he courts should declare the Missouri
Compromise null and void. Three days later, January 10th, the
_Sentinel_ reprinted the bill with an additional section, which had
been omitted by a "clerical error." This twenty-first section read,
"In order to avoid all misconstruction, it is hereby declared to be
the true intent and meaning of this act, so far as the question of
slavery is concerned, to carry into practical operation the following
propositions and principles, established by the compromise measures of
one thousand eight hundred and fifty, to wit:" then followed the three
propositions which had accompanied the report of January 4th. The last
of these three propositions had been slightly abbreviated: all
questions pertaining to slavery were to be left to the decision of the
people through their appropriate representatives, the clause "to be
chosen by them for that purpose" being omitted.

This additional section transformed the whole bill. For the first time
the people of the Territory are mentioned as the determining agents in
respect to slavery. And the unavoidable inference followed, that they
were not to be hampered in their choice by the restrictive feature of
the Missouri Act of 1820. The omission of this weighty section was
certainly a most extraordinary oversight. Whose was the "clerical
error"? Attached to the original draft, now in the custody of the
Secretary of the Senate, is a sheet of blue paper, in Douglas's
handwriting, containing the crucial article. All evidence points to
the conclusion that Douglas added this hastily, after the bill had
been twice read in the Senate and ordered to be printed; but whether
it was carelessly omitted by the copyist or appended by Douglas as an
afterthought, it is impossible to say.[447] After his report of
January 4th, there was surely no reason why Douglas should have
hesitated to incorporate the three propositions in the bill; but it is
perfectly obvious that with the appended section, the Nebraska bill
differed essentially from its prototypes, though Douglas contended
that he had only made explicit what was contained implicitly in the
Utah bill.

Two years later Douglas replied to certain criticisms from Trumbull in
these words: "He knew, or, if not, he ought to know, that the bill in
the shape in which it was first reported, as effectually repealed the
Missouri restriction as it afterwards did when the repeal was put in
express terms. The only question was whethe