close the shutters of her house at noon, and hold a reception by artificial light every Saturday afternoon, society followed her lead.  There were no more brilliant affairs in Washington than these afternoon receptions and hops at the Douglas residence in Minnesota Block.[647] In contrast to these functions dominated by a thoroughly charming personality, the formal precision of the receptions at the White House was somewhat chilling and forbidding.  President Buchanan, bachelor, with his handsome but somewhat self-contained niece, was not equal to this social rivalry.[648] Moreover, the cares of office permitted the perplexed, wearied, and timid executive no respite day or night.

Events in Kansas gave heart to those who were fighting Lecomptonism.  At the election appointed by the convention, the “constitution with slavery” was adopted by a large majority, the free-State people refusing to vote; but the legislature, now in the control of the free-State party, had already provided for a fair vote on the whole constitution.  On this second vote the majority was overwhelmingly against the constitution.  Information from various sources corroborated the deductions which unprejudiced observers drew from the voting.  It was as clear as day that the people of Kansas did not regard the Lecompton constitution as a fair expression of their will.[649]

Ignoring the light which made the path of duty plain, President Buchanan sent the Lecompton constitution to Congress with a message recommending the admission of Kansas.[650] To his mind, the Lecompton convention was legally constituted and had exercised its powers faithfully.  The organic act did not bind the convention to submit to the people more than the question of slavery.  Meantime the Supreme Court had handed down its famous decision in the Dred Scott case.  Fortified by this dictum, the President told Congress that slavery existed in Kansas by virtue of the Constitution of the United States.  “Kansas is, at this moment, as much a slave State as Georgia or South Carolina”!  Slavery, then, could be prohibited only by constitutional provision; and those who desired to do away with slavery would most speedily compass their ends, if they admitted Kansas at once under this constitution.

The President’s message with the Lecompton constitution was referred to the Committee on Territories and gave rise to three reports:  Senator Green of Missouri presented the majority report, recommending the admission of Kansas under this constitution; Senators Collamer and Wade united on a minority report, leaving Douglas to draft another expressing his dissent on other grounds.[651] Taken all in all, this must be regarded as the most satisfactory and convincing of all Douglas’s committee reports.  It is strong because it is permeated by a desire for justice, and reinforced at every point by a consummate marshalling of evidence.  Barely in his career had his conspicuous qualities as a special pleader been put so unreservedly at the service of simple justice.  He planted himself firmly, at the outset, upon the incontrovertible fact that there was no satisfactory evidence that the Lecompton constitution was the act and deed of the people of Kansas.[652]