of our moral nature, into which we are compelled to enter, whatever may be the odds against us. Nor do the great exemplars of the race form any exception to the law of this conflict. They are our models, and best illustrate and enforce in their lives in their triumphs and defeats-the principle of renunciation. Such is the lesson which all sympathetic souls learn from the career of this great man, whose whole life was a grand exemplification of the doctrine of Renunciation, whose sympathetic genius is become immortal, and who, perhaps more than any other man for many centuries, comprehended the needs and perplexities of the struggling heart. Even where his name is not known his power is felt. To the great Goethe, then, if ever to any man, is due the title of Imperator.

CLARA WHITE.

ART. V. THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL.

THE passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and the execution of the law by Presidents Pierce and Buchanan, led directly to secession and its consequences. The KansasNebraska bill was the most important which ever passed the Congress of the United States. Yet the American people to this day do not know, and cannot have known, who was its author, or what were the immediate objects to be accomplished by its passage. Stephen A. Douglas was, and still is, believed by the country to have been its author. It is a fact that he, as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, reported it to the Senate, and was its able and active supporter and advocate. But Mr. Douglas was not its author.

That the people of today may know the importance of that bill, it is necessary that a brief sketch be given of the slavery question. The writer desires to say-and it is due to the reader that he was in 1854 in a position to know many facts and incidents connected with this bill which were not accessible to the public, or even to the press of the country. He believes only one other person, perhaps two, to be now living, familiar with the origin and secret history of the KansasNebraska bill. He may also add that he is familiar with, and has taken part in, the slavery agitation since 1819 and 1820, and that he was a slave-holder until the late war. As early as 1835 he was convinced that slavery was one of the greatest evils we had to contend with, and the greatest barrier to national prosperity. These views were obtained by observations made in extensive travels through the southern and western States. He, however, disapproved of the slavery agitation as conducted by Garrison and his coworkers. He believed that their course delayed the emancipation of the

slaves, so much desired by some of the most distinguished men, slave-owners, in Virginia, in 1831 and 1832, who were then endeavoring to devise some scheme for gradual emancipation.

At an early period in the history of our country it was foreseen that the question of slavery would be one of the most serious with which we would have to contend. This feeling was manifested in the convention which framed the Constitution. The South at that time did not desire the extension of slavery, and it is well known that she opposed the extension of the time at which the slave trade should cease. Virginia, then the largest slave State in the Union, in 1784 conveyed to the United States her immense domain, the North-West Territory, now composing five or six of the largest and most powerful and wealthy States in the Union. In the ordinance of cession she stipulated that slavery should never exist in that territory. This cession, with the circumstances under which it was made, has no parallel in the history of the world. It gave to the United States an empire from which, as Mr. Webster declared, the United States derived two hundred millions of dollars. She dedicated it forever to freedom, a noble deed on which her citizens may look back with pride; and if at any time Virginia, in the eyes of her sister States, has made mistakes or committed errors, she has, by virtue of her glorious past, a right to ask that they be blotted from memory, and that she be considered the peer of any State. She was the author of free-soilism in the United States. At the time she made this cession of territory and consecrated it forever to freedom, nearly all the States held slaves. When France ceded Louisiana to the United States it was expected that one State would soon be admitted into the Union with slavery; but it was then known that, in the future, out of that immense territory other States would be formed where slavery would not exist. In 1819 Missouri asked to be admitted into the Union, with slavery. She was a part of the Louisiana purchase. It was upon this petition of Missouri that parties arrayed themselves against each other on the slavery question. Up to that time there had been no disposition shown to inter

fere with slavery in the States where it then existed. On the one hand, the North took the ground that slavery should not be extended over any portion of the territory belonging to the United States. On the other hand, the South held that the territory was the joint property of all the States, and that the people of all the States had equal rights and privileges in their occupancy; that property was entitled to protection, and that slaves were recognized by the Constitution as property, and as such could be rightfully and legally carried into any territory. The North, regarding slavery as an evil, contended that it was its duty to prevent its extension, believing it would be held responsible before the civilized world if it did not avail itself of every means to arrest the increase. These issues were plain and distinct, and upon them a most angry and exciting discussion in Congress, through the press, and among the people, ensued for nearly two years. No one then living can forget the excitement which existed throughout the whole country. Mr. Jefferson said in one of his letters that it was "like a fire bell in the night." The Union seemed to hang on a slender thread; a dark pall appeared to cover the country. Patriots trembled for its safety, and men calculated the value of the Union. But fortunately there was in the councils of the nation a patriot statesman, wise and fearless. He represented a slave-holding State. He came forward with the olive branch and offered the famous Missouri Compromise, under which Missouri was admitted as a State. By this compromise slavery was permitted south of 36° 30' north latitude, but forever excluded north of that line. This solution of the difficulty was accepted by all political parties; reluctantly accepted by the South, yet acquiesced in and acted upon by all. The country canonized the Compromise and all people held it sacred until 1854. The name of the author of that Compromise scarcely needs to be mentioned. It will ever be cherished by the American people. Henry Clay needs no monument to tell who he was, or the part he bore in that eventful period.

Peace was restored, a new lease of life and prosperity was given to the Union, and for years this state of quiet continued.

Yet, in the discussions which had preceded the Compromise, the seed of dissolution was sown which ripened for the harvest of secession in 1860 and 1861. Frequently after the adoption of the Missouri Compromise, the slavery question was introduced into Congress and brought before the country by petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, in the annexation of Texas and the admission of new States. These never failed to cause angry and bitter feeling and had a tendency to weaken the ties which bound the States together. A very small party only exhibited any disposition to interfere with slavery in the States where it existed. But a great and rapidly increasing party had been formed in the non-slaveholding States for the avowed purpose of preventing its extension. Very many of the northern leading democrats adopted the principles of this new party. Among the most distinguished of these were ex-President Van Buren, the Hon. Salmon P. Chase, and the Hon. D. S. Dickinson, of New York. Mr. Dickinson, on the 1st of March, 1847, while opposing the Wilmot Proviso as an amendment to the loan for prosecuting the Mexican war, said in the Senate: "I will vote for a separate bill to exclude slavery from all the territory we now have, or may hereafter acquire, instructed or not instructed." He had been instructed by the Legislature of New York to vote for the Wilmot Proviso. The sweeping declaration on the part of Mr. Dickinson indicated public opinion in the free States, and especially in view of the fact· that we expected to acquire California, a large portion of which lay south of the line of 36° 30'; and, further, that a very large portion of the people of the United States were looking for a speedy acquisition of Cuba.

In 1848 the Free-Soil Convention met at Buffalo, New York, and nominated Mr. Van Buren for President, with Charles F. Adams for Vice-President. The convention was composed chiefly of democrats and took strong position against the extension of slavery. In 1852 the Democratic Convention convened in Baltimore, and it is a matter of history that the Virginia delegates offered the Presidency to Mr. Dickinson, who only five years before had made his free-soil declaration in