Incidental to the late administration, but by no means traceable to its influence, had been legislation by Congress of a most important character, which was to give a powerful impulse to agencies long tending to the destruction of the Union. The election of Pierce had been carried with a unanimity unprecedented, upon the distinct pledge of the acceptance of the Compromise as a _finality_. The country, for months subsequently, reposed in profound quiet, produced by its confidence in an approaching season of unequaled prosperity, and exempt from all danger of political agitation. This hallucination was destined to be speedily and rudely dispelled by events, which afford striking evidence of how completely the peace and happiness of the American people have always been at the mercy of aspiring and unscrupulous demagogues. Mr. Stephen A. Douglas must ever be held, equally by both sections, responsible for the disastrous agitation, which followed his introduction of certain measures, under the pretense of a sentimental justice, or a concession of principle to the South, but in reality prompted by his personal ambition, and which greatly aided to precipitate the catastrophe of disunion. Upon the application of the Territory of Nebraska for admission into the Union, Senator Douglas, from the Committee on Territories, submitted a bill creating the two Territories of Nebraska and Kansas, and affirming the supersession of the Missouri restriction of 1820, which prohibited slavery north of 36° 30', by the Compromise of 1850. It declared the Missouri restriction inconsistent with the principle of _non-intervention_ by Congress with territorial affairs, which had been adopted in the settlement of 1850, and therefore inoperative. This bill was apparently a mere concession of principle to the South, not likely to be of much practical value, but still gratifying, as it gave to her citizens the right to carry their property into districts from which it had been hitherto inhibited. Passing both houses of Congress, in 1854, it was approved by the Pierce administration,[11] sanctioned by the Democracy generally, and greeted by the South as a triumph. It was not imagined that a victory, so purely sentimental and intangible, could be accepted by the North, as a pretext for violent eruptions of sectional jealousy, and least of all did the South believe its author capable of the subsequent duplicity with which, by specious arguments and verbal ingenuity, he claimed for the measure, a construction far more insidious, but not less fatal to her interests, than the designs of proclaimed Abolitionists. The immediate result was a tempest of excitement in the Northern States, in the midst of which the so-called Republican party, for the first time, appeared as a formidable contestant in political struggles, and defeated the Democracy in almost every State election. The latter, with extreme difficulty, elected Mr. Buchanan to the Presidency two years afterwards.