Such was the general repose of the country upon these topics when President Pierce was inaugurated, that he congratulated the country upon the calm security now evinced by the public mind, and promised that it should receive no shock during his official term, if he could prevent it. But the shock came within two years, and it came because the repeal of the Missouri Compromise threw open again the whole question of slavery in the Territories, to remain an unending sectional controversy until it had divided one great national party, built up a new and sectional party, and finally rent the Union into a geographical array of section against section. The more immediate and local effect remains to be described. Kansas at once became the theatre where the extreme men of both sections entered into a deadly conflict, the one party to make it a free, the other to make it a slaveholding Territory and State. Congress having abdicated its duty of fixing the character of the Territory by law, one way or the other, the beauty of Mr. Douglas’s principle of “non-intervention,” now become popularly known in the political jargon of the day as “squatter sovereignty,” had ample room for development. What one party could do, on this principle, the other could do. The Southern pro-slavery settler, or his sympathizer in the Southern State which he had left, could claim that his slaves were property in Kansas as much as in Missouri, or Tennessee, or Kentucky. The Northern anti-slavery settler, or his sympathizer in the Northern State from which he had come, could contend that slavery was local and confined to the States where it existed. Fierce war arose between the parties in their struggle for local supremacy; both parties were respectively upheld and supplied by their sympathizers in the near and in the distant States, North and South; scenes of bloodshed and rapine ensued; and the bitter fruits of opening a fine Territory to such a contest were reaped in an abundance that made sober men stand aghast at the spectacle. It was when Mr. Buchanan entered upon the duties of the Presidency that this condition of things in Kansas came to its culmination. The pro-slavery party in the Territory, in general violent and lawless enough, in one respect kept themselves on the side of law. They sustained the Territorial government which had been organized under the Act of Congress, and obtained control of its legislature. The anti-slavery party repudiated this legislature, alleging, with some truth, that frauds and violence had been committed in the election.