover of the organic act.[551]

This was an ingenious argument.  It was in accord with the utterances of some of the weightiest intellects in our constitutional history.  But it was not in accord with precedent.  There was hardly a territorial act that had emerged from Douglas’s committee room, which had not imposed restrictions not binding on the older Commonwealths.