We may fairly say that the slaveholders in the more southern Commonwealths sustained the Fugitive Slave {379} Law more out of consideration for their brothers in the border Commonwealths than for the sake of their own immediate interests, or from their own convictions of its policy, while they would have greatly preferred the restriction of slavery to the territory south of the line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes to the Pacific, with some sort of a guarantee of its existence there during the Territorial period, to any chance of extending slavery north of that line by the repeal of the prohibitions already existing. It is not at all surprising, in view of this state of feeling in 1852, that, ten years later, the Confederates considered themselves left in the lurch by the border Commonwealths, in the support of whose views and interests they had done so much to provoke the North to the contest. {380} CHAPTER XIX. THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE The Connection of California with the Mississippi Valley--Nebraska--Mr. Douglas' Nebraska Bill and Report--The Surprising Assumptions in the Report--Mr. Douglas' Purpose--The Report and Bill Together in Conflict with the Act of 1820--The New Section--Mr. Dixon's Proposed Amendment--Mr. Blair's Letter in Reference to Mr. Seward's Connection with Dixon's Proposition--Douglas and Dixon--Mr. Douglas' New Bill--The Free-soil Protest Against the Bill--Mr. Douglas' Reply to the Address--Mr. Chase's First Amendment to the Bill--The Southern Whigs Aroused by Mr. Wade's Accusations--Mr. Chase's Amendment Lost--Mr. Douglas' Last Change in the Wording of the Clause--Mr. Everett's Views--Mr. Houston's Opposition to the Bill--Mr. Bell's Attitude Toward the Bill--Mr. Douglas' Amendment Passed by the Senate--Mr. Chase's Amendments--Mr. Bell's Argument Against the Bill--Mr. Douglas' Final Argument--The Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill by the Senate--Analysis of the Vote Upon the Bill--Development of Popular Opposition to the Bill--The Kansas-Nebraska Bill in the House--The Relation of the Administration to the Bill--President Pierce and Mr. Davis--The Bill Taken up in the Committee of the Whole of the House of Representatives--Mr. A. H. Stephens' Management of the Bill--The Bill Passed and Signed by the President--Analysis of the Vote on the Bill in the House--What the Figures Taught--The Kansas-Nebraska Act a Stupendous Fallacy. When President Fillmore's last annual message to Congress was sent in, on December 6th, 1852, the quiet of the country in regard to the slavery question was more {381} complete than it had been since 1830. The President did not even mention the subject. Evidently the people believed that the Measures of 1850, and their cordial endorsement in the elections just passed, had finally solved the great question, in so far as the Congress could solve it at all. But never was there a more deceptive peace. It was merely the dead calm before the dread cyclone.