"all
questions as to slavery in the Territories," no less than in the States
which should grow out of them, were to be left to the residents, subject
to appeal to the United States courts. It passed both houses by good
majorities and was signed by President Pierce May 30th. Its animus
appeared from the loss in the Senate of an amendment, moved by S. P.
Chase, of Ohio, allowing the Territory to prohibit slavery.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
Franklin Pierce.
From a painting by Healy, in 1852, at the Corcoran Art Gallery.

Thus was first voiced by a public authority Judge Douglas's new and
taking heresy of "squatter sovereignty," that Congress, though
possessing by Article IV., Section iii., Clause 2 of the Constitution,
general authority over the Territories, is not permitted to touch
slavery there, but must leave it for each territorial populace "to vote
up or vote down." At the South this doctrine of Douglas's was dubbed
"nonintervention," and its real aim to secure Kansas a pro-slavery
character avowed. It was consequently popular there as useful toward the
repeal, although repudiated the instant its working bade fair to render
Kansas free.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
Stephen A. Douglas.

[1855]

This was soon the prospect. Organizations had been formed to aid
anti-slavery emigrants from the northern States to Kansas. The first was
the Kansas Aid Society, another a Massachusetts corporation entitled the
New England Emigrant Aid Society. There were others still. Kansas began
to fill up with settlers of strong northern sympathies. They were in
real minority at the congressional election of November, 1854, and in
apparent minority at the territorial election the next March. The vote
against them on the last occasion, however, was largely deposited by
Missourians who came across the border on election day, voted, and
returned. This was demonstrated by the fact that there were but 2,905
legal voters in the Territory at the time, while 5,427 votes were cast
for the pro-slavery candidates alone. These early successes gave the
pro-slavery party and government in Kansas great vantage in the
subsequent congressional contest. The first Legislature convened at
Pawnee, July 2, 1855, enacted the slave laws of Missouri, and ordered
that for two years all state officers should be appointed by legislative
authority, and no man vote in the Territory who would not swear to
support the fugitive slave law.

The free-state s