f to repeal the Missouri Compromise.
He had undertaken to throw open to slavery a great region long
consecrated to freedom. He had written the bill of his own motion, by
himself, in his own house. The South had not asked for the concession,
the North had not in any wise consented to it. For a little while, in
fact, the Southern leaders seemed to distrust the bill, for they
distrusted Douglas; one or two of them, like Sam Houston, of Texas,
resisted it to the last, declaring it was sure in the end to do the
South more harm than good. But for the most part they came quickly into
line behind Douglas, though they never generally accepted his principle
of popular sovereignty. As to the North, the challenge of the
Kansas-Nebraska bill met there with such a response as no Southern
aggression had yet provoked. Through every avenue of expression--through
the press and the pulpit, in petitions to Congress, in angry protests
of public meetings and solemn resolves of legislatures--a hostile and
outraged public opinion broke upon Douglas and his bill. His own party
could not be held in line. Scores of Democratic newspapers turned
against him. Save the legislature of Illinois, no Northern assembly,
representative or other, that could speak with any show of authority,
dared to support him. No Southern fire-eater was ever half so reviled.
He could have traveled from Boston to Chicago, so he afterwards
declared, by the light of his own burning effigies.

But the firmest and clearest protest of all came from the sturdy little
band of anti-slavery men in Congress. The day after Douglas proposed his
substitute, it came up for debate, and Chase, of Ohio, speaking for the
opposition, asked for more time to examine the new provisions. Douglas
granted a week, and the next day there appeared in various newspapers an
address to the country entitled "An Appeal of the Independent Democrats
in Congress." Chase was the principal author of it; he and Sumner and
four representatives signed it. They denounced the bill as a breach of
faith, infringing the historical compact of 1820, and as part of a plot
to extend the area of slavery; and they accused Douglas of hazarding the
dearest interests of the American people in a presidential game.

That judgment of him and of the bill was probably accepted by a majority
of his contemporaries. For lack of Southern support, he had missed the
Democratic nomination in 1852. It seemed clear that whatever Northern
c