It is only necessary to say that this kind of agitation—resistance to the laws and disturbance of the peace—has been a part of the tactics of abolitionists down to the present moment. They have never allowed an opportunity to pass of showing their utter disregard for law and order, and of interposing every obstacle in the way of those whose sincere desire it is to promote the peace and prosperity of the country. The breeze has become a gale, and the gale has swelled into a tempest, under the influence of which the mind of a portion of the North has been lashed into insane fury.
THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE, AND FORMATION OF THE
TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENTS OF KANSAS AND NEBRASKA.
It was reserved for the years 1853 and 1854 to be a period of agitation—revived under the auspices of such men as Stephen A. Douglas, Franklin Pierce, Caleb Cushing, David Atchinson and other politicians intent upon the Presidency—unrivalled in the annals of the country.
The new danger came up in the shape of a proposition to establish a Territorial government in Nebraska (then embracing Kansas), a Territory which, with Missouri, originally constituted the upper part of the province of Louisiana, and was acquired from the French in 1803 by the payment of 60,000,000 francs.
As early as Dec. 11, 1844, Mr. Douglas gave notice to the House of his intention to introduce a bill for this purpose, which he did on the 17th instant following. After being favorably reported upon, it was referred to the Committee of the Whole, where, owing to the importance of other measures pending, it was not again acted upon during the session. On the 15th of March, 1848, he introduced a similar bill, and again it met a similar fate. In the Senate, in 1852, Mr. Dodge, of Iowa, early introduced a resolution, which was passed, instructing the Committee on Territories to inquire into the expediency of organizing the Territory; but no further action was taken upon it until the House of Representatives had passed its bill for that purpose. On December 17, the petition of Mr. Guthrie for a seat as a delegate from Nebraska, was received and referred, and on the 2d day of February, 1853, the Committee on Territories, through Mr. Richardson, of Illinois, their chairman, reported their bill for organizing Nebraska, which, after three days consideration, was passed on the 10th, by a vote of 98 to 43. It was silent on the subject of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The Senate received it the next day, and on the 17th instant, the Committee on Territories reported it without amendment. On the 3d of March, 1853, it was laid upon the table. In the debate which immediately preceded this disposition, Senator Atchison, of Missouri, openly avowed the ground of his opposition to be that the law excluding slavery from the Territory of Louisiana, north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, would be enforced in the new Territory, “unless specially rescinded.” He did not appear, however, to entertain any hope that this desirable object could be effected. He said he should, therefore, oppose the organization, unless the whole South could go into the Territory with rights and privileges, respecting property, equal to other people of the Union. The idea of the possibility of a repeal of the Missouri Compromise was thus, for the first time, thrown out and left to take root in the minds of the nation, with the chance of growing up to perfection. Even the most ultra among the Southerners then regarded this as a thing rather to be hoped for than realized.
On the 4th of January, 1854, Mr. Douglas, from the Committee on Territories, (which consisted of Messrs. Douglas, of Illinois; Houston, of Texas; Johnson, of Arkansas; Bell, of Tennessee; Jones, of Iowa, and Everett, of Massachusetts,) to whom had been referred the bill of Mr. Dodge, reported back the same with amendments and a report which contained the first open, and as it were official, declaration of the impending coup d’etat. This report assumed as its basis that the Compromise acts of 1850, which, it will be recollected, leave to the people of the Territories to decide for themselves whether or not there shall be slavery in their midst, were the supreme, authentic law of the land, and the Missouri Compromise was cited and put aside as immaterial, because it came in collision with this latest legislation and adjustment of the question. This perpetual prohibition Mr. Douglas proposed incidentally to repeal by the following provision in the bill:—
“And when admitted as a State or States, the said Territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received in the Union with or without slavery, as their constitutions may prescribe at the time of their admission.”
Later in this month the same committee submitted an amended bill by which two Territories—Kansas and Nebraska—were to be created out of the domain in question.
On the 22d of January, Messrs. Chase and Sumner, of the Senate, and Messrs. Giddings, Wade, Dewitt and Gerrit Smith, of the House, issued a stirring appeal to the people of the United States, urging and imploring instant action to avert the pending calamity. This was circulated over the whole country, and aided not a little in adding fuel to the already furious flame of excitement.
The discussion of the bill in the Senate was continued from time to time through January. It swallowed up all other interests, and was the absorbing topic throughout the country. The vote was finally reached at five o’clock in the morning of March 4, 1854, when the bill passed the Senate by a vote of thirty-seven to fourteen. Fourteen of the votes in its favor were given by Senators from the free States, and two of those against it by Senators from the slave States—Messrs. Houston, of Texas, and Bell, of Tennessee.