Mr. Chase now moved that the whole country should be organized as one Territory instead of two. He seemed to anticipate that if two should be established at the same time, the slaveholders would claim one. This proved to be a correct suspicion. It was subsequently declared throughout the South that the purpose in forming two Territories was to give one to the North and the other to the South. And when the North made the fight for Kansas, it was really felt in the South by the mass of the people that a tacit agreement had been violated. The Senators in favor of the bill had now come to think that Mr. Chase was simply endeavoring to discredit the bill, and they quickly voted this motion down by a large majority. [Sidenote: Mr. Bell's argument against the bill.] Down to this juncture, the bill had been considered in the Senate as a committee of the Whole. It was now reported to the Senate as amended by this committee, and, on March 3rd, it came to the vote upon its final passage. It was at this point that Mr. Bell revealed his opposition to the bill, and made his great argument, the greatest effort of his long and useful life, against it. The speech was chiefly a logical and an eloquent elaboration of the three propositions, that popular sovereignty could not be {397} established in the Territories by an Act of Congress, that the passage of the bill before the Senate attempting it would produce a vast development of the anti-slavery sentiment at the North, and that no practical benefits whatsoever could accrue to the South by the repeal of the restriction upon slavery extension in the Act of 1820. But the Southerners would not listen to these words of wisdom from their own greatest colleague. [Sidenote: Mr. Douglas' final argument.]