The South had realized their inability to compete with Northern emigration by their experience in attempting to wrest Kansas from the control of free labor.

They were not to be deluded now by a nominal equality of rights in Territories where, in a long contest for supremacy, they were sure to be outnumbered, outvoted, and finally excluded by organic enactment.

The political agitation and the sentimental feeling on this question were therefore exposed on both sides,--the North frankly confessing that they did not desire a Congressional restriction against slavery, and the South as frankly conceding that the demand they had so loudly made for admission to the Territories was really worth nothing to the institution of slavery.

The whole controversy over the Territories, as remarked by a witty representative from the South, related to an imaginary negro in an impossible place.
James Stephens Green, who was so prominent in this legislation, who prepared and reported the bills, and who was followed by a unanimous Senate, terminated his public service on the day Mr.
Lincoln was inaugurated.

He was then but forty-four years of age, and had served only four years in the Senate.