anti-Lecompton fight going over to the administration.[667] Douglas
accepted this defection with philosophic equanimity, indulging in no
vindictive feelings.[668] Had he not himself felt misgivings as to his
own course?

By midsummer the people of Kansas had recorded nearly ten thousand
votes against the land ordinance and the Lecompton constitution. The
administration had failed to make Kansas a slave State. Yet the
Supreme Court had countenanced the view that Kansas was legally a
slave Territory. What, then, became of the great fundamental principle
of popular sovereignty? This was the question which Douglas was now
called upon to answer.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 621: Report of the Covode Committee, pp. 105-106; Cutts,
Constitutional and Party Questions, p. 111; Speech of Douglas at
Milwaukee, Wis., October 14, 1860, Chicago _Times and Herald_, October
17, 1860.]

[Footnote 622: Spring, Kansas, p. 213; Rhodes, History of the United
States, II, p. 274.]

[Footnote 623: Rhodes, History of the United States, II, pp. 277-278.]

[Footnote 624: _Ibid._, pp. 278-279; Spring, Kansas, p. 223.]

[Footnote 625: See Article VII, of the Kansas constitution, Senate