ir appropriate representatives, may,
if they see fit, prohibit the existence of slavery therein"; and Douglas
and his followers, in defiance of consistency, instantly threw this out.
The meaning of the whole business was unmistakable; under the pretext of
"popular sovereignty,"--Douglas's favorite watchword--the bars were
thrown down and slavery was invited to enter.

The proposal took the country completely by surprise. The South was not
asking for any such advantage as was offered, but was prompt to accept
it. This of course Douglas had expected, and in this lay his personal
gain as a Presidential candidate. But he had utterly misjudged the
temper of the North. The general acquiescence in the compromise of 1850
might seem to indicate a weariness or indifference as to the slavery
question. But just as in 1820 and in 1850, again there sprung up a wide
and deep hostility to any extension of slavery, and now the old
restraints on that hostility were gone, and its sources were newly
filled. For now Clay and Webster were dead, and the case itself offered
no room for compromise; no offset was possible. And the anti-slavery
feeling had strengthened immensely throughout the North. Under the
stimulus of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, the inhumanity of the system had made
the deepest impression on the popular imagination and conscience. To
this system it was now proposed to throw open all the fair and fertile
Northwest, in effect from the Mississippi to the Pacific. The North
awoke like a giant from sleep. The old party organizations went down in
the shock; a new party came instantly to birth; and the last triumph of
slavery in Congress gave the signal for a six-years' campaign, ending in
the triumph of the Republicans and the appeal of the South to
revolution.

The debate in Congress was hot through the winter and spring of 1854. In
the Senate, Seward and Sumner and Chase had been reinforced by such
allies as Benjamin Wade of Ohio, Hamilton Fish of New York, Solomon Foot
of Vermont, and William P. Fessenden of Maine. The supporters of the
bill, with such leaders as Douglas and Cass from the North and Mason and
Benjamin from the South, proved finally to number three-fourths of the
Senate. In the House, party lines were completely broken, and the
division was almost equal,--the bill passed by 113 to 110. Its
supporters included all the Southern and just half of the Northern
Democrats, and two-thirds of the few Southern Whigs. Its opponent