me
answer from every one of them.... They say if they allowed a negative
vote the constitution would have been voted down by an overwhelming
majority, and hence the fellows shall not be allowed to vote at all."

"Will you force it on them against their will," he demanded, "simply
because they would have voted it down if you had consulted them? If
you will, are you going to force it upon them under the plea of
leaving them perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic
institutions in their own way? Is that the mode in which I am called
upon to carry out the principle of self-government and popular
sovereignty in the Territories?" It is no answer, he argued, that the
constitution is unobjectionable. "You have no right to force an
unexceptionable constitution on a people." The pro-slavery clause was
not the offense in the constitution, to his mind. "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 up or down." The whole affair looked to him "like a system
of trickery and jugglery to defeat the fair expression of the will of
the people."[635]

The vehemence of his utterance had now carried Douglas perhaps farther
than he had meant to go.[636] He paused to plead for a fair policy
which would redeem party pledges:

"Ignore Lecompton, ignore Topeka; treat both those party
movements as irregular and void; pass a fair bill--the one
that we framed ourselves when we were acting as a unit; have
a fair election--and you will have peace in the Democratic
party, and peace throughout the country, in ninety days. The
people want a fair vote. They never will be satisfied
without it. They never should be satisfied without a fair
vote on their Constitution....

"Frame any other bill that secures a fair, honest vote, to
men of all parties, and carries out the pledge that the
people shall be left free to decide on their domestic
institutions for themselves, and I will go with you with
pleasure, and with all the energy I may possess. But if this
Constitution is to be forced down our throats, in violation
of the fundamental principle of free government, under a
mode of submission that is a mockery and insult, I will
resist it to the last. I have no fear of any party
ass