hose who now crossed for the first
time, under a similar pretext. As Douglas subsequently contended with
much force, the number of votes cast in excess of the census returns
did not in itself prove wholesale fraud.[539]

Under such liability to deception and misjudgment, the territorial
authorities held the election which was likely to determine the status
of Kansas with respect to slavery. Both parties were playing for great
stakes; passion and violence were the almost inevitable outcome. Both
parties contained desperadoes, who invariably come to the surface in
the general mixing which occurs on the frontier. Both parties committed
frauds at the polls. But the most serious gravamina have been laid at
the door of those Blue Lodges of Missouri which deliberately sought to
secure the election of pro-slavery candidates by fair means or foul.
The people of western Missouri had come to believe that the fate of
slavery in their own Commonwealth hinged upon the future of Kansas. It
was commonly believed that after Kansas, Missouri would be
abolitionized. It was, therefore, with the fierce, unreasoning energy
of defenders of their own institutions, that Blue Lodges organized
their crusade for Kansas.[540] On election day armed bands of
Missourians crossed into Kansas and polled a heavy vote for the
pro-slavery candidates, in the teeth of indignant remonstrances.[541]

The further history of popular sovereignty in Kansas must be lightly
touched upon, for it is the reflex action in the halls of Congress
that interests the student of Douglas's career. Twenty-eight of the
thirty-nine members of the first territorial legislature were men of
pronounced pro-slavery views; eleven were anti-slavery candidates. In
seven districts, where protests had been filed, the governor ordered
new elections. Three of those first elected were returned, six were
new men of anti-slavery proclivities. But when the legislature met,
these new elections were set aside and I the first elections were
declared valid.[542]

In complete control of the legislature, the pro-slavery party
proceeded to write slavery into the law of the Territory. In their
eagerness to establish slavery permanently, these legislative Hotspurs
quite overshot the mark, creating offenses and affixing penalties of
doubtful constitutionality.[543] Meanwhile the census of February
reported but one hundred ninety-two slaves in a total population of
eight thousand six hundred.[544] Those