organize Kansas anew as a free Territory and all will be put right."
But if Congress was bent on continuing the experiment, then the
Territory must be reorganized with proper safeguards against illegal
voting. The only alternative was to admit the Territory as a State
with its free constitution.

The issue could not have been more sharply drawn. Popular sovereignty
as applied in the Kansas-Nebraska Act was put upon the defensive.
Republican senators made haste to press their advantage. Sumner
declared that the true issue was smothered in the majority report, but
stood forth as a pillar of fire in the report of the minority.
Trumbull forced the attack, while Douglas was absent, without waiting
for the printing of the reports. It needed only this apparent
discourtesy to bring Douglas into the arena. An unseemly wrangle
between the Illinois senators followed, in the course of which Douglas
challenged his colleague to resign and stand with him for re-election
before the next session of the legislature.[560] Trumbull wisely
declined to accept the risk.

On the 20th of March, Douglas addressed the Senate in reply to
Trumbull.[561] Nothing that he said shed any new light on the
controversy. He had not changed his angle of vision. He had only the
old arguments with which to combat the assertion that "Kansas had been
conquered and a legislature imposed by violence." But the speech
differed from the report, just as living speech must differ from the
printed page. Every assertion was pointed by his vigorous intonations;
every argument was accentuated by his forceful personality. The report
was a lawyer's brief; the speech was the flexible utterance of an
accomplished debater, bent upon a personal as well as an argumentative
victory.