| Analysis of the vote upon the bill. |
Counting the names of those who announced how they would have voted had they been able to be present, and considering the Commonwealths in whose delegations there were vacancies as represented fully by the one member from each, we may say that, in the Senate, New Hampshire, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, California, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Arkansas, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana voted for the bill; that Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin voted against the bill; that Connecticut, Tennessee, and Texas were divided; and that Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland were doubtful. Not a single Northern Whig voted for the bill, and only two Northern Whigs failed to vote against it. One Southern Whig, Mr. Bell, voted against it, and two Southern Whigs, Mr. Clayton and Mr. Pearce, failed to vote for it. Every Southern Democrat, except only Mr. Houston, voted for the bill, while, even if we count Mr. Chase and Mr. Sumner as Democrats, only six Northern Democrats voted against it. The bill may thus be fairly considered to have been a Western and Southern measure, and a Democratic measure. The Western Democracy, with its crude and radical notions about local self-government, invited the South into a position which turned out to be a snare and a pitfall. It is not meant by this that the Western Democracy was insincere, but only that it was crude and vulgarly over self-confident. And it is not meant that the South was insincere, but only too eager to vindicate its honor and dignity, by obliterating the inequality with the North in regard to the common territory of the Union, under which it fancied it had suffered since the restriction placed upon slavery extension by the Act of 1820.
| Development of popular opposition to the bill. |
If the bill had been subjected to the plebiscite on February 1st, it is very probable that the people in the Northern Commonwealths would have sustained the positions taken by their respective Senators. Had this been done on March 1st, it is probable that this would not have been the case in some of the Northern Commonwealths, whose Senators voted for the measure. And had it been done on April 1st, it is practically certain that it would not have been. After February 1st, there was developed throughout the North a very strong opposition to the bill among the people. The most influential newspapers denounced it. Numerous meetings, largely attended, protested against it. The legislatures of several of the Commonwealths passed resolutions condemning it. And the clergy generally arraigned it as immoral, inhuman, and irreligious. The movements against it seem to have been spontaneous and to have been connected with each other only by the common sentiment against the extension of slavery. It is, however, probable that the Address to the people, issued by Mr. Chase and his Free-soil friends in the latter part of January, furnished the necessary excitant. The Address seems to have been the text from which most of these articles, protests, memorials, speeches, and sermons were drawn. When the bill was sent to the House of Representatives, it was thus evident to all impartial observers that its growing unpopularity at the North would be a very great obstacle to its passage by the House. Its friends felt that they must get it through speedily or see it lost altogether.
Already, on January 31st, Mr. Richardson, of Illinois, Mr. Douglas' lieutenant in the House of Representatives, had reported from the House committee on Territories a bill for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, which was the same in substance and language as that reported by Mr. Douglas to the Senate. It had been discussed a little in the committee of the Whole House, but had slumbered there after February 15th.
| The Kansas-Nebraska bill in the House. |