r it should be done in the
language of the acts of 1850, or in the language subsequently
employed, but the legal effect was precisely the same."[448] Of course
Douglas was here referring to the original bill containing the
twenty-first section.

It has commonly been assumed that Douglas desired the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise in order to open Nebraska to slavery. This was the
passionate accusation of his anti-slavery contemporaries; and it has
become the verdict of most historians. Yet there is ample evidence
that Douglas had no such wish and intent. He had said in 1850, and on
other occasions, that he believed the prairies to be dedicated to
freedom by a law above human power to repeal. Climate, topography, the
conditions of slave labor, which no Northern man knew better, forbade
slavery in the unoccupied areas of the West.[449] True, he had no such
horror of slavery extension as many Northern men manifested; he was
probably not averse to sacrificing some of the region dedicated by law
to freedom, if thereby he could carry out his cherished project of
developing the greater Northwest; but that he deliberately planned to
plant slavery in all that region, is contradicted by the
incontrovertible fact that he believed the area of slavery to be
circumscribed definitely by Nature. Man might propose but physical
geography would dispose.

The regrettable aspect of Douglas's course is his attempt to nullify
the Missouri Compromise by subtle indirection. This was the device of
a shifty politician, trying to avert suspicion and public alarm by
clever ambiguities. That he really believed a new principle had been
substituted for an old one, in dealing with the Territories, does not
extenuate the offense, for not even he had ventured to assert in 1850,
that the compromises of that year had in any wise disturbed the status
of the great, unorganized area to which Congress had applied the
restrictive proviso of 1820. Besides, only so recently as 1849, he had
said, with all the emphasis of sincerity, that the compromise had
"become canonized in the hearts of the American people, as a sacred
thing, which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to
disturb." And while he then opposed the extension of the principle to
new Territories, he believed that it had been "deliberately
incorporated into our legislation as a solemn and sacred
compromise."[450]

By this time Douglas must have been aware of the covert purpose of
Atchi