[Sidenote: The bill passed and signed by the President.] The Senate bill slept in the committee of the Whole of the House of Representatives from March 21st until May 8th. During this period its friends were undoubtedly working for it, and its opponents against it. By the latter date the leaders in favor of the bill knew that they had a reliable majority in the House, and, on that day, Mr. Richardson moved that the House go into committee of the Whole, for the purpose of taking up the House Kansas-Nebraska bill for consideration. After much parliamentary fencing, this was accomplished. Mr. Richardson then proposed to substitute the Senate bill, shorn of the provision in it confining suffrage and office-holding in these Territories {404} to American citizens, for the House bill. The opponents of the bill now entered upon a course of obstruction, and, although there was a safe majority of about twenty in favor of the bill, they prevented such a vote being taken in the committee of the Whole, as would bring the matter to a crisis, for about two weeks. By this time Mr. Richardson seems to have been completely demoralized, and Mr. Alexander H. Stephens came forward and took the management of the bill into his own hands. He moved to strike out the enacting clause of the House bill. According to the rules of the House, this motion took the precedence of all motions to amend, and the effect of it would be, if passed, equivalent to the rejection of the bill, upon the happening of which the committee must rise and report its action to the House. The House could then refuse to concur with the report of the committee of the Whole, upon the happening of which Mr. Richardson could then offer the Senate bill, as a substitute, in the House, and in the House the obstructive tactics of the opposition could be dealt with as they could not be in the committee of the Whole. Mr. Stephens explained his tactics to the committee, in order that the friends of the bill might know how to vote. The opponents of the bill called this procedure a new "gag," but Mr. Stephens remained firm, and drove the Senate bill in this manner through the House by a vote of one hundred and thirteen to one hundred. The Senate concurred in the omission of the provision limiting suffrage and office-holding in the Territories to American citizens; and the President signed the bill, on May 30th. [Sidenote: Analysis of the vote on the bill in the House.] Eighty-seven members from the North, of whom forty-five were Whigs, counting the Free-soilers as Whigs, and forty-two of whom were Democrats, voted against {405} the bill; while only forty-four members from the North, all Democrats, voted for it. Sixty-nine members from the South, of whom fifty-seven were Democrats and twelve were Whigs, voted for the bill; while seven Whigs and two Democrats from the South voted against it. [Sidenote: What the figures taught.]