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Updated: May 1, 2025
Senator Toombs ridiculed the idea of the "thunder of popular indignation." "If even this were true, it should in no wise control the actions of American senators. But it is not real but melodramatic thunder nothing but phosphorus and sheet-iron." Senator Toombs admitted that the North had the power to reject the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. They had a majority in the House and Senate.
A paramount purpose of these gatherings was to solidify the South and to harmonize the interests of the border States with those of the lower South. In the background of all this, and especially after the struggle over the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in 1854, there was the ever-recurring probability of secession from the Union.
In 1852-3 they commenced the Kansas-Nebraska agitation; and, what with their incessant political and colonizing movements in those Territories; the frequent and dreadful atrocities committed by their tools, the Border-ruffians; the incessant turmoil created by cruelties to their Fugitive-slaves; their persistent efforts to change the Supreme Court to their notions; these-with the decision and opinion of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case together worked the Slavery question up to a dangerous degree of heat, by the year 1858.
But Douglas afterwards said, and truly: "I passed the Kansas-Nebraska act myself. I had the authority and power of a dictator throughout the whole controversy in both houses. The speeches were nothing. It was the marshaling and directing of men and guarding from attacks and with ceaseless vigilance preventing surprise."
Lincoln in turn made a charge that Douglas had conspired with Presidents Pierce and Buchanan and Chief Justice Taney to spread slavery and make it universal. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was their first step, the Dred Scott decision the second; but one more step, and slavery could be fastened upon States as they had already fastened it upon Territories.
And when "explaining this Kansas-Nebraska Bill" Mr.
Norman Hapgood writes to me as follows: "I think the history of the Kansas-Nebraska trouble, in which the preliminary conflict centred, the speeches of the time, North and South, the party platforms, all proved that the North said, 'Slavery shall keep its rights and have no further extension, while the South said, 'It shall go into any newly-acquired territory it chooses. In 1860 the slave interest was more protected and extended by law than ever before in the history of the country.
In 1854 the Whig party, which had been divided on the Kansas-Nebraska question, began to manifest symptoms of disintegration; while the Republican party, though not yet known by that name, began to take form.
On both counts it seemed to him immaterial what concessions be made to slavery extension northwestward. Therefore, he dismissed this consideration and applied himself to the harmonization of the four business factors involved. The result was a famous compromise inside a party. His Kansas-Nebraska Bill created two new territories, one lying westward from Chicago; one lying westward from St. Louis.
"Free to form and regulate their domestic institutions" the phrase employed in the Kansas-Nebraska act was construed to mean a vote to continue or discontinue slavery. And "if any portion of the inhabitants shall refuse to vote, a fair opportunity to do so having been presented, ... they alone will be responsible for the consequences."
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