Under these circumstances it would not be strange if Douglas “wavered."[661] Here was an opportunity to close the rift between himself and the administration, to heal party dissensions, perhaps to save the integrity of the Democratic party and the Union.  And the price which he would have to pay was small.  He could assume, plausibly enough,—­as he had done many times before in his career,—­that the bill granted all that he had ever asked.  He was morally sure that the people of Kansas would reject the land grant to rid themselves of the Lecompton fraud.  Why hesitate then as to means, when the desired end was in clear view?

Douglas found himself subjected to a new pressure, harder even to resist than any he had yet felt.  Some of his staunch supporters in the anti-Lecompton struggle went over to the administration, covering their retreat by just such excuses as have been suggested.  Was he wiser and more conscientious than they?  A refusal to accept the proffered olive branch now meant,—­he knew it well,—­the irreconcilable enmity of the Buchanan faction.  And he was not asked to recant, but only to accept what he had always deemed the very essence of statesmanship, a compromise.  His Republican allies promptly evinced their distrust.  They fully expected him to join his former associates.  From them he could expect no sympathy in such a dilemma.[662] His political ambitions, no doubt, added to his perplexity.  They were bound up in the fate of the party, the integrity of which was now menaced by his revolt.  On the other hand, he was fully conscious that his Illinois constituency approved of his opposition to Lecomptonism and would regard a retreat across this improvised political bridge as both inglorious and treacherous.  Agitated by conflicting emotions, Douglas made a decision which probably cost him more anguish than any he ever made; and when all has been said to the contrary, love of fair play would seem to have been his governing motive.[663]

When Douglas rose to address the Senate on the English bill, April 29th, he betrayed some of the emotion under which he had made his decision.  He confessed an “anxious desire” to find such provisions as would permit him to support the bill; but he was painfully forced to declare that he could not find the principle for which he had contended, fairly carried out.  He was unable to reconcile popular sovereignty with the proposed intervention of Congress in the English bill.  “It is intervention with inducements to control the result.  It is intervention with a bounty on the one side and a penalty on the other."[664] He frankly admitted that he did not believe there was enough in the bounty nor enough in the penalty to influence materially the vote of the people of Kansas; but it involved “the principle of freedom of election and—­the great principle of self-government upon which our institutions rest.”  And upon this principle he took his stand.  “With all the anxiety that I have had,” said he with deep feeling, “to be able to arrive at a conclusion in harmony with the overwhelming majority of my political friends in Congress, I could not bring my judgment or conscience to the conclusion that this was a fair, impartial, and equal application of the principle."[665]