mmittee on
Territories, and was induced to cooeperate.[63] January 23, 1854, he
introduced his famous "Kansas-Nebraska bill," establishing the two
Territories and declaring the Missouri Compromise "inoperative" therein.
A later amendment declared the Compromise to be "inconsistent with the
principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and
Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850," and therefore
"inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this Act
not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it
therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and
regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to
the Constitution." After a long and hard fight the bill was passed with
this clause in it, which Benton well stigmatized as a "stump speech
injected into the belly of the bill." The insertion of the word State
was of momentous significance.

This repeal set the anti-slavery party all ablaze. Among the rest
Lincoln was fired with strenuous indignation, and roused from the
condition of apparent indifference to public affairs in which he had
rested since the close of his term in Congress. Douglas, coming home in
the autumn, was so disagreeably received by an angry audience in Chicago
that he felt it imperative to rehabilitate his stricken popularity. This
difficult task he essayed at the great gathering of the State Fair in
October. But Lincoln was put forward to answer him, and was brilliantly
successful in doing so, if the highly colored account of Mr. Herndon may
be trusted. Immediately after Lincoln's close, Owen Lovejoy, the
Abolitionist leader, announced "a meeting in the same place that evening
of all the friends of freedom." The scheme was to induce Lincoln to
address them, and thus publicly to commit him as of their faith. But the
astute Herndon, though himself an Abolitionist, felt that for Lincoln
personally this was by no means desirable. So he hastened to Lincoln and
strenuously said: "Go home at once! Take Bob with you, and drive
somewhere into the country, and stay till this thing is over;" and
Lincoln did take Bob and drove away to Tazewell Court House "on
business." Herndon congratulates himself upon having "saved Lincoln,"
since either joining, or refusing to join, the Abolitionists at that
time would have been attended with "great danger." Lincoln had upon his
own part a wise instinct and a strong p