all is well; vote against him, and you are to be instantly shot." That
was a fair election! "This election," said Douglas with bitter irony,
"is to be _equally fair!_ All men in favor of the constitution may
vote for it--all men against it shall not vote at all! Why not let
them vote against it? I have asked a very large number of the
gentlemen who framed the constitution ... and I have received the same
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: