[Footnote 399:  MacDonald, Select Documents of the History of the United States, No. 77.]

[Footnote 400:  Globe, 32 Cong., 2 Sess., App., p. 170.]

[Footnote 401:  Douglas declined to serve on the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, because he was opposed to the policy of the majority, so he afterward intimated. Globe, 32 Cong., 2 Sess., App., p. 268.]

[Footnote 402:  Globe, 32 Cong., 2 Sess., App., p. 173.]

[Footnote 403:  Globe, 32 Cong., Special Sess., p. 261.]

[Footnote 404:  Ibid., p. 262.]

[Footnote 405:  Globe, 32 Cong., Special Sess., p. 276.]

[Footnote 406:  Ibid., p. 262.]

[Footnote 407:  Globe, 32 Cong., Special Sess., p. 275.]

[Footnote 408:  Globe, 32 Cong., Special Sess., p. 273.]

[Footnote 409:  Sheahan, Douglas, pp. 443-444.]

[Footnote 410:  Sheahan, Douglas, pp. 444-445.]

[Footnote 411:  Major McConnell in the Transactions of the Illinois Historical Society, IV, p. 48; Linder, Early Bench and Bar of Illinois, pp. 80-82.]

[Footnote 412:  Sheahan, Douglas, p. 444.]

[Footnote 413:  Conversation with Judge R.M.  Douglas.]

[Footnote 414:  Washington Union, and Illinois State Register, May 26 and November 6, 1853.]

CHAPTER XI

THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT

With the occupation of Oregon and of the gold fields of California, American colonization lost temporarily its conservative character.  That heel-and-toe process, which had hitherto marked the occupation of the Mississippi Valley, seemed too slow and tame; the pace had lengthened and quickened.  Consequently there was a great waste—­No-man’s-land—­between the western boundary of Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas, and the scattered communities on the Pacific slope.  It was a waste broken only by the presence of the Mormons in Utah, of nomadic tribes of Indians on the plains, and of tribes of more settled habits on the eastern border.  In many cases these lands had been given to Indian tribes in perpetuity, to compensate for the loss of their original habitat in some of the Eastern States.  With strange lack of foresight, the national government had erected a barrier to its own development.

As early as 1844, Douglas had proposed a territorial government for the region of which the Platte, or Nebraska, was the central stream.[415] The chief trail to Oregon traversed these prairies and plains.  If the United States meant to assert and maintain its title to Oregon, some sort of government was needed to protect emigrants, and to supply a military basis for such forces as should be required to hold the disputed country.  Though the Secretary of War indorsed this view,[416] Congress was not disposed to anticipate the occupation of the prairies.  Nebraska became almost a hobby with Douglas.  He introduced a second bill in 1848,[417] and a third in 1852,[418] all designed to prepare the way for settled government.