It was read by hundreds and thousands of people, and soon the fame of it spread to every country in Europe, and it was translated into at least twenty languages. And even today when the work it was meant to do is done, hundreds of boys and girls still laugh at Topsy and feel very choky indeed over the fate of poor old Uncle Tom.
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Chapter 80 - Pierce - The Story of "Bleeding Kansas"
In 1853 Fillmore's term of office came to an end and Franklin Pierce became President. He was only forty-eight, and was the youngest President who had been elected so far.
He was the son of a soldier who had fought in the Mexican War. But by profession he was a lawyer and not a soldier.
During the administration of Pierce another territory was added to the United States. This was a strip of land which now forms the south of New Mexico and Arizona. It was bought from Mexico in 1854 and, as James Gadsden arranged the treaty with the President of Mexico, it was called the Gadsden Purchase. With this purchase the territory of the United States as we know it today was completed. Only seventy years had passed since the Peace of Paris. But in these seventy years the country had made mighty strides and had been doubled and trebled. Instead of being merely a strip of land east of the Mississippi it now stretched from ocean to ocean.
The chief interest in this administration was still the slavery question. It had not been settled as some people thought it had been. But it slept, at least, until suddenly a senator names Douglas awoke it again by bringing in a bill to do away with the Missouri Compromise Line.
There was still a great deal of territory of the Louisiana Purchase waiting to be carved into states. Now said Douglas, "why make all this fuss about slavery or no slavery every time a new state wants to be admitted? Do away with this Missouri Compromise, and when there are enough people in a territory to allow of its being admitted as a state, let these people themselves decide whether they wish it to be a free state or a slave state."
The bill which Douglas brought in thus to do away with the Missouri Compromise was known as the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, as Douglas suggested calling the great unorganised territory Nebraska in the north and Kansas in the South.
Douglas was a Northern man, but he wanted to please the Southerners, and get them to vote for him as President. So he brought in this bill. It met the fierce opposition from the North, but it passed. The President alone had power to stop it. But he did not use his power.