Senator Dodge had also come to this conclusion. Nebraska would be to Iowa, what Iowa had been to Illinois. Were only one Territory organized, the seat of government and leading thoroughfares would pass to the south of Iowa.[[462]] Put in the language of the promoters of the Pacific railroad, one Territory meant aid to the central route; two Territories meant an equal chance for both northern and central routes. As the representative of Chicago interests, Douglas was not blind to these considerations.
On Monday, January 23d, Douglas reported the Kansas-Nebraska bill with a brief word of explanation. Next day Senator Dixon expressed his satisfaction with the amendment, which he interpreted as virtually repealing the Missouri Compromise. He disclaimed any other wish or intention than to secure the principle which the compromise measures of 1850 had established.[[463]] An editorial in the Washington Union threw the weight of the administration into the balance: "The proposition of Mr. Douglas is a practical execution of the principles of that compromise [of 1850], and therefore, cannot but be regarded by the administration as a test of Democratic orthodoxy."[[464]]
While the administration publicly wheeled into line behind Douglas, the "Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States" summoned the anti-slavery elements to join battle in behalf of the Missouri Compromise. This memorable document had been written by Chase of Ohio and dated January 19th, but a postscript was added after the revised Kansas-Nebraska bill had been reported.[[465]] It was an adroitly worded paper. History has falsified many of its predictions; history then controverted many of its assumptions; but it was colored with strong emotion and had the ring of righteous indignation.
The gist of the appeal was contained in two clauses, one of which declared that the Nebraska bill would open all the unorganized territory of the Union to the ingress of slavery; the other arraigned the bill as "a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights." In ominous words, fellow citizens were besought to observe how the blight of slavery would settle upon all this land, if this bill should become a law. Christians and Christian ministers were implored to interpose. "Let all protest, earnestly and emphatically, by correspondence, through the press, by memorials, by resolutions of public meetings and legislative bodies, and in whatever other mode may seem expedient, against this enormous crime." In the postscript Douglas received personal mention. "Not a man in Congress or out of Congress, in 1850, pretended that the compromise measures would repeal the Missouri prohibition. Mr. Douglas himself never advanced such a pretence until this session. His own Nebraska bill, of last session, rejected it. It is a sheer afterthought. To declare the prohibition inoperative, may, indeed, have effect in law as a repeal, but it is a most discreditable way of reaching the object. Will the people permit their dearest interests to be thus made the mere hazards of a presidential game, and destroyed by false facts and false inferences?"[[466]]
This attack roused the tiger in the Senator from Illinois. When he addressed the Senate on January 30th, he labored under ill-repressed anger. Even in the expurgated columns of the Congressional Globe enough stinging personalities appeared to make his friends regretful. What excited his wrath particularly was that Chase and Sumner had asked for a postponement of discussion, in order to examine the bill, and then, in the interval, had sent out their indictment of the author. It was certainly unworthy of him to taunt them with having desecrated the Sabbath day by writing their plea. The charge was not only puerile but amusing, when one considers how Douglas himself was observing that particular Sabbath.
It was comparatively easy to question and disprove the unqualified statement of the Appeal, that "the original settled policy of the United States was non-extension of slavery." Less convincing was Douglas's attempt to prove that the Missouri Compromise was expressly annulled in 1850, when portions of Texas and of the former Spanish province of Louisiana were added to New Mexico, and also a part of the province of Louisiana was joined to Utah. Douglas was in the main correct as to geographical data; but he could not, and did not, prove that the members of the Thirty-first Congress purposed also to revoke the Missouri Compromise restriction in all the other unorganized Territories. This contention was one of those non-sequiturs of which Douglas, in the heat of argument, was too often guilty. Still more regrettable, because it seemed to convict him of sophistry, was the mode by which he sought to evade the charge of the Appeal, that the act organizing New Mexico and settling the boundary of Texas had reaffirmed the Missouri Compromise. To establish his point he had to assume that all the land cut off from Texas north of 36° 30', was added to New Mexico, thus leaving nothing to which the slavery restriction, reaffirmed in the act of 1850, could apply. But Chase afterward invalidated this assumption and Douglas was forced so to qualify his original statement as to yield the point. This was a damaging admission and prejudiced his cause before the country. But when he brought his wide knowledge of American colonization to bear upon the concrete problems of governmental policy, his grasp of the situation was masterly.
