Having given thus a constitutional sanction to the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the report unhesitatingly denounced that “vast moneyed corporation,” created for the purpose of controlling the domestic institutions of a distinct political community fifteen hundred miles away.[552] This was as flagrant an act of intervention as though France or England had interfered for a similar purpose in Cuba, for “in respect to everything which affects its domestic policy and internal concerns, each State stands in the relation of a foreign power to every other State.”  The obvious retort to this extraordinary assertion was, that Kansas was only a Territory, and not a State.  Douglas then made this “mammoth moneyed corporation” the scapegoat for all that had happened in Kansas.  The Missouri Blue Lodges were defensive organizations, called into existence by the fear that the “abolitionizing” of Kansas was the prelude to a warfare upon slavery in Missouri.  The violence and bloodshed in Kansas were “the natural and inevitable consequences of such extraordinary systems of emigration."[553]

Such ex post facto assertions did not mend matters in Kansas, however much they may have relieved the author of the report.  It remained to deal with the existing situation.  The report took the ground that the legislature of Kansas was a legal body and had been so recognized by Governor Reeder.  Neither the alleged irregularity of the elections, nor other objections, could diminish its legislative authority.  Pro-tests against the election returns had been filed in only seven out of eighteen districts.  Ten out of thirteen councilmen, and seventeen out of twenty-six representatives, held their seats by virtue of the governor’s certificate.  Even if it were assumed that the second elections in the seven districts were wrongly invalidated by the legislature, its action was still the action of a lawful legislature, possessing in either house a quorum of duly certificated members.  This was a lawyer’s plea.  Technically it was unanswerable.

Having taken this position, Douglas very properly refused to pass judgment on the laws of the legislature.  By the very terms of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Congress had confided the power to enact local laws to the people of the Territories.  If the validity of these laws should be doubted, it was for the courts of justice and not for Congress to decide the question.[554]

Throughout the report, the question was not once raised, whether the legislature really reflected the sentiment of a majority of the settlers of Kansas.  Douglas assumed that it was truly representative.  This attitude is not surprising, when one recalls his predilections and the conflict of evidence on essential points in the controversy.  Nevertheless, this attitude was unfortunate, for it made him unfair toward the free-State settlers, with whom by temper and training he had far more in common than with the Missouri emigrants.