traitor to the party, and hunted down by all the newspapers
that share the patronage of the government, and every man
who holds a petty office in any part of my State to have the
question put to him, 'Are you Douglas's enemy? if not, your
head comes off.'" "I intend to perform my duty in
accordance with my own convictions. Neither the frowns of
power nor the influence of patronage will change my action,
or drive me from my principles. I stand firmly, immovably
upon those great principles of self-government and state
sovereignty upon which the campaign was fought and the
election won.... If, standing firmly by my principles, I
shall be driven into private life, it is a fate that has no
terrors for me. I prefer private life, preserving my own
self-respect and manhood, to abject and servile submission
to executive will. If the alternative be private life or
servile obedience to executive will, I am prepared to
retire. Official position has no charms for me when deprived
of that freedom of thought and action which becomes a
gentleman and a senator.'"[659]

On the following day, the Senate passed the bill for the admission of
Kansas under the Lecompton constitution, having rejected the amendment
of Crittenden to submit that constitution to a vote of the people of
Kansas. A similar amendment, however, was carried in the House. As
neither chamber would recede from its position, a conference committee
was appointed to break the deadlock.[660] It was from this committee,
controlled by Lecomptonites, that the famous English bill emanated.
Stated briefly, the substance of this compromise measure--for such it
was intended to be--was as follows: Congress was to offer to Kansas a
conditional grant of public lands; if this land ordinance should be
accepted by a popular vote, Kansas was to be admitted to the Union
with the Lecompton constitution by proclamation of the President; if
it should be rejected, Kansas was not to be admitted until the
Territory had a population equal to the unit of representation
required for the House of Representatives.

Taken all in all, the bill was as great a concession as could be
expected from the administration. Not all were willing to say that the
bill provided for a vote on the constitution, but Northern adherents
could point to the vote on the land ordinance as an indirect vote upon
the constitution. I