Mr. Lincoln, of course, shared the general indignation of Northern
sentiment that the whole of the remaining Louisiana Territory, out of
which six States, and the greater part of two more, have since been
organized and admitted to the Union, should be opened to the possible
extension of slavery. But two points served specially to enlist his
energy in the controversy. One was personal, in that Senator Douglas of
Illinois, by whom the repeal was championed, and whose influence as a
free-State senator and powerful Democratic leader alone made the repeal
possible, had been his personal antagonist in Illinois politics for
almost twenty years. The other was moral, in that the new question
involved the elemental principles of the American government, the
fundamental maxim of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are
created equal. His intuitive logic needed no demonstration that bank,
tariff, internal improvements, the Mexican War, and their related
incidents, were questions of passing expediency; but that this sudden
reaction, needlessly grafted upon a routine statute to organize a new
territory, was the unmistakable herald of a coming struggle which might
transform republican institutions.
It was in January, 1854, that the accidents of a Senate debate threw
into Congress and upon the country the firebrand of the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise.
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