most flagitious resolution, adopted by both conventions, that these measures should be regarded as "final"; that, wicked and oppressive as they were, there should be no further agitation of the subject. Neither the poor boon of protest nor even an attempt to repeal or modify was allowed. The nation was to be not only bound, but dumb. And to all this the people gave their emphatic sanction. No darker day, not even the most critical period of the Rebellion, has ever marked the history of the Republic. For this only threatened the forcible subjection of the body; that betokened the complete enslavement of the soul. In the face of all the pulpits and presses of the land, notwithstanding the antislavery agitations of a quarter of a century, only one hundred and fifty thousand, out of more than three millions, were found ready to refuse their votes even for measures so infamous and wrong.

And this was the statesmanship of the hour. Nor was it an unfitting climax, or culmination, of much that had preceded it. Much has been claimed for the great statesmen of the earlier and palmier days of the Republic, especially of the time now passing in review. Without detracting from the well-earned fame of many, not only is there the testimony of John Quincy Adams that up to his day "the preservation, propagation, and perpetuation of slavery" had ever been "the animating spirit" of the American government, but the statement is due to historic verity that a main feature of the national policy had been from the outset that of retreat. As the government began its existence by yielding vantage-ground it might have retained, so did its great and leading men, especially after the great Missouri struggle, too often signalize their career by some new concession, some new form of compromise to the Slave Power; until, driven from one position after another, the nation seemed, by the voice and vote of this election, to have made a full surrender, and to have sought an ignoble peace by both ceasing resistance and promising never to resume it. According to the military maxim that it requires greater skill to conduct a successful retreat than to achieve a victory, merit may not be wanting, though he would be hardly esteemed a great general whose only excellence consists in conducting retreats.

VOL. 11.

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CHAPTER XXX.

THE ABROGATION OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.

The Missouri compromise. - Bill for the organization of the Territory of Ne braska. Lost in the Senate. - President Pierce's message.

-The Nebraska bill. Dixon's proposition to abrogate the Missouri compromise. - Its repeal reported by Mr. Douglas. - President's commitment. Meeting of New York Democrats. Mr. Fenton's visit to the President and Secretary of State. — Secretary Marcy's position. The appeal of the Free Soil members. — Bill for the organization of Kansas and Nebraska.

Speech of Mr. Douglas. Mr. Chase's amendment and speech. - Speeches of Wade, Everett, Smith, Houston. Mr. Douglas's amendment. Mr. Chase's amendment. - Speeches

Excited debate.

Badger's amendment. - Closing Memorial of the New EngMr. Richardson's House bill.

-Speeches of

of Seward, Sumner, Toombs, Fessenden. speech of Mr. Douglas. Passage of the bill. land clergy. Meacham, Stephens, Breckinridge, Yates, Keitt, Clingman, Washburn of Maine, Smith, Benton, Goodrich. - Defence of the clergy by Banks. — Great struggle in the House. - Passage of the bill. Excited debate in the Senate. - Passage through that body. - Triumph of the Slave Power.

No event in the progress of the great conflict stands out more prominently than the abrogation of the compromise of 1820. As both effect and cause it defies competition and almost comparison with any single measure of the long series of aggressions of the Slave Power. It was more than a milestone, indicating the distance which the nation had travelled in its disastrous journey; it was a beacon, giving warning of approaching danger. No single act of the Slave Power ever spread greater consternation, produced more lasting results upon the popular mind, or did so much to arouse the North and to convince the people of its desperate character. Lulled by the siren song and drugged by the sorceries of compromise, they had learned to regard with equanimity and to acquiesce in the fixed facts of slavery as, exclusively and perpetually, a Southern system, confined within established limits, and kept back by impassable barriers. So long as it was only the slave that was crushed by its power, and the slaveholding States that

were cursed by its presence, the North, sordid and safe, accepted its existence, and even welcomed its pecuniary and political aid, because it put money in its coffers and gave it votes, pleading ever the compact of the fathers as their confident reply to the simple claims, however urgent, of justice and humanity. But when the compromise itself was abrogated, and its obligations were treated as a thing of naught; when the monster, who had been hitherto restricted in his limits, and could only glare across the line, gave no equivocal indications of his purpose to spring upon the fair domain of freedom, and range at will over territory that compromise had made inviolate, then the cry of danger reached ears that were deaf to the voice of duty. Though large masses of the people were still craven, and ready, for present advantage, to eat the bread of dishonor, this flagrant outrage increased the number of those who comprehended the situation, and who were willing to co-operate with others to resist encroachments that were becoming so serious. Men who sat unmoved under the fulminations of the Abolitionists, answering their arguments and warding off their appeals by the cool assumption that they were but the words of fanaticism and folly, did not remain quite as serene when they witnessed these encroachments and anticipated the day, seemingly not very remote, when the whole country would be laid open thereto. Never before had so much feeling been elicited; never before had so many been found ready to disown their former allegiance to the Slave Power and combine for its overthrow.

