that it was truly representative.
This attitude is not surprising, when one recalls his predilections
and the conflict of evidence on essential points in the controversy.
Nevertheless, this attitude was unfortunate, for it made him unfair
toward the free-State settlers, with whom by temper and training he
had far more in common than with the Missouri emigrants. Could he have
cut himself loose from his bias, he would have recognized the
free-State men as the really trustworthy builders of a Commonwealth.
But having taken his stand on the legality of the territorial
legislature, he persisted in regarding the free-State movement as a
seditious combination to subvert the territorial government
established by Congress. To the free-State men he would not accord any
inherent, sovereign right to annul the laws and resist the authority
of the territorial government.[555] The right of self-government was
derived only from the Constitution through the organic act passed by
Congress. And then he used that expression which was used with telling
effect against the theory of popular sovereignty: "The sovereignty of
a Territory remains in abeyance, suspended in the United States, in
trust for the people, until they shall be admitted into the Union as a
State."[556] If this was true, then popular sovereignty after all
meant nothing more than local self-government, the measure of which
was to be determined by Congress. If Congress left slavery to local
determination, it was only for expediency's sake, and not by reason of
any constitutional obligation.

Douglas found a vindication of his Kansas-Nebraska Act in the peaceful
history of Nebraska, "to which the emigrant aid societies did not
extend their operations, and into which the stream of emigration was
permitted to flow in its usual and natural channels."[557] He fixed
the ultimate responsibility for the disorders in Kansas upon those who
opposed the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and who, "failing to
accomplish their purpose in the halls of Congress, and under the
authority of the Constitution, immediately resorted in their
respective States to unusual and extraordinary means to control the
political destinies and shape the domestic institutions of Kansas, in
defiance of the wishes and regardless of the rights of the people of
that Territory as guaranteed by their organic law."[558]

A practical recommendation accompanied the report. It was proposed to
authorize the territor