ce, giving him his triumphant election, the slavocracy in 1854
proceeded in its work of suicide to undo the sacred Missouri Compromise
of 1820. Douglas, the ablest northern Democrat, led in this, succeeding,
as official pacificator between North and South, somewhat to the office
of Clay, who had died June 29, 1852. The aim of most who were with him
was to make Kansas-Nebraska slave soil, but we may believe that Douglas
himself cherished the hope and conviction that freedom was its destiny.

This rich country west and northwest of Missouri, consecrated to freedom
by the Missouri Compromise, had been slowly filling with civilized men.
It did not promise to be a profitable field for slavery, nor would
economic considerations ever have originated a slavery question
concerning it. But politically its character as slave or free was of the
utmost consequence to the South, where the resolution gradually arose
either to secure it for the peculiar institution or else prevent its
organization even as a Territory. A motion for such organization had
been unsuccessfully made about 1843, and it was repeated, equally
without effect, each session for ten years. None of these motions had
contained any hint that slavery could possibly find place in the
proposed Territory. The bill of December 15, 1853, like its
predecessors, had as first drawn no reference whatever to slavery, but
when it returned from the committee on Territories, of which Douglas was
chairman, the report, not explicitly, indeed, made the assumption,
unheard of before, that Kansas-Nebraska stood in the same relation to
slavery in which Utah and New Mexico had stood in 1850; and that the
compromise of that year, in leaving the question of slavery to the
States to be formed from these Territories, had already set aside the
agreement of 1820. These assumptions were totally false. The act of 1850
gave Utah and New Mexico no power as Territories over the debatable
institution, and contained not the slightest suggestion of any rule in
the matter for territories in general.

But the hint was taken, and on January 16th notice given of intention to
move an out-and-out abrogation of the Missouri Compromise. Such
abrogation was at once incorporated in the Kansas-Nebraska bill reported
by Douglas, January 23, 1854. This separated Kansas from Nebraska, and
the subsequent struggle raged in reference to Kansas alone. The bill
erroneously declared it established by the acts of 1850 that