%384.  Franklin Pierce, Fourteenth President.%—­Although the struggle with slavery was thus growing more and more serious, the two great parties pretended to consider the question as finally settled.  In 1852 the Democrats nominated Franklin Pierce and William E. King, and declared in their platform that they would “abide by and adhere to” the Compromise of 1850, and would “resist all attempts at renewing, in Congress or out of it, the agitation of the slavery question.”  The Whigs nominated General Winfield Scott, and declared that they approved the fugitive-slave law, and accepted the compromise measures of 1850 as “a settlement in principle” of the slavery question, and would do all they could to prevent any further discussion of it.

[Illustration:  Franklin Pierce]

So far as the Whigs were concerned, the question was settled; for the Northern people, angry at their acceptance of the Compromise of 1850 and the fugitive-slave law, refused to vote for Scott, and Pierce was elected.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Pierce carried every state except Massachusetts, Vermont, Tennessee, and Kentucky.]

The Free-soilers had nominated John P. Hale and George W. Julian.

%385.  The Nebraska Bill.%—­Pierce was inaugurated March 4, 1853.  He, too, believed that all questions relating to slavery were settled.  But he had not been many months in office when the old quarrel was raging as bitterly as ever.  In 1853 all that part of our country which lies between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains, the south boundary of Kansas and 49 deg., was wilderness, known as the Platte country, and was without any kind of territorial government.  In January, 1854, a bill to organize this great piece of country and call it the territory of Nebraska was reported to the Senate by the Committee on Territories, of which Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois was chairman.  Every foot of it was north of 36 deg. 30’, and according to the Missouri Compromise was free soil.  But the bill provided for popular sovereignty; that is, for the right of the people of Nebraska, when they made a state, to have it free or slave, as they pleased.

%386.  The Kansas-Nebraska Law.%—­An attempt was at once made to prevent this.  But Douglas recalled his bill and brought in another, providing for two territories, one to be called Kansas[1] and the other Nebraska, expressly repealing the Missouri Compromise,[2] and opening the country north of 36 deg. 30’ to slavery.[3] The Free-soilers, led on by Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, Seward of New York, and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, did all they could to defeat the bill; but it passed, and Pierce signed it and made it law.[4]

[Footnote 1:  The northern and southern boundaries of Kansas were those of the present state, but it extended westward to the Rocky Mountains.]

[Footnote 2:  It declared that the slavery restriction of the Missouri Compromise “was suspended by the principles of the legislation of 1850, commonly called the compromise measures, and is hereby declared inoperative.”]