President Pierce's first message went to Congress December 5, 1853, and he congratulated the country on the settlement of the slavery question; but in the following month, notwithstanding the express promises made in both the party platforms of the preceding election, the event came that stunned the North, and as the realization of its enormity grew, aroused her to the wildest excitement and the most bitter denunciation, finally resulting in direct and emphatic political action in the organization of the Republican Party. On January 4, 1854, Senator Douglas introduced a Bill organizing the Territory of Nebraska. Twelve days later Senator Dixon, of Kentucky, gave notice that he would move an Amendment, repealing the Missouri Compromise, thereby permitting slavery in the new Territory. Senator Douglas then reported (January 23d) a new Bill, making two territories out of the same territory of the first Bill, the southern part to be called Kansas and the northern part to be called Nebraska, and the Missouri Compromise, "being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850, commonly called Compromise Measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of the Act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way." The Bill passed the Senate March 3d, but the South was not certain of its success in the House, and final action was postponed until May 24th, and this iniquity became a law on May 30, 1854. While setting forth the doctrine of non-intervention and popular sovereignty the Bill was in effect the forcing of slavery into the Territories, and that this was the plan became practically assured when it was discovered that throughout the summer and fall of 1853 the people of western Missouri had been deliberately planning to settle in the territory west of them (now called Kansas) and to make it slave soil. The whole plot, as revealed by the legislation to which Douglas gave his support, was to force Kansas into the Union as a slave State, thereby counterbalancing the admission of California, which had destroyed the equilibrium between the two sections.