he
added adroitly, the Kansas question is not to be treated as an
administration measure. He shared the disappointment of the President
that the constitution had not been submitted fully and freely to the
people of Kansas; but the President, he conceived, had made a
fundamental error in supposing that the Nebraska Act provided for the
disposition of the slavery question apart from other local matters.
The direct opposite was true. The main object of the Act was to remove
an odious restriction by which the people had been prevented from
deciding the slavery question for themselves, like all other local and
domestic concerns. If the President was right in thinking that by the
terms of the Nebraska bill the slavery question must be submitted to
the people, then every other clause of the constitution should be
submitted to them. To do less would be to reduce popular sovereignty
to a farce.

But Douglas could not maintain this conciliatory attitude. His sense
of justice was too deeply outraged. He recalled facts which every
well-informed person knew. "I know that men, high in authority and in
the confidence of the territorial and National Government, canvassed
every part of Kansas during the election of delegates, and each one of
them pledged himself to the people that no snap judgment was to be
taken. Up to the time of the meeting of the convention, in October
last, the pretense was kept up, the profession was openly made, and
believed by me, and I thought believed by them, that the convention
intended to submit a constitution to the people, and not to attempt to
put a government in operation without such submission."[634] How was
this pledge redeemed? All men, forsooth, must vote for the
constitution, whether they like it or not, in order to be permitted to
vote for or against slavery! This would be like an election under the
First Consul, when, so his enemies averred, Napoleon addressed his
troops with the words: "Now, my soldiers, you are to go to the
election and vote freely just as you please. If you vote for Napoleon,
all is well; vote against him, and you are to be instantly shot." That
was a fair election! "This election," said Douglas with bitter irony,
"is to be _equally fair!_ All men in favor of the constitution may
vote for it--all men against it shall not vote at all! Why not let
them vote against it? I have asked a very large number of the
gentlemen who framed the constitution ... and I have received the sa