Salmon P. Chase: “Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress”

U.S. Senator Salmon P. Chase, together with his antislavery colleagues Senator Charles Sumner and Representatives Joshua R. Giddings, Edward Wade, Gerrit Smith, and Alexander DeWitt, published their “Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States” on January 19, 1854, to publicly oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act that Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois was pushing through Congress. The “Appeal” was originally published in the Cincinnati Daily Gazette and widely reprinted by other national newspapers. The essay reviews the history of the Missouri Compromise and argues that it had been accepted by the North only with the expectation that most of the remaining territory from the Louisiana Purchase would remain free from slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska bill permitted the extension of slavery in violation of what Chase considered to be the original policy of the United States. Describing the bill as a “bold scheme against American Liberty,” Chase vows fierce resistance.