ome too offensive for
further tolerance.

In the Senate, with its heavy Democratic majority, the Administration
easily secured the passage of a bill to admit Kansas with the
Lecompton Constitution. Out of eleven Democratic Senators from free
States, only three--Douglas of Illinois, Broderick of California, and
Stuart of Michigan--took courage to speak and vote against the
measure. In the House of Representatives, however, with a narrower
margin of political power, the scheme, after an exciting discussion
running through about two months, met a decisive defeat. A formidable
popular opposition to it had developed itself in the North, in which
speeches and letters from Governor Walker and Secretary Stanton in
denunciation of it were a leading feature and a powerful influence.
The lower House of Congress always responds quickly to currents of
public sentiment; but in this case it caught direction all the more
promptly because its members were to be chosen anew in the ensuing
autumn. However much they might have party subordination and success
at heart, some of them felt that they could not defend before their
anti-slavery constituencies the Oxford frauds, the Calhoun
dictatorship, the theory that slave property is above constitutional
sanction, and the dogma that "Kansas is therefore at this moment as
much a slave-State as Georgia or South Carolina." When the test vote
was taken on April 1, out of the 53 Democratic representatives from
the free-States 31 voted for Lecompton; but the remaining 22,[2]
joining their strength to the opposition, passed a substitute,
originating with Mr. Crittenden of the Senate, which in substance
directed a resubmission of the Lecompton Constitution to the people of
Kansas;--if adopted, the President to admit the new State by a simple
proclamation; if rejected, the people to call a convention and frame a
new instrument.

As the October vote had been the turning-point in the local popular
struggle in the Territory, this adoption of the Crittenden-Montgomery
substitute, by a total vote of 120 to 112 in the House of
Representatives, was the culmination of the National intrigue to
secure Kansas for the South. It was a narrow victory for freedom; a
change of 5 votes would have passed the Lecompton bill and admitted
the State with slavery, and a constitutional prohibition against any
change for seven years to come. With his authority to control election
returns, there is every reason to suppose th