tions poured into Congress, meetings were held to
denounce Douglas as a second Benedict Arnold, and he was burned in
effigy by thousands who never took the trouble to read the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill or seriously contemplated its effects. In Congress
Chase, Sumner, Seward, and even moderates like Edward Everett denounced
the ambitious politician from Illinois who had dared to "sell the
birthright of the free States for a mess of pottage." It was a revival
of the sectional hatred, as well as of the fears of the aggressive
planters who had enticed Douglas to go one step farther than he had
intended.

Though the South had begun to fear the consequences of popular
sovereignty and to see that Douglas was only making the more certain the
power of his group of States, its spokesmen felt compelled to support
him in a fight against abolitionists and anti-slavery agitators.
Alexander Stephens, an able Whig leader of Georgia, and most other
members of that party in the South, gave Douglas hearty support. The
struggle developed into a fight between the East and the South. A great
many of the followers of Douglas were won away from the original program
when it seemed a mere question of slavery extension, and the Democrats
of the Northwest divided sharply. After four months of angry debate and
unprecedented log-rolling the bill became law, and the President
promptly organized Kansas and Nebraska as Territories. Members of
Congress went home after the adjournment to face their constituents, and
a most exciting campaign followed. In Wisconsin and Michigan a new party
was organized. Its appeal was to the fundamental American doctrines that
all men are equal and that no great interests should rule the country.
It received immediate support in the two States mentioned, and in all
the counties of the Northwest where the New England influence was
predominant, in northern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Naturally the
remnants of the old party organizations, the Whigs and the Free-Soilers,
lent enthusiastic support.

Chase and Sumner had called into being a new idealist movement
resembling that which had overwhelmed the Federalists in 1800, and a
group of new leaders, soon to become famous, emerged. In addition to the
well-known names already mentioned, there now appeared the kindly,
shrewd Abraham Lincoln, of Kentucky and Illinois; J. W. Grimes arose in
Iowa to threaten a Democratic machine which had never known defeat;
Zachary Chandler, of Mich