Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[68] unreasonableness of such an opinion, by insisting that it was in opposition to the principle which pervaded our institutions, and which was every day carried into practice, to the effect that the people had the right to delegate to representatives, chosen by themselves, sovereign power to frame Constitutions, enact laws, and perform many other important acts, without the necessity of testing the validity of their work by popular approbation.

These views appeared reasonable enough. But Mr. Buchanan found that they were opposed by many members of Congress who had actively supported him in his canvass, and chief and leader among them the distinguished author of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, Mr. Douglas. This man had assembled an opposition under the captivating term of “popular sovereignty;” but these words had a certain narrow and technical party meaning, and covered a remarkable and ingenious design upon the power and interests of the South.

It had long been evident to intelligent observers that the Northern Democratic party, of which Mr. Douglas some time ago had been the acknowledged leader, was becoming demoralized on the slavery question. This party had formerly acted with the South for political power. In the depression of that power and the rapid growth of the anti-slavery party in the North, it had no hesitation in courting and conciliating the ruling element. This disposition was accommodated by the controversy which lad taken place between Mr. Douglas and the administration of Mr. Buchanan. The anti-slavery sentiment in the North was conciliated by the partisans of the former in adopting a new principle for the government of the Territories, which was to allow the people to determine the question of slavery in their Territorial capacity, without awaiting their organization as a State, and thus to risk the decision of the rights of the South on the verdict of a few settlers on the public domain. This doctrine was violently entitled by Mr. Douglas “popular sovereignty;” but it was more justly described by Gov. Wise of Virginia, as “a short cut to all the ends of Black Republicanism.”

It is thus seen that Mr. Douglas had tortured the language of the Kansas-Nebraska bill into the sense that the unorganized population of a Territory might decide the question of slavery as against the State interests of the South; thus indicating to the North that this measure might quite as easily and readily exclude slavery as the intervention of Congress, the right of which the Black Republican party claimed.

Mr. Douglas was an able and eloquent demagogue. He imposed his doctrine upon the minds of not a few of the Southern people by the artfulness of its appeals to the name of a principle, which had none of the substance of justice or equality. He raised in Congress what was called the Anti-Lecompton party, pledged to the exclusion of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution, and insisting on the right of Territorial legislation