His efforts were vain, his protest unheard; and amid the sorrow and gloom of thinking men, and the riotous rejoicings of those who could not measure the evil of their work, the Douglas Bill was passed.

On the thirtieth of May, 1854, the wise and patriotic Compromise of March 6, 1820, was declared to be at an end, and the advocates and the opponents of slavery were invited to a trial of strength on the public domain of the United States.
No previous anti-slavery excitement bore any comparison with that which spread over the North as the discussion progressed, and especially after the bill became a law.

It did not merely call forth opposition; it produced almost a frenzy of wrath on the part of thousands and tens of thousands in both the old parties, who had never before taken any part whatever in anti-slavery agitation.
So conservative a statesman as Edward Everett, who had succeeded John Davis as senator from Massachusetts, pointed out the fallacy not to say the falsehood of the plea that the Compromise measures of 1850 required or involved this legislation.

This plea was an afterthought, a pretense, contradicted by the discussion of 1850 in its entire length and breadth.

In the North, conservative men felt that no compromise could acquire weight or sanction or sacredness, if one that had stood for a whole generation could be brushed aside by partisan caprice or by the demands of sectional necessity.