[Footnote 439: MS. Letter to the editors of the Illinois _State Register_, dated November 11, 1853.] [Footnote 440: Washington _Union_, December 3, 1853. See also item showing the interest in Nebraska, in the issue of November 26.] [Footnote 441: Senate Bill No. 22. The bounds were fixed at 43 deg. on the north; 36 deg. 30' on the south, except where the boundary of New Mexico marked the line; the western line of Iowa and Missouri on the east; and the Rocky Mountains on the west.] [Footnote 442: Illinois _State Register_, December 22, 1853.] [Footnote 443: New York _Journal of Commerce_, December 30, 1853.] [Footnote 444: Two years later, Douglas flatly denied that he had brought in the bill at the dictation of Atchison or any one else; and I see no good ground on which to doubt his word. His own statement was that he first consulted with Senator Bright and one other Senator from the Northwest, and then took counsel with Southern friends. See _Globe_, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., App., pp. 392-393; also Rhodes, History of the United States, I, pp. 431-432. Mr. Rhodes is no doubt correct, when he says "the committee on territories was Douglas."] [Footnote 445: Senate Report No. 15, 33 Cong., 1 Sess.] [Footnote 446: The northern boundary was extended to the 49th parallel.] [Footnote 447: The first twenty sections are written on white paper, in the handwriting of a copyist. In pencil at the end are the words: "Douglas reports Bill & read I & to 2 reading special report Print agreed." The blue paper in Douglas's handwriting covers part of these last words. The sheet has been torn in halves, but pasted together again and attached by sealing wax to the main draft. The handwriting betrays haste.] [Footnote 448: _Globe,_34 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 1374.] [Footnote 449: See his speech of March, 1850, quoted above. In a letter to the editor of _State Capital Reporter_ (Concord, N.H.), February 16, 1854, Douglas intimated as strongly as he then dared--the bill was still pending,--that "the sons of New England" in the West would exclude slavery from that region which lay in the same latitude as New York and Pennsylvania, and for much the same reasons that slavery had been abolished! in those States; see also Transactions of Illinois State Historical Society, 1900, pp. 48-49.] [Footnote 450: Speech before the Illinois Legislature, October 23, 1849; see Illinois _State Register_, November 8, 1849.] [Footnote 451: The Southern Whigs were ready to support the Dixon Amendment, according to Clingman, Speeches and Writings, p. 335.] [Footnote 452: See remarks of Douglas, January 24th, _Globe_, 33 Cong., 1 Sess., p. 240.] [Footnote 453: Letter of Dixon to Foote, September 30, 1858, in Flint, Douglas, pp. 138-141.] [Footnote 454: Dixon, True History of the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise.] [Footnote 455: Parker, Secret History of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, in the _National Quarterly Review_, July, 1880.]