CHAPTER XXX

THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS

424. Pierce becomes President and promises the Country Peace on the Subject of Slavery. On March 4, 1853, Franklin Pierce became President. He said he would do all he could to keep peace on the slavery question and that the compromises should not be disturbed or the agitation renewed during his administration, if he could prevent it.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

Born in New Hampshire in 1804, and died in the same state in 1869. He was a lawyer and a graduate of Bowdoin College. He was a United States senator and had served in the Mexican War before becoming President. He was in sympathy with the South during the Civil War.

The agi-
tation is
renewed

by the re

Yet his ad

peal of the ministration was not

Missouri

Compro

mise.

a year old before the country was thrown

into the greatest excitement over slavery by an agitation not to be allayed until the question was settled by civil war. This was caused by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854, which repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

425. Douglas proposes the Kansas-Nebraska Bill.-In January, 1854, Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois proposed the "KansasNebraska Bill," providing a government for the Nebraska country. He also submitted a long report explaining the measure. The bill divided the country into two territories, Kansas on the south, Nebraska on the north. It was supposed that Kansas

would come into the Union as a slave state and Nebraska as a free state, and thus each section be treated fairly.

66

Douglas maintained that the Compromise of 1850 had superseded" the Compromise of 1820; that the “old, exploded doctrine" of Congressional prohibition of slavery in the territories had given way to the new principle of non-intervention by Congress, the principle of "popular sovereignty,"

explains

the Act of

of leaving the people of the territories to settle the Douglas question of slavery for themselves. As Congress in how the Act of 1850 1850 deemed it wise to refrain from settling the dis- superseded pute over slavery in the territories by adopting the 1820. great compromise principle which had been so happily and universally accepted by the country, so now, Douglas said, he would adopt the same principle. He took the ground that in 1850, when Congress refused to apply the Wilmot Proviso in organizing New Mexico and Utah but left the question of slavery in those territories to the people there, Congress was laying down a general principle for the organization of all future territories, and in doing this it virtually repealed the Missouri Compromise.

Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act, in harmony with this doctrine, now enacted this repeal into law. Douglas said in his bill that "the Act of 1820, being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the territories as recognized in the Compromise of 1850, is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any territory or state or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States."

426. What Motive prompted Douglas? It is not known what moved Douglas to take this course. Perhaps he wished to be President, and therefore took this means of gaining the favor of the South. It may be he sincerely believed that his measure would keep down slavery agitation. If he believed this he was woefully mistaken, for the Kansas-Nebraska Bill produced the

greatest political agitation the country had ever known. His act and doctrine were amazing to the people of the North. was a startling surprise even to the men who had taken part in the debates of 1850. Not one of them had ever said or heard anything of the kind. They supposed that in 1850 they were legislating only for the Mexican cessions. They never dreamed they were adopting a measure which opened up the rest of the Louisiana territory to slavery, from which it had been excluded more than thirty years before.

The Os

ifesto.

This seemed like a most unjustifiable attack on the part of slavery. It seemed that slavery could not be satisfied where Slavery is it was, merely to be let alone, but that it was deteraggressive. mined to have more territory and more power. Since 1850 there had been movements for the acquisition of Cuba or of more territory in Mexico or Central America, to increase the slave power. In this very year (1854) the "Ostend Manifesto" was issued. The American ministers to Great Britain, tend Man- France, and Spain (Buchanan, Mason, and Soulé) met together at Ostend in Belgium, to discuss the question of Cuba. They issued a manifesto declaring that the United States should offer Spain one hundred million dollars for Cuba, but if Spain would not sell, then we should "wrest it from her" by force. This was the diplomacy of the bully in the interest of slavery, a kind of highwayman's plea that might makes right. These things aroused the people of the North to the feeling that they must unite to resist these aggressions of slavery.

427. Appeal of the Independent Democrats. The KansasNebraska Bill was not passed without great opposition. The debate was long and bitter. The first call to resistance came in the "Appeal of the Independent Democrats." This was written by Chase and signed by a few antislavery members of Congress. The appeal accused Douglas of bad faith. "If this bill shall become a law," it said, "the blight of slavery will cover the land and a fair region consecrated to freedom by a solemn compact will be given over to masters and slaves. Take your map,

fellow-citizens, we entreat you, and see what country it is which this bill proposes to open to slavery. It is an area more than twelve times as great as that of Ohio, occupying the very heart of the continent, and now for more than thirty years regarded by the common consent of the American people as consecrated to freedom by law and compact."

This "Appeal of the Independent Democrats" had great influence in arousing opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Public meetings were held, and protests began to come into Congress from all over the North. Douglas was denounced, and he said he could travel to his home in Illinois by the light of his own burning effigies. Douglas was stirred to defend his doctrine of "popular sovereignty." This meant that the people of a Territory should be allowed to legislate for themselves upon all questions, including the question of slavery. "If they wish slavery, they have a right to it. If they do not want it, they will not have it, and you should not force it upon them," said Douglas.

Douglas defends " рорular sovereignty."

The South

The South supported Douglas's measure. All they asked, they said, was to be allowed to carry their slave property with them into the Territories. "Why should any one demands the object," asked one of the Southern senators, "if a Southern gentleman wishes to take his good old negro Mammy with him to a new home in the West?" Wade of Ohio answered that no one objected to that;

right to

take slaves into the Territories.

the only objection was to the Southern gentleman's taking his State law into the Territories, by which he might be allowed to sell his good old "Mammy" after he got her there. Seward

Seward
accepts the
challenge to
a contest
for the
Territories.

expressed the feeling that if slavery were to control the Western Territories, America could not much longer be a land of freedom. On the night before the bill was voted on, when it was seen that Southern support would lead to its passage, Seward exclaimed: "Come on, then, gentlemen of the slave States. Since there is no escaping your challenge, I accept it in behalf of the cause of

freedom. We will engage in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory to the side which is stronger in numbers as it is in right.” In spite of all opposition, however, the bill became a law in May, 1854.

428. Results of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. — Judged by its consequences, the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was one of the most momentous legislative acts in American history. Its results were as follows:

1. North and South arrayed against

1. It opened up again the whole question of slavery in the territories. It arrayed the two sections against one another for the final struggle. Sumner said it "set freedom and slavery face to face and bade them grapple." People saw that there could be no more one anoth- compromises with slavery. It had to be settled whether freedom or slavery should control the national policy in the territories.

er.

2. It caused the dissolution of the Whig party. The great leaders of the Whigs, Clay and Webster, had passed away.

2. The Whig parties disappear.

Both died in 1852. Some "old line Whigs," who had no interest in the slavery question, still clung to the party, but the great body of the party in the North were antislavery men; they were opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Bill and were ready to organize a new party to resist the extension of slavery. Many of the Southern Whigs went with the Democrats in favor of slavery. Others joined the "Know-Nothings," or Americans (§ 433), or were afterward Constitutional Union men, following Bell of Tennessee.

3. It caused the division of the Democratic party in the North. Many Northern Democrats had voted in Congress

3. The Democratic

party is divided.

against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. These joined with the antislavery Whigs, and together they were called the "Anti-Nebraska men." They began to organize, and in the Congressional elections of 1854 a majority of the newly elected Congressmen were against the Democrats. Nearly every Northern man who had voted for Douglas's bill was defeated.