Henry J. Raymond was busy with his new venture, the _Times_, launched by him and George Jones, the banker. With Raymond were associated editorially Alexander C. Wilson and James W. Simonton. William Cullen Bryant, nearing sixty, still bent “the good grey head that all men knew” over his editor’s desk in the office of the _Evening Post_. With him, as partner and managing editor, was that other great American, John Bigelow. J. Watson Webb, fiery as ever in spirit, still ran the _Courier and Enquirer_, “the Austrian organ in Wall Street,” as Raymond called it because of Webb’s hostile attitude toward Kossuth. Webb had been minister to Austria, a post for which Raymond was afterward to be nominated but not confirmed. The newspapers and the people were all pretty well satisfied with themselves. And then Stephen A. Douglas put his foot in it, and Kansas began to bleed. Douglas had been one of the _Sun’s_ great men, for the _Sun_ listed heavily toward the Democratic party nationally; but it did not disguise its dislike of the Little Giant’s unhappily successful effort to organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska on the principle of squatter sovereignty. After the peace and quiet that had followed the Missouri Compromise, this attempt to bring slavery across the line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes by means of a local-option scheme looked to the _Sun_ very much like kicking a sleeping dragon in the face. After Douglas had been successful in putting his bill through Congress, the _Sun_ still rejected its principles. Commenting on the announcements of certain Missourians that they would take their slaves into the new Territory, the _Sun_ said: They may certainly take their slaves with them into the new Territory, but when they get them there they will have no law for holding the slaves. Slavery is a creation of local law, and until a Legislature of Kansas or Nebraska enacts a law recognizing slavery, all slaves taken into the Territory will be entitled to their freedom. It was at this time that the germs of Secession began to show themselves on the culture-plates of the continent. The _Sun_ was hot at the suggestion of a division of the Union: It can only excite contempt when any irate member of Congress or fanatical newspaper treats the dissolution of the Union as an event which may easily be brought about. There is moral treason in this habit of continually depreciating the value of the Union.