"
The bill which Douglas brought in thus to do away with the Missouri
Compromise was known as the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, as Douglas
suggested calling the great unorganised territory Nebraska in the
north and Kansas in the South.
Douglas was a Northern man, but he wanted to please the Southerners,
and get them to vote for him as President. So he brought in this
bill. It met the fierce opposition from the North, but it passed.
The President alone had power to stop it. But he did not use his
power.
Douglas had brought in the bill to make himself popular. But he
made a great mistake. All over the North he was hated and cursed
because of it. In town after town he was hanged in effigy, and
then burned with every mark of scorn. He was reviled as a Judas,
and some women living in a little Northern village sent him thirty
pieces of silver.
In spite of this bill the Northerners were determined that slavery
should not be extended. So even before the President had signed
it men were hurring westward into Kansas. Claims were staked out,
trees were felled, and huts built as if by magic. Settlers streamed
in by hundreds every day. Some came of themselves, others were sent
by societies got up to help settlers, and by the end of the year,
two or three towns were founded.
But the slave holders were just as determined to make Kansas a slave
state.
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