At the time of the admission of Missouri with the prohibition of slavery north of 36° 30′ there was a vast and fertile region lying west and northwest of that State and stretching away to the Rocky Mountains. That beautiful territory, now covered by the States of Kansas and Nebraska, had been forever consecrated to freedom by the compromise of that act. Sixteen years afterward, the western boundary of Missouri, lying in the Platte country, was extended westward, adding thereby territory enough to make seven counties. This conversion of free territory into slave soil was, however, in direct violation of the Missouri compromise, and was carried through

Congress under the lead of the Missouri delegation. Having converted in 1836 this portion of free soil to the purposes of slavery, and covered it with thousands of bondmen, the people of Western Missouri desired to enter that magnificent region which lay beyond, in the heart of the continent, and to carry their slaves with them.

At the second session of the XXXIId Congress, Willard P. Hall, a Representative from Missouri, introduced a bill organizing that vast region into a Territory. It was referred to the Committee on Territories, of which William A. Richardson, a Democratic member from Illinois, was chairman. On the 2d of February, 1853, the committee reported a bill for the organization of the Territory of Nebraska. Much opposition was manifested to its passage; but it passed the House on the 10th of February by more than a two-thirds vote. In the Senate it was referred to the Committee on Territories, of which Mr. Douglas was chairman, and reported back without amendment. On the 2d of March, Mr. Douglas made an unsuccessful motion. to proceed to its consideration; and when he renewed it the next day it was laid on the table, on motion of Mr. Borland of Arkansas, by a majority of six. The Senators from the slave States, with the exception of those from Missouri, opposed the organization of a Territory which they believed was sure to become a free State, and the effort failed.

The XXXIIId Congress met on the 5th of December, 1853. President Pierce congratulated the country on the sense of repose and security in the public mind which the compromise measures had restored. He assured Congress, and especially those who had placed him in the executive department of the government, that "this repose is to suffer no shock during my official term, if I have power to avert it." These congratulations of the President were, however, manifestly based upon superficial and fallacious views of the real character of the much-lauded compromise and its logical sequences. Failing so signally to comprehend the past, it was not strange that he did not rightly forecast even the near and immediate future. The fact that his own administration was at once to enter upon a policy that would "shock" this seeming repose, dis

turb the country, and plunge the nation into rebellion and civil war, was evidently far from his thoughts. He did not then apprehend, as he was soon compelled to know, that the repeal of the Missouri compromise was the beginning of the end, the final stage of that open and undisguised aggression and lawless violence which culminated in the slaveholders' Rebellion.

On the 14th of December, 1853, Augustus C. Dodge, the Democratic Senator from Iowa, introduced a bill for the organization of Nebraska. This was referred to the Committee on Territories, which on the 4th of January reported it back with amendments. In the accompanying report the original validity of the Missouri compromise was questioned, and the unauthorized declaration was made that the compromises of 1850 left all questions of slavery to the decision of the people residing in any given Territory. But it was not even hinted that these measures abrogated the prohibition of 1820, nor was its repeal proposed. That new advance had not been made, that new dogma had not been proclaimed. A few days afterward the bill was recommitted to the committee, and on the 16th, Archibald Dixon, a Whig Senator from Kentucky, gave notice of an amendment which he intended to offer, abrogating the Missouri compromise so far as it prohibited slavery, and providing "that the citizens of the several States or Territories shall be at liberty to take and hold their slaves within any of the Territories or States to be formed therefrom." The next day, Mr. Sumner gave notice of an amendment, providing that nothing contained in the bill should be construed to abrogate or contravene the act of the 6th of March, 1820.

On the 23d, Mr. Douglas reported back the bill, modified and amended. It proposed a division of the territory into two Territories, the southern to be called Kansas and the northern Nebraska. It provided that all questions pertaining to slavery in the Territories, and in the new States to be formed therefrom, should be left to the decision of the people, through their appropriate representatives; "that all cases involving title to slaves" and "questions of personal freedom should be referred to the adjudication of the local tribunals, with the right of appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States"; and that the