Some of the historians teach that this would have been the end of the bill, except for the interference of President Pierce and his two most trusted advisers, Mr. Caleb Cushing and Mr. Jefferson Davis. Mr. Davis relates his connection with the matter in his own book. He says that, on Sunday morning, January 22nd, gentlemen from the two Congressional committees on Territories called at his house and asked his aid in obtaining an interview with the President; that he went with them to the executive mansion, and secured for them the desired access to the President; that the President listened patiently to the reading of the bill for organizing Kansas and Nebraska; and that the President decided that the bill "rested upon sound constitutional principles, and recognized in it only a return to that rule which had been infringed by the Compromise of 1820, and the restoration of which had been foreshadowed by the legislation of 1850." Mr. Davis furthermore specifically denies that the measure was inspired by President Pierce or any member of his Cabinet. Of course, though not inspired, it may have been aided on the way of its passage through Congress by the Administration. The proof upon which these historians chiefly rely, in their assertion that it was so aided, was the fact that the editorials in the Washington _Union_ supported the bill, and the claim that this paper was the organ of the Administration. But Mr. Sidney Webster, President Pierce's private secretary at the time, has recently declared that the Washington _Union_ was not President {402} Pierce's organ in the Kansas-Nebraska matter, or in any other matter; that President Pierce had no organ. [Sidenote: President Pierce and Mr. Davis.]