and thus create a pecuniary revulsion that would overwhelm the business arrangements and financial affairs of the country.  The River and Harbor question must be met and decided.  Now in my opinion is the time to put those great interests on a more substantial and secure basis by a well devised system of Tonnage duties.  I do not know what the administration will do on this question, but I hope they will have the courage to do what we all feel to be right.  The Pacific railroad will also be a disturbing element.  It will never do to commence making railroads by the federal government under any pretext of necessity.  We can grant alternate sections of land as we did for the Central Road, but not a dollar from the National Treasury.  These are the main questions and my opinions are foreshadowed as you are entitled to know them.”

In the same letter occurs an interesting personal allusion:  “I see many of the newspapers are holding me up as a candidate for the next Presidency.  I do not wish to occupy that position.  I do not think I will be willing to have my name used.  I think such a state of things will exist that I shall not desire the nomination.  Yet I do not intend to do any act which will deprive me of the control of my own action.  I shall remain entirely non-committal and hold myself at liberty to do whatever my duty to my principles and my friends may require when the time for action arrives.  Our first duty is to the cause—­the fate of individual politicians is of minor consequence.  The party is in a distracted condition and it requires all our wisdom, prudence and energy to consolidate its power and perpetuate its principles.  Let us leave the Presidency out of view for at least two years to come.”

These are not the words of a man who is plotting a revolution.  Had Nebraska and the Missouri Compromise been uppermost in his thoughts, he would have referred to the subject, for the letter was written in strict confidence to friends, from whom he kept no secrets and before whom he was not wont to pose.

Those better informed, however, believed that Congress would have to deal with the territorial question in the near future.  The Washington Union, commonly regarded as the organ of the administration, predicted that next to pressing foreign affairs, the Pacific railroad and the Territories would occupy the attention of the administration.[440] And before Congress assembled, or had been long in session, the chairman of the Committee on Territories must have sensed the situation, for on December 14, 1853, Senator Dodge of Iowa introduced a bill for the organization of Nebraska, which was identical with that of the last session.[441] The bill was promptly referred to the Committee on Territories, and the Nebraska question entered upon its last phase.  Within a week, Douglas’s friends of the Illinois State Register were sufficiently well informed of the thoughts and intents of his mind to hazard this conjecture:  “We