On the 16th of January Senator Dixon of Kentucky offered an amendment repealing the Missouri Compromise. The next day Sumner gave notice of an amendment affirming it. The question could no longer be dodged. When Dixon's amendment was offered, Douglas, who was greatly annoyed by it, went to his seat and implored him to withdraw it. But he refused. He called upon Dixon and took him for a drive. They talked of the Nebraska bill and the amendment.
The result of the conference was that Douglas said to him: "Ihave become perfectly satisfied that it is my duty as a fair minded national statesman, to cooperate with you as proposed in securing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise restriction. It is due to the South; it is due to the Constitution, heretofore palpably infracted; it is due to that character for consistency which I have heretofore labored to maintain. The repeal will produce much stir and commotion in the free States * * * * for a season. I shall be assailed by demagogues and fanatics there without stint. * * * *Every opprobrious epithet will be applied to me. I shall probably be hung in effigy. * * * * I may become permanently odious among those whose friendship and esteem I have heretofore possessed.
This proceeding may end my political career. But, acting under the sense of duty which animates me, I am prepared to make the sacrifice. I will do it."The bluff Kentuckian was much affected, and with deep emotion exclaimed: "Sir, I once recognized you as a demagogue, a mere party manager, selfish and intriguing. I now find you a warm hearted and sterling patriot. Go forward in the pathway of duty as you propose, and, though the whole world desert you, I never will."He had now decided on his course. Cass, who had been forestalled by his alert rival, was understood to be ready to step into the breach if Douglas faltered. He was on perilous heights where a false step would be fatal. Already a storm of opposition was brewing in the North, which would surely break upon him with fury if he proposed the repeal. It might fail in the House and thus leave him with both the North and South angrily condemning him,--the South for his rashness and the North for his treachery. Pierce was known to be opposed to the express repeal of the Compromise. On Sunday, January 22d, Douglas called on the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, explained the proposed change and sought the help of the Administration in passing the bill. Davis was overjoyed and at once accompanied him to the White House. Pierce received his distinguished visitors, discussed the plan with them and promised his help.
The next morning Douglas offered in the Senate a substitute for the original Nebraska bill, in which two radical changes appeared.
The new bill divided the proposed Territory, calling the southern part Kansas and the northern part Nebraska, and declared the Missouri Compromise superseded by the legislation of 1850 and now inoperative.
On the next day appeared the "Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States." The paper was written by Chase and corrected by Sumner. It denounced the original Kansas-Nebraska bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge, a criminal betrayal of precious rights, part of an atrocious plot to exclude free labor and convert the Territory into a dreary region of despotism inhabited by masters and slaves, a bold scheme against American liberty, worthy of an accomplished architect of ruin.
It declared in a postscript, written after the substitute bill was offered by Douglas on January 23d, that not a man in Congress or out of it, not even Douglas himself, pretended at the time of their passage that the measures of 1850 would repeal the Missouri Compromise. "Will the people," it asked, "permit their dearest interests to be thus made the mere hazards of a presidential game and destroyed by false facts and false inferences?"The Appeal, which (except the postscript) was written before the substitute was offered, was published in many papers in the North and produced a deep sensation. On the 30th Douglas entered the Senate Chamber angry and excited. He had already begun to hear the distant mutterings of the storm. He opened the debate on his substituted bill, but he was smarting under the cruel lash and, before beginning his argument, poured out his rage on the authors of the Appeal. He accused Chase of treacherously procuring a postponement of the consideration of the bill for a week in order to circulate their libel upon him. Chase interrupted him with angry emphasis. Douglas waxed furious and poured out his "senatorial billingsgate" upon the offenders. Yet, amidst his wrath, he kept his head and made a keen and ingenious defense of his course.
The basis of his argument was the proposition, assumed though no where stated, that while the laws of Congress were specific and enacted to meet particular demands, the PRINCIPLE embodied in each law was general, and if the philosophic principle of any law was repugnant to that of any prior law, however foreign to each other the subjects might be, the latter must be held to repeal the former by implication; that the principle of the legislation of 1850 was repugnant to that of the Missouri Compromise and hence repealed it.
Chase at once replied briefly to the fiery attack, and on February 3d delivered an elaborate speech against the bill, which Douglas recognized as the strongest of the session. As a legal argument it was a complete and crushing answer to the quibbling sophistry of the advocates of implied repeal. But it was not merely the argument of a great lawyer. It was the earnest remonstrance of a moralist who believed in the eternal and immeasurable difference between right and wrong.
