urely a matter
of expediency; and that "non-intervention" in Utah and New Mexico was no
more inconsistent with the prohibition of slavery in Kansas and Nebraska
than "non-intervention" in the Southwest Territory, sixty years before,
had been inconsistent with the prohibition of slavery in the Northwest
Territory. Whether Douglas is to be considered as too scrupulous, or too
timid, or too willing to be terrified, it is certain that his action was
unnecessary.

After a struggle of some months, the Kansas-Nebraska bill became law.
The Missouri compromise was abrogated, and the question of the extension
of slavery to the territories was adrift again, never to be got rid of
except through the abolition of slavery itself by war. The demands of
the South had now come fully abreast with the proposal of Douglas:
that slavery should have permission to enter all the Territories, if
it could. The opponents of the extension of slavery, at first under the
name of "Anti-Nebraska men," then of the Republican party, carried the
elections for representatives in Congress in 1854-'55, and narrowly
missed carrying the Presidential election of 1856. The percentage
of Democratic losses in the congressional districts of the North was
sufficient to leave Douglas with hardly any supporters in Congress from
his own section. The Democratic party was converted at once into a
solid South, with a northern attachment of popular votes which was not
sufficient to control very many Congressmen or electoral votes.

Immigration into Kansas was organized at once by leading men of the two
sections, with the common design of securing a majority of the voters of
the territory and applying "popular sovereignty" for or against slavery.
The first sudden inroad of Missouri intruders was successful in securing
a pro-slavery legislature and laws; but within two years the stream
of free-State immigration had become so powerful,in spite of murder,
outrage, and open civil war, that it was very evident that Kansas was
to be a free-State. Its expiring territorial legislature endeavored
to outwit its constituents by applying for admission as a slave State,
under the Lecompton constitution; but the Douglas Democrats could not
support the attempt, and it was defeated. Kansas, however, remained a
territory until 1861.

The cruelties of this Kansas episode could not but be reflected in the
feelings of the two sections and in Congress. In the former it showed
too plainly th