e ground. Much careful research has indeed
been expended in seeking to determine who originated the policy which,
about 1853, Douglas decided to make his own. There has also been much
dispute about his motives. Most of us, however, see in his course of
action an instance of playing the game of politics with an audacity that
was magnificent.

His conduct may well have been the result of a combination of motives
which included a desire to retain the favor of the Northwest, a wish
to pave the way to his candidacy for the Presidency, the intention to
enlist the aid of the South as well as that of his own locality, and
perhaps the hope that he was performing a service of real value to his
country. That is, he saw that the favor of his own Northwest would be
lavished upon any man who opened up to settlement the rich lands beyond
Iowa and Missouri which were still held by the Indians, and for which
the Westerners were clamoring. Furthermore, they wanted a railroad that
would reach to the Pacific. There were, however, local entanglements and
political cross-purposes which involved the interests of the free State
of Illinois and those of the slave State of Missouri.

Douglas's great stroke was a programme for harmonizing all these
conflicting interests and for drawing together the West and the South.
Slaveholders were to be given what at that moment they wanted most--an
opportunity to expand into that territory to the north and west of
Missouri which had been made free by the Compromise of 1820, while the
free Northwest was to have its railroad to the coast and also its chance
to expand into the Indian country. Douglas thus became the champion of a
bill which would organize two new territories, Kansas and Nebraska, but
which would leave the settlers in each to decide whether slavery or free
labor should prevail within their boundaries. This territorial scheme
was accepted by a Congress in which the Southerners and their Northern
allies held control, and what is known as the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was
signed by President Pierce on May 30,1854.*

*The origin of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill has been a much
discussed subject among historians in recent years. The
older view that Douglas was simply playing into the hands of
the "slavepower" by sacrificing Kansas, is no longer
tenable. This point has been elaborated by Allen Johnson in
his study of Douglas ("Stephen A. Douglas: a Study in
American Poli