The condition was strange. The Georgians had a policy and the lead of a section, but no man among them possessed the qualities essential for such a task, as their bold program of pushing slavery to the Pacific within the Union, demanded. Howell Cobb approached nearer the station of leader than any other man of his State; but he scarcely measured up to what was required. Besides as great as Georgia was among the Southern States, second only to Virginia, in point of population, and quite beyond in wealth and resources, among the States of the Union, in point of population, she barely ranked tenth. From the continuous stream of white immigrants pouring into Illinois that great State was, however, rapidly moving up to the position of fourth in population, while in Stephen A. Douglas, she possessed one of the most audacious and resourceful of politicians who had ever moved in the affairs of the Union, to a great height. Carrying at his heels some forty-two Northern votes in Congress, he appeared to be just the man the Georgians needed, and accordingly in the Congress which met in December, 1853, he introduced his bill for the organization of the territory of Nebraska, framing the provisions thereof upon the precedents set in the organization of the territories of Utah and New Mexico four years before. Of this bill, a distinguished author, later president of the United States, has said: “No bolder or more extraordinary measure had ever been proposed in Congress, and it came upon the country like a thief in the night, without warning or expectation, when parties were trying to sleep off the excitement of former debates about the extension of slavery.”[152] Mr. Woodrow Wilson was of the opinion that Southern members had never dreamed of demanding such a measure and that no one but Douglas, would have dreamed of offering it to them; but yet he says the President had been consulted and had given his approval to it, upon the ground that “it was founded upon a sound principle which the compromise of 1820 had infringed upon.”[153] And certain it is that the President had consulted, concerning it, that Southerner who was destined to occupy the most prominent position ever held by a Southerner. Jefferson Davis knew of it. Of the author of the bill, Robert Toombs declared some seven years later, with his characteristic exaggeration, that the Apostle Paul was about his only superior as a leader. While Alexander H. Stephens, with absolute devotion, clung to him, until secession swept them apart, Toombs was less faithful. Forty-four Northern Democrats, and all but nine of the Southern members of the House of Representatives, supported the bill, and in the popular branch of Congress, it prevailed, by a majority of thirteen votes; in the Senate, by a vote of nearly three to one.[154] But Mr. Wilson declares that the Act contained a fatal ambiguity. When was squatter sovereignty to give its decision on the question of slavery?