If the bill had been subjected to the plebiscite on February 1st, it is very probable that the people in the Northern Commonwealths would have sustained the positions taken by their respective Senators. Had this been {400} done on March 1st, it is probable that this would not have been the case in some of the Northern Commonwealths, whose Senators voted for the measure. And had it been done on April 1st, it is practically certain that it would not have been. After February 1st, there was developed throughout the North a very strong opposition to the bill among the people. The most influential newspapers denounced it. Numerous meetings, largely attended, protested against it. The legislatures of several of the Commonwealths passed resolutions condemning it. And the clergy generally arraigned it as immoral, inhuman, and irreligious. The movements against it seem to have been spontaneous and to have been connected with each other only by the common sentiment against the extension of slavery. It is, however, probable that the Address to the people, issued by Mr. Chase and his Free-soil friends in the latter part of January, furnished the necessary excitant. The Address seems to have been the text from which most of these articles, protests, memorials, speeches, and sermons were drawn. When the bill was sent to the House of Representatives, it was thus evident to all impartial observers that its growing unpopularity at the North would be a very great obstacle to its passage by the House. Its friends felt that they must get it through speedily or see it lost altogether. Already, on January 31st, Mr. Richardson, of Illinois, Mr. Douglas' lieutenant in the House of Representatives, had reported from the House committee on Territories a bill for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, which was the same in substance and language as that reported by Mr. Douglas to the Senate. It had been discussed a little in the committee of the Whole House, but had slumbered there after February 15th. {401} [Sidenote: The Kansas-Nebraska bill in the House.] On March 7th, the Senate bill was sent into the House for concurrence. It was taken up for consideration on the twenty-first, and, after some parliamentary passes, was referred to the House committee on Territories. [Sidenote: The relation of the Administration to the bill.]