ti-slavery press
and societies, and all people opposed to further slavery aggression
and extension, at once took alarm and violently assailed the new
doctrines of the report; the South, too, at first viewed them with
surprise, denominating them "a snare set for the South," yet later
regarded them as favorable to the extension of slavery. Southern
statesmen, however, determined to force Douglas to amend them so
as to accomplish the ends of the South. Accordingly, Senator Dixon
of Kentucky, on January 16th, offered an amendment to the Nebraska
Bill providing for the absolute repeal of the Missouri Compromise
line. This amendment Douglas, apparently with reluctance,(81)
accepted, after a consultation with Jefferson Davis, then Secretary
of War, and President Pierce, both of whom promised it their
support.(82)

January 23, 1854, Douglas presented a substitute for his original
bill, wherein it was provided that the restriction of the Missouri
Compromise "was superseded by the principles of the legislation of
1850, and is hereby declared inoperative."

The new bill divided the Territory in two parts; the southern,
called Kansas, lay between 37 deg. and 40 deg. of latitude, extending west
to the Rocky Mountains, and the northern was still called Nebraska.

As early as 1853 a movement in Missouri was started, avowedly to
make Nebraska slave Territory, and this was well known to Douglas
and the supporters of his newly announced doctrines. Kansas, lying
farthest south, was climatically better suited for slavery than
the new Nebraska. Before the bill passed, plans were made to invade
Kansas from Missouri and Arkansas by slaveholders with their slaves.

January 24, 1854, the _Appeal of the Independent Democrats in
Congress to the People of the United States_ was published.

Chase and Giddings of Ohio were its authors; some verbal additions,
however, were made to it by Sumner and Gerritt Smith.(83)

This _Appeal_ was signed by S. P. Chase, Charles Sumner, Joshua R.
Giddings, Edward Wade, Gerritt Smith, and Alexander De Witt; three
at least of whom were then, or soon became first among the great
statesmen opposed to human slavery. The _Appeal_ declared the new
Nebraska Bill would "open all the unorganized Territories of the
Union to the ingress of slavery." A plot to convert them "into a
dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves," to
the exclusion of immigrants from the Old World and free laborers
fro