But as not infrequently happens, the Democrats were in a majority so large that it became unwieldy; and before the administration of General Pierce had closed, a step was taken that was to lead to the most serious consequences. This step was the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The settlement, or “compromise” of 1850, made by the consentaneous action of the North and the South, rested, as on a corner stone, upon the inviolable character of the settlement of 1820, known as the Missouri Compromise. To preserve that earlier compromise intact, was to preserve the later one; for if the settlement made in 1820 in regard to all the territory derived from France should be renounced, the door would be open for the renunciation of the settlement made in 1850 respecting New Mexico and Utah. Sweep away the compact which dedicated the whole Louisiana territory north of 36° 30´ to perpetual freedom, and which gave to the South whatever parts of it below that line might be adapted to slave labor, and all Territories everywhere would be subject to a new contention over the dogma that slavery did or that it did not go into every Territory by virtue of a right derived from the Constitution of the United States. There was no security for the peace and harmony of the country, but to act upon the principle that the settlement of 1850 rested for its foundation upon the inviolable character and perpetual duration of the settlement of 1820. But in all free countries governed by political parties, and especially at times when the party in power is in an extraordinary majority, there are always men who feel that they are wiser than others, and who are apt to couple their own aims as statesmen, looking to the highest honors of their country, with new plans for the management of public affairs. Such a man was the late Stephen A. Douglas, a Senator in Congress from the State of Illinois from 1847 until his death, in 1861; a distinguished leader of the Democratic party, who had been several times a candidate for the nomination by his party to the Presidency. This very able man, who had a considerable body of friends attached to him from his energetic and somewhat imperious qualities, had been a strenuous supporter of the Compromise of 1850, and had rendered very efficient service in the adoption of that settlement. He seems to have been somewhat suddenly led, in 1854, to the adoption of the idea that it would be wise to repeal the Missouri Compromise, and that in its place might be substituted a doctrine that the people of a Territory have the same right and ought to have the same sovereign power, while in the Territorial condition, to shape their domestic institutions in their own way, as the people of a State. He does not appear to have had the foresight to see that the practical application of this doctrine would lead, in the circumstances of the country, to a sectional struggle for the possession and political dominion of a Territory, between