in a slightly amended form and to make a party measure of it.[572]
Prudence warned against attempting to elect Buchanan on a policy of
merely negative resistance to the Topeka movement.[573] The Republican
members of Congress were to be forced to make a show of hands on a
measure which promised substantial relief to the people of Kansas.

In his report of June 30th, Douglas discussed the various measures
that had been proposed by Whigs and Republicans, but found the Toombs
bill best adapted to "insure a fair and impartial decision of the
questions at issue in Kansas, in accordance with the wishes of the
_bona fide_ inhabitants." A single paragraph from this report ought to
have convinced those who subsequently doubted the sincerity of
Douglas's course, that he was partner to no plots against the free
expression of public opinion in the Territory. "In the opinion of your
committee, whenever a constitution shall be formed in any Territory,
preparatory to its admission into the Union as a State, justice, the
genius of our institutions, the whole theory of our republican system
imperatively demand that the voice of the people shall be fairly
expressed, and their will embodied in that fundamental law, without
fraud or violence, or intimidation, or any other improper or unlawful
influence, and subject to no other restrictions than those imposed by
the Constitution of the United States."[574]

The Toombs bill caused Republicans grave misgivings, even while they
conceded its ostensible liberality. Could an administration that had
condoned the frauds already practiced in Kansas be trusted to appoint
disinterested commissioners? Would a census of the present population
give a majority in the proposed convention to the free-State party in
Kansas? Everyone knew that many free-State people had been driven away
by the disorders. Douglas endeavored to reassure his opponents on