result was a decisive free-State victory.  The next legislature would have an ample majority of free-State men in both chambers.  It was with the discomfiting knowledge, then, that they represented only a minority of the community that the delegates of the constitutional convention began their labors.[623] It was clear to the dullest intelligence that any pro-slavery constitution would be voted down, if it were submitted fairly to the people of Kansas.  Gloom settled down upon the hopes of the pro-slavery party.

When the document which embodied the labors of the convention was made public, the free-State party awoke from its late complacence to find itself tricked by a desperate game.  The constitution was not to be submitted to a full and fair vote; but only the article relating to slavery.  The people of Kansas were to vote for the “Constitution with slavery” or for the “Constitution with no slavery.”  By either alternative the constitution would be adopted.  But should the constitution with no slavery be ratified, a clause of the schedule still guaranteed “the right of property in slaves now in this Territory."[624] The choice offered to an opponent of slavery in Kansas was between a constitution sanctioning and safeguarding all forms of slave property,[625] and a constitution which guaranteed the full possession of slaves then in the Territory, with no assurances as to the status of the natural increase of these slaves.  Viewed in the most charitable light, this was a gambler’s device for securing the stakes by hook or crook.  Still further to guard existing property rights in slaves, it was provided that if the constitution should be amended after 1864, no alteration should be made to affect “the rights of property in the ownership of slaves."[626]

The news from Lecompton stirred Douglas profoundly.  In a peculiar sense he stood sponsor for justice to bleeding Kansas, not only because he had advocated in abstract terms the perfect freedom of the people to form their domestic institutions in their own way, but because he had become personally responsible for the conduct of the leader of the Lecompton party.  John Calhoun, president of the convention, had been appointed surveyor general of the Territory upon his recommendation.  Governor Walker had retained Calhoun in that office because of Douglas’s assurance that Calhoun would support the policy of submission.[627] Moreover, Governor Walker had gone to his post with the assurance that the leaders of the administration would support this course.

Was it likely that the pro-slavery party in Kansas would take this desperate course, without assurance of some sort from Washington?  There were persistent rumors that President Buchanan approved the Lecompton constitution,[628] but Douglas was loth to give credence to them.  The press of Illinois and of the Northwest voiced public sentiment in condemning the work of the Lecomptonites.[629] Douglas was soon on his way to Washington, determined to know the President’s mind; his own was made up.