ive were those
compromises; he never dreamed that it was a question that no compromise
could settle permanently, and probably had no conception of the new
force that was to be given to it during his own term of office. Stephen
A. Douglas, an acknowledged aspirant to the Presidency, being Chairman
of the Senate Committee on Territories, introduced and carried through
Congress a measure called the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which, in providing
for the admission of those Territories as States, embodied his doctrine
of "Popular Sovereignty" in that it permitted the inhabitants to
determine by popular vote whether they should come into the Union as
free States or as slave States, and abolished the Missouri Compromise,
which for thirty-four years had forbidden the acquisition of any slave
territory north of the parallel of 36 deg. 30'.

The abrogation of this compromise, which had been looked upon as a
sacred compact, convinced a majority of the Northern people that the
system of slavery was filled with the spirit of aggressiveness and
determined to spread itself into all the Territories. Consequently there
arose for the first time a powerful anti-slavery party, which, while
denying that it had any purpose of meddling with that institution in the
States where it already existed, declared that it should never be
extended into any more of the national domain. At the same time this was
a stronger party in favor of the protective tariff than had ever before
existed. This organization, which gave itself the name "Republican
party," came into existence in 1854, the same year in which Senator
Douglas's bill abrogated the Missouri Compromise. There are several
claimants for the honor of first proposing it; but as a fact, it sprang
into existence with virtual simultaneousness in several of the Northern
States. If there was a priority, it was in Massachusetts, where Robert
Carter acted as Secretary of the Convention and wrote the resolutions.
Two years later this party entered the Presidential contest with John C.
Fremont as its candidate. It cast an enormous vote, but was not
successful, mainly for the reason that the short-lived American (or
Know-Nothing) party was then at its best, and had its own ticket, headed
by Millard Fillmore. Four years later still, it nominated and elected
Abraham Lincoln as President, and the clearest argument for its
existence that ever has been put forth is in Lincoln's first speech in
his famous debate with S