"Let me ask you where you have succeeded in excluding slavery by an act of Congress from one inch of American soil? You may tell me that you did it in the northwest territory by the ordinance of 1787. I will show you by the history of the country that you did not accomplish any such thing. You prohibited slavery there by law, but you did not exclude it in fact.... I know of but one territory of the United States where slavery does exist, and that one is where you have prohibited it by law, and it is in this very Nebraska Territory. In defiance of the eighth section of the act of 1820, in defiance of Congressional dictation, there have been, not many, but a few slaves introduced.... I have no doubt that whether you organize the territory of Nebraska or not this will continue for some time to come.... But when settlers rush in—when labor becomes plenty, and therefore cheap, in that climate, with its productions, it is worse than folly to think of its being a slave-holding country.... I do not like, I never did like, the system of legislation on our part, by which a geographical line, in violation of the laws of nature, and climate, and soil, and of the laws of God, should be run to establish institutions for a people."[[467]]
The fate of the bill was determined behind closed doors. After all, the Senate chamber was only a public clearing-house, where senators elucidated, or per-chance befogged, the issues. The real arena was the Democratic caucus. Under the leadership of Douglas, those high in the party conclaves met, morning after morning, in the endeavor to compose the sharp differences between the Northern and the Southern wings of the party.[[468]] On both sides, there was a disposition to agree on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, though grave misgivings were felt. There were Southern men who believed that the repeal would be "an unavailing boon"; and there were Northern politicians who foresaw the storm of popular indignation that would break upon their heads.[[469]] Southern Democrats were disposed to follow the South Carolina theory to its logical extreme: as joint owners of the Territories the citizens of all the States might carry their property into the Territories without let or hindrance; only the people of the Territory in the act of framing a State constitution might exclude slavery. Neither Congress nor a territorial legislature might take away property in slaves. With equal pertinacity, Douglas and his supporters advocated the right of the people in their territorial status, to mould their institutions as they chose. Was there any middle ground?
Prolonged discussion made certain points of agreement clear to all. It was found that no one questioned the right of a State, with sufficient population and a republican constitution, to enter the Union with or without slavery as it chose. All agreed that it was best that slavery should not be discussed in Congress. All agreed that, whether or no Congress had the power to exclude slavery in the Territories, it ought not to exercise it. All agreed that if Congress had such power, it ought to delegate it to the people. Here agreement ceased. Did Congress have such power? Clearly the law of the Constitution could alone determine. Then why not delegate the power to control their domestic institutions to the people of the Territories, subject to the provisions of the Constitution? "And then," said one of the participants later, "in order to provide a means by which the Constitution could govern ... we of the South, conscious that we were right, the North asserting the same confidence in its own doctrines, agreed that every question touching human slavery or human freedom should be appealable to the Supreme Court of the United States for its decision."[[470]]
While this compromise was being reached in caucus, the bill was under constant fire on the floor of the Senate. The Appeal of the Independent Democrats had bitterly arraigned the declaratory part of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, where the Missouri Compromise was said to have been superseded and therefore inoperative. Even staunch Democrats like Cass had taken exception to this phraseology, preferring to declare the Missouri Compromise null and void in unequivocal terms. To Douglas there was nothing ambiguous or misleading in the wording of the clause. What was meant was this: the acts of 1850 rendered the Missouri Compromise inoperative in Utah and New Mexico; but so far as the Missouri Compromise applied to territory not embraced in those acts, it was superseded by the great principle established in 1850. "Superseded by" meant "inconsistent with" the compromise of 1850.[[471]] The word "supersede," however, continued to cause offense. Cass read from the dictionary to prove that the word had a more positive force than Douglas gave to it. To supersede meant to set aside: he could not bring himself to assent to this statement.[[472]]