aveholders cast envious eyes upon the great
territory of the Northwest, stretching out from the Missouri border,
although it was north of the prohibited line of 36 deg. 30'. And so it came
about that, within four short years after the compromise of 1850, the
unrest of the North under the Fugitive-Slave Law, followed by the
efforts of the South to break down the earlier compromise of 1821, awoke
again with renewed fierceness the slavery agitation, in discussing the
bill for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska,--an
immense area, extending from the borders of Missouri, Iowa, and
Minnesota, west to the Rocky Mountains, and from the line of 36 deg. 30'
north to British America.

The mover of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, Stephen A. Douglas, Senator from
Illinois, a Democrat and a man of remarkable abilities, now came into
prominent notice. He wanted to be President of the United States, and
his popularity, his legal attainments, his congressional services, his
attractive eloquence and skill in debate, marked him out as the rising
man of his party, He was a Vermonter by birth, and like Lincoln had
arisen from nothing,--a self-made man, so talented that the people
called him "the little giant," but nevertheless inferior to the giants
who had led the Senate for twenty years, while equal to them in
ambition, and superior as a wire-pulling politician. He was among those
who at first supposed that the Missouri Compromise of 1821 was a final
settlement, and was hostile to the further agitation of the slavery
question. He was a great believer in "American Destiny," and the
absorption of all North America in one grand confederation, in certain
portions of which slavery should be tolerated. As chairman of the Senate
Committee on Territories he had great influence in opening new routes of
travel, and favored the extension of white settlements, even in
territory which had been given to the Indians.

To further his ambitious aspirations, Douglas began now to court the
favor of Southern leaders, and introduced his famous Kansas-Nebraska
Bill, which was virtually the repeal of the Missouri Compromise,
inasmuch as it opened the vast territories to the north of 36 deg. 30' to
the introduction of slavery if their people should so elect. This the
South needed, to secure what they called the balance of power, but what
was really the preponderance of the Slave States, or at least the
curtailment of the political power of the