The sequel to this heroic posturing of the chief magistrate is one of the most humiliating chapters in American politics.  Attendant circumstances leave little doubt that a portion of Mr. Buchanan’s cabinet, in secret league and correspondence with the pro-slavery Missouri-Kansas cabal, aided and abetted the framing and adoption of what is known to history as the Lecompton Constitution, an organic instrument of a radical pro-slavery type; that its pretended submission to popular vote was under phraseology, and in combination with such gigantic electoral frauds and dictatorial procedure, as to render the whole transaction a mockery of popular government; still worse, that President Buchanan himself, proving too weak in insight and will to detect the intrigue or resist the influence of his malign counselors, abandoned his solemn pledges to Governor Walker, adopted the Lecompton Constitution as an administration measure, and recommended it to Congress in a special message, announcing dogmatically:  “Kansas is therefore at this moment as much a slave State as Georgia or South Carolina.”

The radical pro-slavery attitude thus assumed by President Buchanan and Southern leaders threw the Democratic party of the free States into serious disarray, while upon Senator Douglas the blow fell with the force of party treachery—­almost of personal indignity.  The Dred Scott decision had rudely brushed aside his theory of popular sovereignty, and now the Lecompton Constitution proceedings brutally trampled it down in practice.  The disaster overtook him, too, at a critical moment.  His senatorial term was about to expire; the next Illinois legislature would elect his successor.  The prospect was none too bright for him, for at the late presidential election Illinois had chosen Republican State officers.  He was compelled either to break his pledges to the Democratic voters of Illinois, or to lead a revolt against President Buchanan and the Democratic leaders in Congress.  Party disgrace at Washington, or popular disgrace in Illinois, were the alternatives before him.  To lose his reelection to the Senate would almost certainly end his public career.  When, therefore, Congress met in December, 1857, Douglas boldly attacked and denounced the Lecompton Constitution, even before the President had recommended it in his special message.

“Stand by the doctrine,” he said, “that leaves the people perfectly free to form and regulate their institutions for themselves, in their own way, and your party will be united and irresistible in power....  If Kansas wants a slave-State constitution, she has a right to it; if she wants a free-State constitution, she has a right to it.  It is none of my business which way the slavery clause is decided.  I care not whether it is voted down or voted up.  Do you suppose, after the pledges of my honor that I would go for that principle and leave the people to vote as they choose, that I would now degrade myself by voting one way if the slavery clause be voted down,