There were, however,
local entanglements and political cross-purposes which involved
the interests of the free State of Illinois and those of the
slave State of Missouri.
Douglas's great stroke was a programme for harmonizing all these
conflicting interests and for drawing together the West and the
South. Slaveholders were to be given what at that moment they
wanted most--an opportunity to expand into that territory to the
north and west of Missouri which had been made free by the
Compromise of 1820, while the free Northwest was to have its
railroad to the coast and also its chance to expand into the
Indian country. Douglas thus became the champion of a bill which
would organize two new territories, Kansas and Nebraska, but
which would leave the settlers in each to decide whether slavery
or free labor should prevail within their boundaries. This
territorial scheme was accepted by a Congress in which the
Southerners and their Northern allies held control, and what is
known as the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was signed by President Pierce
on May 30,1854.*
*The origin of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill has been a much discussed
subject among historians in recent years. The older view that
Douglas was simply playing into the hands of the "slavepower" by
sacrificing Kansas, is no longer tenable.
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