y.

If Douglas had had any serious convictions opposed to slavery the last
of the five factors would have brought him to a standstill. Fortunately
for him as a party strategist, he was indifferent. Then, too, he firmly
believed that slavery could never thrive in the West because of
climatic conditions. "Man might propose, but physical geography would
dispose."(1) On both counts it seemed to him immaterial what concessions
be made to slavery extension northwestward. Therefore, he dismissed
this consideration and applied himself to the harmonization of the four
business factors involved. The result was a famous compromise inside a
party. His Kansas-Nebraska Bill created two new territories, one lying
westward from Chicago; one lying westward from St. Louis. It also
repealed the Missouri Compromise and gave the inhabitants of each
territory the right to decide for themselves whether or not slavery
should be permitted in their midst. That is to say, both to the railway
promoter and the slavery financier, it extended equal governmental
protection, but it promised favors to none, and left each faction to
rise or fall in the free competition of private enterprise. Why--was not
this, remembering Douglas's assumptions, a master-stroke?

He had expected, of course, denunciation by the Abolitionists. He
considered it immaterial. But he was not in the least prepared for what
happened. A storm burst. It was fiercest in his own State. "Traitor,"
"Arnold," "Judas," were the pleasant epithets fired at him in a
bewildering fusillade. He could not understand it. Something other than
mere Abolitionism had been aroused by his great stroke. But what was it?
Why did men who were not Abolitionists raise a hue and cry? Especially,
why did many Democrats do so? Amazed, puzzled, but as always furiously
valiant, Douglas hurried home to join battle with his assailants. He
entered on a campaign of speech-making. On October 3, 1854, he spoke
at Springfield. His enemies, looking about for the strongest popular
speaker they could find, chose Lincoln. The next day he replied to
Douglas.

The Kansas-Nebraska Bill had not affected any change in Lincoln's
thinking. His steady, consistent development as a political thinker
had gone on chiefly in silence ever since his Protest seventeen years
before. He was still intolerant of Abolitionism, still resolved to leave
slavery to die a natural death in the States where it was established.
He defended the meas