possible.  The mass of the people, less far-sighted, were highly gratified at the passing of the great danger; refused to recognize that a more temporary compromise was never patched up to serve a turn; and applauded it so zealously that in preparing for the presidential campaign of 1852 each party felt compelled to declare emphatically—­what all wise politicians knew to be false—­the “finality” of the great Compromise of 1850.  Never, never more was there to be a revival of the slavery agitation!  Yet, at the same time, it was instinctively felt that the concord would cease at once if the nation should not give to the South a Democratic President!  In this campaign Lincoln made a few speeches in Illinois in favor of Scott; but Herndon says that they were not very satisfactory efforts.  Franklin Pierce was chosen, and slavery could have had no better man.

This doctrine of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the Territories lay as the seed of mortal disease imbedded in the vitals of the great Compromise even at the hour of its birth.  All the howlings of the political medicine-men in the halls of Congress, and in the wigwams where the party platforms were manufactured, could not defer the inevitable dissolution.  The rapid peopling of the Pacific coast already made it imperative to provide some sort of governmental organization for the sparsely inhabited regions lying between these new lands and the fringe of population near the Mississippi.  Accordingly bills were introduced to establish as a Territory the region which was afterward divided between Kansas and Nebraska; but at two successive sessions they failed to pass, more, as it seemed, from lack of interest than from any open hostility.  In the course of debate it was explained, and not contradicted, that slavery was not mentioned in the bills because the Missouri Compromise controlled that matter.  Yet it was well known that the Missouri Compromise was no longer a sure barrier; for one wing of the pro-slavery party asserted that it was unconstitutional on the ground that slaves, being property, could not be touched in the Territories by congressional enactments; while another wing of the party preferred the plausible cry of “popular sovereignty,” than which no words could ring truer in American ears; and no one doubted that, in order to give that sovereignty full sway, they would at any convenient moment vote to repeal even the “sacred” Compromise.  It could not be denied that this was the better course, if it were practicable; and accordingly, January 16, 1854, Senator Dixon of Kentucky offered an amendment to the pending Nebraska bill, which substantially embodied the repeal.  In the Senate Douglas was chairman of the Committee on Territories, and was induced to cooeperate.[63] January 23, 1854, he introduced his famous “Kansas-Nebraska bill,” establishing the two Territories and declaring the Missouri Compromise “inoperative” therein.  A later amendment declared the Compromise to be “inconsistent with