The most famous of these
names were those of Chase and Sumner, both of whom had been sent
to the Senate by a coalition of Free-Soilers and Democrats. With
them was the veteran abolitionist, Giddings of Ohio. The
"Appeal" denounced Douglas as an "unscrupulous politician" and
sounded both the warcries of the Northern masses by accusing him
of being engaged in "an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast
unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers
from our own States."
The events of the spring and summer of 1854 may all be grouped
under two heads--the formation of an antiNebraska party, and the
quick rush of sectional patriotism to seize the territory laid
open by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The instantaneous refusal of
the Northerners to confine their settlement to Nebraska, and
their prompt invasion of Kansas; the similar invasion from the
South; the support of both movements by societies organized for
that purpose; the war in Kansas all the details of this thrilling
story have been told elsewhere.* The political story alone
concerns us here.
*See Jesse Macy, "The Anti-Slavery Crusade". (In "The Chronicles
of America".)
When the fight began there were four parties in the field: the
Democrats, the Whigs, the Free-Soilers, and the Know-Nothings.
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