Opposition to the passage of the act. Rhodes's United States, I, 441; Johnston's Orations, III, 3-49. line of the Missouri Compromise (36° 30' north latitude), and west of the states of Missouri and Iowa. It was proposed that this territory should be admitted to the Union at some future time as one state or as several states, "with or without slavery as their constitution may prescribe at the time." On being reminded that this region had been devoted to freedom by the terms of the Missouri Compromise, Douglas asserted that that compromise had been superseded and repealed by the Compromise of 1850. He maintained that he now merely proposed to extend the principle of "popular sovereignty" to the country north of the line of 1820. He was driven to do this by "a proper sense of patriotic duty." He repeated Webster's argument that slavery was excluded by nature from the proposed territory. Before its passage, the bill was changed to provide for the organization of two territories Kansas and Nebraska in place of one Nebraska, Kansas to include the region between 37° and 40° north latitude, and Nebraska that between 40° and 43° 30'. Kansas, as thus defined, would be situated directly west of the slave state of Missouri, and Nebraska of the free state of Iowa. Probably this division was made in the expectation that Kansas would become a slave and Nebraska a free state. The bill as finally passed also declared that the Missouri Compromise had been suspended and made inoperative by the principles of the Compromise of 1850. 311. Appeal of the Independent Democrats, 1854. Douglas's soothing assurances that the opening of these territories to slavery was a matter of no great moment, did not commend itself to the antislavery leaders in the Senate. Senator Chase of Ohio asserted that the proposed measure was "a violation of the plighted faith and solemn compact [the Missouri Compromise] which our fathers made, and which we, their sons, are bound by every sacred tie of obligation sacredly to maintain." The old political leaders had now passed away; new men had come to the front: Seward, Wade, Hale, but none more outspoken than Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. He joyfully welcomed the issue raised` 1854] The Kansas-Nebraska Act 467 by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill: "To every man in the land, it says with clear penetrating voice, 'Are you for freedom or are you for slavery?' Appeal Some of the leading opponents of the measure summed up their objections to it in a document entitled, Appeal of the Independent of the Independent Democrats. They arraigned the bill "as Democrats." a gross violation of a sacred pledge [the Missouri Compromise]; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and American History Leaflets, No. 17. parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World, and free laborers from our own states, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves. "Take your maps, fellow-citizens, we entreat you, and see what country it is which this bill gratuitously and recklessly proposes to open to slavery." As to the statement that the Missouri Compromise had been made inoperative by the Compromise of 1850, the "Independent Democrats" de Popular sovereignty. Wishes of the slave owners. Abraham clared in a postscript to the "Appeal" that such a statement was a manifest falsification of the truth of history." 66 312. Popular Sovereignty." Popular sovereignty," or "squatter sovereignty," is thus defined in the KansasNebraska Act: "The true intent and meaning of this act [is] not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." Apart from the question of the violation of the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was fatally incomplete in providing no efficient means for the peaceful occupation of the territories by free immigrants, or by slave owners with their slaves. On the face of it, all that the slave owners asked was to be allowed to carry their slaves with them; "in reality," as Senator Benton said, what the slave; holder wanted was 66 to carry the state law along with him to protect his slave," or rather his interest in his slave. It was necessary, therefore, the moment a slave entered a territory to enact a complete code of slave laws to keep him in bondage. It was impossible to permit slave owners and free immigrants to live together under a territorial organization, and settle the question when the time came to seek admission into the Union. Douglas's ablest opponent in Illinois was Abraham Lincoln. He had already served one term in Congress, but had not been re-elected. While in Congress, he had made one speech which is interesting to note in view of his later career. It was in 1847 that Lincoln declared: "Any people anywhere have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. . . . Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people . . . may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit." This would appear to be a recognition of the doctrine of "popular sovereignty" in its most extended application. But Lincoln now opposed most 1854] Popular Sovereignty 469 warmly the application of it made in the Kansas-Nebraska Act: "I admit that the emigrant to Kansas and Nebraska is competent to govern himself, but I deny his right to govern any other person without that person's consent." The act was especially defective in that it contained no means of ascertaining the "popular sovereign's" will. Bloodshed was inevitable; "will not the first drop of blood so shed be the real knell of the Union?" United 313. Struggle for Kansas, 1855-61. The slave owners Kansas. and their friends at once prepared to take possession of Schouler's Kansas, which they appear to have regarded as rightfully States, V. belonging to them. Bands of "Sons of the South," as they 320-333. called themselves, or "Border Ruffians," as the free-state settlers soon came to regard them, now crossed the frontier of Missouri to seize the government of the new territory, and to occupy the best lands until actual settlers should appear from the South. The Southern settlers never came in any force. The slave owners were well to do and possessed freedom of movement to a certain extent. It was easy for one of them to take a number of slaves, migrate to a neighboring slave state, and establish a new plantation like the one which he had left behind him. When it came, however, to making a long journey to an unknown region whose climate might prove injurious or fatal to his blacks, and to engage in new forms of agriculture, to which he and his slaves were unaccustomed, — that project was one not to be lightly undertaken. It proved, indeed, nearly impossible to induce the slave owners to remove. It was of little avail to encourage the emigration of Southern whites, unless a considerable body of slaveholders and slaves accompanied them; the story of California had shown that Southern whites, mingled with a mass of Northern whites, would unhesitatingly vote to exclude slavery from their new home. Settlers from the free states were confronted by none of Free emigrathe impediments which beset the slaveholders, but difficulties tion to caused by distance, expense, and opposition of the "Border Ruffians" were to be overcome. The hindrances of distance Kansas. Election in Kansas, 1855. The Topeka and expense were surmounted by rich New Englanders, as Amos A. Lawrence, who formed the New England Emigration Society. Northern settlers soon thronged to Kansas ; but the opposition of the Sons of the South remained to be vanquished. The first territorial election was held in 1855, and the Sons of the South carried the elections for the proslavery party by the use of fraud and violence. In the town of Lawrence, for example, seven hundred and eighty-one votes were cast, although there were only three hundred and sixty registered voters on the list. The legislature, elected in this manner, was entirely under the control of the proslavery men, It adopted the laws of Missouri in bulk. slave code and all- as the laws of the new territory; it went even further, and passed severe laws to punish interference with slaves. The free-state settlers then proceeded to establish a government of their own; they held a conConvention, vention at Topeka, drew up a constitution, and applied to Congress for admission to the Union as a free state (1855). A committee of the House of Representatives visited Kansas. It reported that the elections to the legislature had been carried by "organized invasion." The House then voted to admit Kansas as a free state under the Topeka constitution, but the Senate refused to agree to this, and put an end to all hopes of a peaceable solution of the question. The conflict in Kansas now assumed the form of open Slave partisans attacked Lawrence, and burned several buildings. The free-state settlers retaliated; one of the latter encounters was the massacre of several Sons of the South, at Pottawatomie, by a band led by John Brown. 1855. Civil war in war. John Brown It is difficult to say which party behaved with the most intemperance and disregard of the rights of others. At all events, it was certain that this application of the doctrine of "popular sovereignty" had resulted in civil war. In 1857 the free-state settlers obtained control of the legislature; but one of the last acts of the fraudulent |