Jefferson Davis
formulated this position in an address to the Mississippi
Legislature in which he insisted that Congress, not the Kansas
electorate, was entitled to create the Kansas constitution, that
the Convention was a properly chosen body, and that its work
should stand. What Davis said in a stately way, others said in a
furious way. Buchanan stated afterward that he changed front
because certain Southern States had threatened that, if he did
not abandon Walker, they would secede.
Be that as it may, Buchanan did abandon Walker and threw all the
influence of the Administration in favor of admitting Kansas with
the Lecompton constitution. But would this be true to that
principle of "popular sovereignty" which was the very essence of
the Kansas-Nebraska Act? Would it be true to the principle that
each locality should decide for itself between slavery and
freedom? On this issue the Southerners were fairly generally
agreed and maintained that there was no obligation to go behind
the work of the convention. Not so, however, the great exponent
of popular sovereignty, Douglas. Rising in his place in the
Senate, he charged the President with conspiring to defeat the
will of the majority in Kansas. "If Kansas wants a slave state
constitution," said he, "she has a right to it; if she wants a
free state constitution, she has a right to it.
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