The opponents of this great principle had insisted on moulding the State of Kansas from without. Having failed to induce Congress to interfere in the internal affairs of the Territory, they then sought to accomplish their purpose by means of a society organized in Washington and charted in Massachusetts, with several millions of capital. They had deliberately attempted to discredit the Kansas-Nebraska bill and its supporters, in order to influence the approaching presidential election. The whole responsibility for the disturbance in Kansas rested upon the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company and its affiliated societies. The people of Missouri never contemplated the invasion of conquest of the Territory. If they had imitated the example set by New England, they had done it on the principle of self-defense, and had always been ready to abandon their counter-movement as soon as the managers of the New England invasion ceased their efforts to shape the domestic institutions of the Territory by an unwarranted scheme of foreign interference. When the cardinal principle of self-government should be recognized as binding on all, there would be an end of the slavery controversy, and the occupation of political agitators, whose hopes of position and promotion depended upon their capacity to disturb the country, would be gone. The debate lingered along indecisively through the Spring weeks and the Senators poured out their mutual recriminations with increasing bitterness. Personal relations among them were seriously strained. Both parties were conscious that their constituents shared their passions and applauded their acrimony. On the 19th and 20th of May, Sumner delivered his philippic on "The Crime Against Kansas." The title of the speech was a gratuitous insult to the power which had held sway in American politics for fifty years and learned to enjoy that sense of superiority and sacredness which characterized the hierarchy in the middle ages. The assaults on brother Senators were brutal. Senator Butler of South Carolina, a polite, formal gentleman of the old school, was recognized as the social and intellectual head of the Southern aristocracy. Douglas, though forever excluded from its inner circles, was an efficient and useful ally.