r the Indian than for a southern railroad route.
The Nebraska bill passed the House by a vote which suggests the
sectional differences involved in it.[430]

It was most significant that, while a bill to organize the Territory
of Washington passed at once to a third reading in the Senate, the
Nebraska bill hung fire. Douglas made repeated efforts to gain
consideration for it; but the opposition seems to have been motived
here as it was in the House.[431] On the last day of the session, the
Senate entered upon an irregular, desultory debate, without a quorum.
Douglas took an unwilling part. He repeated that the measure was "very
dear to his heart," that it involved "a matter of immense
importance," that the object in view was "to form a line of
territorial governments extending from the Mississippi valley to the
Pacific ocean." The very existence of the Union seemed to him to
depend upon this policy. For eight years he had advocated the
organization of Nebraska; he trusted that the favorable moment had
come.[432] But his trust was misplaced. The Senate refused to consider
the bill, the South voting almost solidly against it, though Atchison,
who had opposed the bill in the earlier part of the session, announced
his conversion,--for the reason that he saw no prospect of a repeal of
the Missouri Compromise. The Territory might as well be organized now
as ten years later.[433]

Disappointed by the inaction of Congress, the Wyandots took matters
into their own hands, and set up a provisional government.[434] Then
ensued a contest between the Missouri factions to name the territorial
delegate,--who was to present the claims of the new government to the
authorities at Washington. On November 7, 1853, Thomas Johnson, the
nominee of the Atchison faction, was elected.[435] In the meantime
Senator Atchison had again changed his mind: he was now opposed to the
organization of Nebraska, unless the Missouri Compromise were
repealed.[436] The motives which prompted this recantation can only be
surmised. Presumably, for some reason, Atchison no longer believed the
Missouri Compromise "irremediable."

The strangely unsettled condition of the great tract whose fate was
pending, is no better illustrated than by a second election which was
held on the upper Missouri. One Hadley D. Johnson, sometime member of
the Iowa legislature, hearing of the proposal of the Wyandots to send
a territorial delegate to Congress, invited his friends in we