%385. The Nebraska Bill.%--Pierce was inaugurated March 4, 1853. He, too, believed that all questions relating to slavery were settled. But he had not been many months in office when the old quarrel was raging as bitterly as ever. In 1853 all that part of our country which lies between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains, the south boundary of Kansas and 49°, was wilderness, known as the Platte country, and was without any kind of territorial government. In January, 1854, a bill to organize this great piece of country and call it the territory of Nebraska was reported to the Senate by the Committee on Territories, of which Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois was chairman. Every foot of it was north of 36° 30', and according to the Missouri Compromise was free soil. But the bill provided for popular sovereignty; that is, for the right of the people of Nebraska, when they made a state, to have it free or slave, as they pleased. %386. The Kansas-Nebraska Law.%--An attempt was at once made to prevent this. But Douglas recalled his bill and brought in another, providing for two territories, one to be called Kansas[1] and the other Nebraska, expressly repealing the Missouri Compromise,[2] and opening the country north of 36° 30' to slavery.[3] The Free-soilers, led on by Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, Seward of New York, and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, did all they could to defeat the bill; but it passed, and Pierce signed it and made it law.[4] [Footnote 1: The northern and southern boundaries of Kansas were those of the present state, but it extended westward to the Rocky Mountains.] [Footnote 2: It declared that the slavery restriction of the Missouri Compromise "was suspended by the principles of the legislation of 1850, commonly called the compromise measures, and is hereby declared inoperative."] [Footnote 3: The "true intent and meaning" of this act, said the law, is, "not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." Read Rhodes's _History of the United States_, Vol. I., pp. 425-490.] [Footnote 4: May 30, 1854.] %387. The Struggle for Kansas.%--Thus was it ordained that Kansas and Nebraska, once expressly set apart as free soil, should become free or slave states according as they were settled while territories by antislavery or proslavery men. And now began a seven years' struggle for Kansas. "Come on, then," said Seward of New York in a speech against the Kansas Bill; "Come on, then, gentlemen of the slave states. Since there is no escaping your challenge, I accept it on behalf of freedom. We will engage in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory to the side that is stronger in numbers as it is in the right."