the legislature, its action was still the action of a lawful
legislature, possessing in either house a quorum of duly certificated
members. This was a lawyer's plea. Technically it was unanswerable.

Having taken this position, Douglas very properly refused to pass
judgment on the laws of the legislature. By the very terms of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, Congress had confided the power to enact local
laws to the people of the Territories. If the validity of these laws
should be doubted, it was for the courts of justice and not for
Congress to decide the question.[554]

Throughout the report, the question was not once raised, whether the
legislature really reflected the sentiment of a majority of the
settlers of Kansas. Douglas assumed 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