adopted, not without shrewdness, as being far better suited to the Northern mind.  For clearly the people enjoyed no sovereignty where they had no option.  Consequently in the Territories there was no longer a slavery question.  The indignation of anti-slavery men of all shades of opinion was intense, and was unfortunately justifiable.  For wholly apart from the controversy as to whether the law was better expounded by the chief justice or by Judge Curtis in his dissenting opinion, there remained a main fact, undeniable and inexcusable, to wit:  that the court, having decided that the lower court had no jurisdiction, and being therefore itself unable to remand the cause for a new trial, had then outstepped its own proper function and outraged legal propriety by determining the questions raised by the rest of the record,—­questions which no longer had any real standing before this tribunal.  This course was well known to have been pursued with the purpose on the part of the majority of the judges to settle by judicial authority, and by a dictum conspicuously obiter, that great slavery question with which Congress had grappled in vain.  It was a terrible blunder, for the people were only incensed by a volunteered and unauthorized interference.  Moreover, the reasoning of Chief Justice Taney was such that the Republicans began anxiously to inquire why it was not as applicable to States as to Territories, and why it must not be extended to States when occasion should arrive; and in this connection it seemed now apparent why “States” had been named in the bill which repealed the Missouri Compromise.[70] In spite of this menace the struggle in Kansas was not slackened.  Time had been counting heavily in favor of the North.  Her multitudinous population ceaselessly fed the stream of immigrants, and they were stubborn fellows who came to stay, and therefore were sure to wear out the persistence of the boot-and-saddle men from over the Missouri border.  Accordingly, in 1857, the free-state men so vastly outnumbered the slavery contingent, that even pro-slavery men had to acknowledge it.  Then the slavery party made its last desperate effort.  Toward the close of that year the Lecompton Constitution was framed by a convention chosen at an election in which the free-state men, perhaps unwisely, had refused to take part.  When this pro-slavery instrument was offered to the people, they were not allowed to vote simply Yea or Nay, but only “for the Constitution with slavery,” or “for the Constitution with no slavery.”  Again the free-state men refrained from voting, and on December 21, 6,143 ballots were declared to have been cast “for the Constitution with slavery,” and 589 “for the Constitution with no slavery.”  Much more than one third of the 6,143 were proved to be fraudulent, but the residue far exceeded the requisite majority.  January 4, 1858, state officers were to be chosen, and now the free-state men decided to make an irregular opportunity to vote, in their turn, simply for or