Publishing a post with Jquery

I am writing a plugin where a click on the publish button is intercepted with jQuery in the admin. After clicking operations are performed using a timer to prevent timeouts. At the end of the operation it submits the form using jQuery(‘form#post’).submit(); . This works, but it is saving as a draft not as published.

Does anyone know how to submit the post form with jQuery and publish the page?

The complete code is below:

jQuery("#publish").click(function(event){

   		if( jQuery('#table_constructor').length==0) {
   			return true;
   		}

   		jQuery('#preview_window').fadeOut('fast');

		  //add top
		  jQuery('#table_constructor #post_content').val('<table>');

		  //use timer to progressively transfer rows
		  var c=0;
		  var num=jQuery('#preview_window table tr').length;

		  var addRowIntval = setInterval(function(){add_input_data()}, 2);
		  jQuery('#loading_bar').remove();
		  jQuery('#table_constructor').prepend('<div id="loading_bar"><h1>Saving Table</h1><div id="bar"><div id="meter" style="width:0"></div></div>');

		  function add_input_data(){
				//adjust progress bar
				var per=c/num*100;
				jQuery('#meter').width(per+'%'); 

				//append table
				var v=jQuery('#table_constructor #post_content').val();
				var tr=jQuery('#preview_window table tr:eq('+c+')').clone().wrap('<p>').parent().html();

				jQuery('#table_constructor #post_content').val(v+tr);
				c++;

				//finish
				if(c>num){
					clearInterval(addRowIntval);
					jQuery('#table_constructor #post_content').val(v+TableLegs);
				//	jQuery('#loading_bar').remove();
					addAlternating_color();
					jQuery('form#post').submit();
				}
			}		

		  event.stopImmediatePropagation();
		  return false;

	  });

Thank you
E