until their contents were reprinted in other papers in connection
with the discussion of legislative halls. A paper, however, which
carried a torch was The Telegraph published at Washington.
This journal in some way secured the reports of the Abolition
Society of New York, so small at the time that it had at-
tracted but little attention from the New York press, and
then by publishing the most offensive passages persuaded what
papers it could that the North was seeking to deprive the
planters of then- slaves without remuneration. It seemed to take
special pride in setting fire to secession papers.
When Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854, which provided that the inhabitants of these States should decide whether slavery should be permitted within their bound- aries, he aroused again a press discussion which to a certain extent had been quieted by the compromise of Clay and the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. The bill was denounced by the press, not only in the South, but also in the North. The Eve- ning Post, for example, asserted at the time that out of some hundred newspapers which reached the editor's desk almost all were in condemnation of the bill. After it had become a law its sponsor, Stephen A. Douglas, became the target of editorial pens all over the country: papers, regardless of party affiliations, de- nounced him everywhere; even in his own State of Illinois, his personal friends found it necessary to establish, at Chicago, in 1854, The Times as a political organ to defend the attacks brought against him.
The Kansas-Nebraska Bill, repudiating as it did the Missouri Compromise, had a national effect upon the press of the period. Its most immediate effect, however, was felt in Kansas. The Free-Soilers started bands of immigrants from New England to Kansas. Border Ruffians, determined to make it a slave State, camped temporarily in the Territory. Both sections had their papers which did much to promote trouble and to cause Kansas to lose some of its best blood.
This chapter of Kansas history may almost be read in the titles of the papers established there during the second half of the decade 1850-60. (See "Beginnings in Kansas.") At Atchi- son, The Squatter Sovereign was started on February 3, 1855; at
