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Douglas’s Organ on Kansas.
The Chicago Times, which has the credit of reflecting the views of Senator Douglas on public affairs, endeavors to digest the Democratic defeat in Kansas, unpalatable as it is to politicians of the Little Giant school. Forced, by its former avowals on the subject of Popular Sovereignty, to admit that Kansas ought to become a free State, as the People have now clearly willed, it endeavors to make a virtue of necessity, and boldly proclaims that the Constitutional Convention should yield to this decision, make an Anti-Slavery Constitution, and submit it to the popular vote. Sentiments so incendiary as the Times now utters, it would have been very dangerous for anybody to utter in Kansas a short time ago, under the laws upheld by Mr. Buchanan and his subordinates. Will the Constitutional Convention carry out this new Douglas policy? We do not believe it; yet we shall soon see. In the meantime, the confessions and concessions of the Douglas organ deserve to be put on record, for future reference. It says:
“What that Convention will do, or what it will not do, we have not the means of knowing. But we know that any attempt to force a Pro-Slavery Constitution upon the People, without the opportunity of voting it down at the polls, will be regarded, after the recent expression of sentiment, as so decidedly unjust, oppressive, and unworthy of a free people, that the People of the United States will not sanction it. It would add thousands to the vote of the Republican party in every State of the Union, and give to that organization what it has never had yet–a show a justice and truth. To the Democratic members of that Convention, the course is plain. The people have decided in favor of a free State, though they have not voted on the naked issue of ‘free State or slave State,’ they have voted practically in favor of a free State. Two-thirds of the Democratic party in Kansas have voted with the ‘Free State’ party at the recent election, in order to make the popular decision more emphatic. As Kansas must be a free State, even those persons in the Territory who are known as Pro-Slavery men must recognize in the late election a decision which must not be slighted nor put at defiance. To that expression of the popular will, there should be a graceful, if not a cheerful, submission. Kansas is to be a free State! That fact being ascertained, let the Convention frame a Constitution to suit her best interests upon all other questions, and let the prohibition of Slavery be put into it, clearly, and without quibble, plainly, without disguise, explicitly, broadly, and firmly. Let the Convention then submit that Constitution to the People. If it be adopted, Kansas will come into the Union next session, and the Republican party will expire, for want of sustenance.”
