"Third—That the provisions of the Constitution, in respect to fugitives from service, are to be carried into faithful execution in all 'the organized Territories,' the same as in the States."
The first of these propositions, in another form, announced the new doctrine of popular sovereignty, soon thereafter popularly called "Squatter Sovereignty," in derision of the rights thus to be vested in the territorial squatter, however temporary his stay might be. It was opposed to the principle of Congressional right (expressly granted by the Constitution (80)) to provide rules (laws) and regulations for United States territory until it became clothed with statehood.
The second proposition announced nothing new, as cases involving titles to slaves, or questions of personal freedom, must necessarily go for final determination to the courts, with a right of appeal.
The third proposition, like the second, was a mere platitude.
The bill accompanying the report, as first presented, required that any part of Nebraska Territory admitted as a state (as provided in the New Mexico and Utah Acts of 1850) "shall be received into the Union with or without slavery, as its Constitution may prescribe at the time of admission." This, too, was not new in any sense, as new States had ever been thus received. The anti-slavery press and societies, and all people opposed to further slavery aggression and extension, at once took alarm and violently assailed the new doctrines of the report; the South, too, at first viewed them with surprise, denominating them "a snare set for the South," yet later regarded them as favorable to the extension of slavery. Southern statesmen, however, determined to force Douglas to amend them so as to accomplish the ends of the South. Accordingly, Senator Dixon of Kentucky, on January 16th, offered an amendment to the Nebraska Bill providing for the absolute repeal of the Missouri Compromise line. This amendment Douglas, apparently with reluctance,(81) accepted, after a consultation with Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, and President Pierce, both of whom promised it their support.(82)
January 23, 1854, Douglas presented a substitute for his original bill, wherein it was provided that the restriction of the Missouri Compromise "was superseded by the principles of the legislation of 1850, and is hereby declared inoperative."
The new bill divided the Territory in two parts; the southern, called Kansas, lay between 37° and 40° of latitude, extending west to the Rocky Mountains, and the northern was still called Nebraska.
As early as 1853 a movement in Missouri was started, avowedly to make Nebraska slave Territory, and this was well known to Douglas and the supporters of his newly announced doctrines. Kansas, lying farthest south, was climatically better suited for slavery than the new Nebraska. Before the bill passed, plans were made to invade Kansas from Missouri and Arkansas by slaveholders with their slaves.
January 24, 1854, the Appeal of the Independent Democrats in
Congress to the People of the United States was published.
Chase and Giddings of Ohio were its authors; some verbal additions, however, were made to it by Sumner and Gerritt Smith.(83)