Stephen Arnold Douglas, Lecompton (Garraty, 1994)

These developments put Senator Stephen A. Douglas in a difficult position. He was a Democrat. (But he was clearly no friend of the president's. Indeed he often used his skills as an orator to express his open contempt for Buchanan.) The president had made the matter a party issue. On the other hand, Douglas sincerely believed in popular sovereignty. And it was obvious that a majority of the people in Kansas were opposed to the Lecompton constitution and to the opening of the territory to slavery.