alone, would enable us in safety to go on and extend our
institutions into new regions. Cass, though he made difficulties about
details, supported the bill, and the Southerners played their part well.
But Douglas afterwards said, and truly: "I passed the Kansas-Nebraska
act myself. I had the authority and power of a dictator throughout the
whole controversy in both houses. The speeches were nothing. It was the
marshaling and directing of men and guarding from attacks and with
ceaseless vigilance preventing surprise."

Chase was the true leader of the opposition, and he was equipped with a
most thorough mastery of the slavery question in its historical and
constitutional aspects. By shrewd amendments he sought to bring out the
division between the Northern and Southern supporters of the bill; for
the Southerners held that slave-owners had a constitutional right to go
into any Territory with their property,--a right with which neither
Congress nor a territorial legislature could interfere. Douglas,
however, managed to avoid the danger. He made another change in the
important clause. To please Cass and others, he made it declare that the
Compromise of 1820 was "inconsistent with" instead of "superseded by"
the principles of the later compromise; and then he added the words,
"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 inhabitants thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their
domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution
of the United States." That, as Benton said, was a little stump speech
incorporated in the bill; and it proved a very effective stump speech
indeed.

Neither the logic and the accurate knowledge of Chase, nor the lofty
invective of Sumner, nor the smooth eloquence of Everett, nor Seward's
rare combination of political adroitness with an alertness to moral
forces, matched, in hand to hand debate, the keen-mindedness, the
marvelous readiness, and the headlong force of Douglas. Their set
speeches were impressive, but in the quick fire, the
question-and-answer, the give-and-take of a free discussion, he was the
master of them all. When, half an hour after midnight of the third of
March, he rose before a full Senate and crowded galleries to close the
debate, he was at his best. Often interrupted, he welcomed every
interruption with courtesy, and never once failed to put his ass