The Administration now declared war on him. The patronage was unsparingly used against his friends and it was better for an applicant for Federal appointment to be accused of any crime than suspected of friendship with Douglas. This separation from his party touched his feelings more deeply than any other event of his life, and we find surprising evidence of his being shaken by deep emotions that seem out of harmony with his robust and unsentimental nature. But when we remember that all his life had been spent in the activities of politics, that his thoughts, sentiments and passions had all been political for twenty years, that the Democratic platform was at once his creed and his philosophy, we can understand something of the choking emotion that threatened to overpower him as he announced that he was thenceforth a rebel and a heretic. After December 9th, the Administration press attacked him bitterly and he found himself everywhere proclaimed a traitor and deserter. He told the Senate that he knew the knife would be put to the throats of his followers. The Administration Senators assailed him. But he was equal to all emergencies and his new position as the recognized leader of the anti-Lecompton revolt gave him the enthusiastic applause of the Northwest. On March 23rd the bill went to the House. A motion was made to refer it to a special committee. A contest over this motion arose, lasted all night, and degenerated into a general brawl, in which a Member from Pennsylvania knocked down a South Carolina Member, and many others were engaged in fisticuffs. At last a reference was agreed to. On April 1st, while the House had the bill under consideration, Montgomery of Pennsylvania offered a substitute which had been offered by Crittenden in the Senate and there rejected, providing that the Constitution should be submitted to a vote, and, if adopted, the President should at once proclaim the admission of the State; if rejected, the inhabitants should hold a new Constitutional Convention. This substitute passed the House but was rejected by the Senate. A conference Committee was appointed, which reported the notorious English bill, providing that a generous grant of land should be offered to Kansas, and the people at a special election vote to accept it. If they so voted, they were to be admitted as a State with the Lecompton Constitution. If they rejected the grant, they could not be admitted until they numbered 93,000, which meant indefinite postponement. The bill was merely an offer of a bribe to the people to accept a Constitution which they abhorred. Its form was such that men who still believe it well to maintain the guise of decency could vote for it on the pretence that it was a land grant.