John N. Holloway

“ This first stroke at the sacred Compromise which had quieted the storm of 1820, and which had been regarded for thirty-four years as lasting as time, fell like a thunder bolt upon the Senate and the nation. The blast of strife was thus sounded by the expiring breath of Plighted Faith. Slavery no longer seeks to disguise its foulness, or apologize for its existence; but vaunteth itself as an institution of our fathers, wholesome to society, and sanctioned by religion. ”

“ Ambition, though baffled and apparently defeated, never despairs, but proceeds to consult the unprincipled Oracle of Success. Mr. Douglas resolves to go so far beyond the one who thus outbid him, that the spoils of his achievements shall be all that the insatiable cravings of slavery can demand. He therefore draws up a bill almost entirely unlike any of the preceding ones. Instead of organizing one, he now proposes to organize two Territories, the first to include that Territory lying between Missouri and the Rocky Mountains, north of thirty-seven degrees north latitude, to be called Kansas ”

“ Kansas-Nebraska Act—A Slavery Triumph By the compromise measure of 1820 slavery was forever prohibited north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude from the territory of the Louisiana purchase, except that portion included in the State of Missouri. As this Compromise was a Southern movement and maintained by Southern votes, it would seem that they were most fairly and solemnly bound to this compact. The opponents of slavery extension were bitterly opposed to the Compromise, because it yielded up the extensive domain of Missouri to slavery ”