INTRODUCTION. 
7 
and man, been regarded? The slave oligarchists looked with 
covetous eyes upon this fair region. They had gained, heretofore, 
whatever they had desired by craft, bribery, or threats; and the 
North, imbecile in many of its legislators, had acquiesced. They 
had gained new territory, for slavery extension, by the compromise 
of 1850, when New England’s greatest senator sounded his own 
death-knell, and, in the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill, had 
rendered the entire country slave-hunting ground. Had they not 
good reason, then, to hope by legislation to get Kansas too ? 
On the 14th of December, 1853, Mr. Dodge, of Iowa, asked 
leave to introduce a bill to organize the Territory of Nebraska, 
which was finally referred to the Committee on Territories. This 
was a simple territorial bill, in no way undertaking to touch the 
compromise of 1820, the prohibition of slavery in the territory. 
This bill w r as opposed by Atchison, Vice-President of the United 
States, as well as by other southern men. On the 4th of Janu¬ 
ary, 1854, Mr. Douglas, of Illinois, as chairman of the Com¬ 
mittee on Territories, reported this bill back to the Senate, with 
various amendments, accompanied by a special report. 
The whole country was moved at the prospect of such an out¬ 
rage as this bill proposed — the annulling of a sacred compact, 
the breaking of a plighted faith. How, through all that long 
season of discussion upon the bill, more than three months, every 
freedom-loving heart was moved to hope this great wrong might 
not be committed! How every honest feeling was stirred at the 
eloquent words of Chase, Giddings, Sumner, Seward, Hale, and 
all our noble men .in Congress, who battled mightily against this 
evil! We can never forget wdrat indignation fired the veins of 
all lovers of God and men, as the wires brought news of the 
indignity offered to New England’s three thousand protesting 
clergymen, and what shame mantled the cheek of many to remem¬ 
ber that the Benedict Arnold of the age should have been born 
of any woman in a beautiful, thriving town nestled amid the Green 
Mountains. Well will the North remember how the womanly 
element mingled its influence to stay this current of evil; how the 
protests, with many thousands of names, poured in through all 
the avenues of communication to the capital. Woman’s heart 
