[449] See his speech of March, 1850, quoted above. In a letter to the editor of State Capital Reporter (Concord, N.H.), February 16, 1854, Douglas intimated as strongly as he then dared—the bill was still pending,—that "the sons of New England" in the West would exclude slavery from that region which lay in the same latitude as New York and Pennsylvania, and for much the same reasons that slavery had been abolished! in those States; see also Transactions of Illinois State Historical Society, 1900, pp. 48-49.
[450] Speech before the Illinois Legislature, October 23, 1849; see Illinois State Register, November 8, 1849.
[451] The Southern Whigs were ready to support the Dixon Amendment, according to Clingman, Speeches and Writings, p. 335.
[452] See remarks of Douglas, January 24th, Globe, 33 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 240.
[453] Letter of Dixon to Foote, September 30, 1858, in Flint, Douglas, pp. 138-141.
[454] Dixon, True History of the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
[455] Parker, Secret History of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, in the National Quarterly Review, July, 1880.
[456] Parker, Secret History of the Kansas-Nebraska Act; also Foote, Casket of Reminiscences, p. 93; also Cox, Three Decades of Federal Legislation, p. 49.
[457] Ibid. Dixon's account of his interview with Douglas is too melodramatic to be taken literally, but no doubt it reveals Douglas's agitation.
[458] This was Greeley's interpretation, Tribune, June 1, 1861.