The most notable legislative outcome of this vexed situation was the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, for which Senator Douglas made himself sponsor. That bill provided for the erection of the two territories, Kansas and Nebraska, leaving it to those who should settle within that domain to permit or exclude slavery as they might please when the time should come for them to apply for admission to the Union as states. By direct implication at least slaves might freely be taken into those territories during the period of their territorial existence if the settlers there so desired. In justice to the memory of a patriotic statesman who served his country to the best of his ability, it is only fair that his doctrine and his opinions shall be presented in his own words. In the speech by which, in 1850, he placated the animosity that had greeted him at Chicago, he set forth his thought as follows: These measures [the compromise measures of 1850] are predicated upon the great fundamental principle that every people ought to possess the right of framing and regulating their own internal concerns and domestic institutions in their own way.... These things are all confided by the constitution to each state to decide for itself, and I know of no reason why the same principle should not be extended to the territories. Three years later Mr. Douglas carefully set forth his doctrine again in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill itself. Referring to the Missouri Compromise, with its prohibition of slavery in the states to be erected out of Louisiana territory north of 36° 30´, the bill said: Which being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the states and territories, as recognized by the legislation of 1850 ... is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this act 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. Mr. Douglas's doctrine, popularly known as "Squatter Sovereignty," was open to criticism on very obvious constitutional and historical grounds. The original conception of the Union had undoubtedly been that it was a confederacy of states, each sovereign within itself except in so far as it had surrendered to the National Government a part of its sovereignty by accepting the Federal Constitution and entering the Union. It was deemed an axiom that each state was free by the will of its own citizens to regulate its domestic affairs in its own way, permitting or forbidding slavery at its own free will. After the great slavery controversy arose the South contended still for this doctrine of states' rights, and by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, this sovereignty of the states was extended to the territories also.