(74) Ibid., p. 765.
(75) Hist. of the U. S. (Rhodes), vol. i., pp. 134 (190).
(76) Hist. Pac. States, H. H. Bancroft, vol. xviii., p. 262.
(77) Thirty Years' View, vol. ii., p. 770.
(78) Cass died March 17, 1866, eighty-two years of age.
XVII NEBRASKA ACT—1854
Over the disposition of the Territory of Nebraska it remained to have the last Congressional struggle for the extension of slavery. This Territory in 1854 comprised what are now the States of Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. It was a large part of the Louisiana Purchase, in area 485,000 square miles, twelve times as large as Ohio, about ten times the size of New York, 140,000 square miles larger than the original thirteen States,(79) and more than four times the area of Great Britain and Ireland. It was what was left of the purchase after Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Indian Territory were carved out. It then had only about one thousand white inhabitants.
The desire to still placate the threatening South and to win its political favor, led some great and patriotic men of the North to attempt measures in the interest of slavery.
On January 4, 1854, Stephen A. Douglas, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, made a report embodying constitutional theories not hitherto promulgated, and questioning or repudiating others long supposed to have been settled.
The report announced the discovery of a new principle of the Compromise measures of 1850.