“The invaders came together in one armed and organized body,
with trains of fifty wagons, besides horsemen, and the night
before election pitched their camp in the vicinity of the
polls; and having appointed their own judges in place of those
who, from intimidation or otherwise, failed to attend, they
voted without any proof of residence.”
With this force they were able, on the succeeding day, in some places,
to intimidate the judges of elections, in others to substitute judges
of their own appointment, in others to wrest the ballot-boxes from
their rightful possessors, and everywhere to exercise a complete
control of the election, and thus, by preternatural audacity of
usurpation, impose a Legislature upon the free people of Kansas. Thus
was conquered the Sebastopol of that Territory!
It was not enough to secure the Legislature. The election of a member
of Congress recurred on the 1st of October, 1855, and the same
foreigners, who had learned their strength, again manifested it.
Another invasion, in controlling numbers, came from Missouri, and once
more forcibly exercised the electoral franchise in Kansas.
At last, in the latter days of November, 1855, a storm, long gathering,
burst upon the heads of the devoted people. The ballot-boxes had been
violated, and a Legislature installed, which proceeded to carry out
the conspiracy of the invaders; but the good people of the Territory,
born to Freedom, and educated as American citizens, showed no signs
of submission. Slavery, though recognized by pretended law, was in
many places practically an outlaw. To the lawless borderers this was
hard to bear; and, like the heathen of old, they raged, particularly
against the town of Lawrence, already known, by the firmness of its
principles and the character of its citizens, as citadel of the good
cause. On this account they threatened, in their peculiar language, to
“wipe it out.” Soon the hostile power was gathered for this purpose.
The wickedness of this invasion was enhanced by the way in which it
began. A citizen of Kansas, by the name of Dow, was murdered by a
partisan of Slavery, in the name of “law and order.” Such an outrage
naturally aroused indignation and provoked threats. The professors of
“law and order” allowed the murderer to escape, and, still further to
illustrate the irony of the name they assumed, seized the friend of
the murdered man, whose few neighbors soon rallied for his rescue.
This transaction, though totally disregarded in its chief front of
wickedness, became the excuse for unprecedented excitement. The weak
Governor,[73] with no faculty higher than servility to Slavery,--whom
the President, in official delinquency, had appointed to a trust worthy
only of a well-balanced character,--was frightened from his propriety.
By proclamation he invoked the Territory. By telegraph he invoked the
President. The Territory would not respond to his senseless appeal. The
President was false. But the proclamation was circulated throughout
the border counties of Missouri; and Platte, Clay, Carroll, Saline,
Howard, and Jackson, each of them, contributed a volunteer company,
recruited from the roadsides, and armed with weapons which chance
afforded, known as “the shot-gun militia,”--with a Missouri officer as
commissary-general, dispensing rations, and another Missouri officer
as general-in-chief,--with two wagon-loads of rifles, belonging to
Missouri, drawn by six mules, from its arsenal at Jefferson City,--with
seven pieces of cannon, belonging to the United States, from its
arsenal at Liberty; and this formidable force, amounting to at least
1,800 men, terrible with threats, oaths, and whiskey, crossed the
borders, and encamped in larger part on the Wakarusa, over against the
doomed town of Lawrence, now threatened with destruction. With these
invaders was the Governor, who by this act levied war upon the people
he was sent to protect. In camp with him was the original Catiline of
the conspiracy, while by his side were the docile Chief Justice and the
docile Judges. But this is not the first instance in which an unjust
governor has found tools where he ought to have found justice. In the
great impeachment of Warren Hastings, the British orator by whom it was
conducted exclaims, in words strictly applicable to the misdeed I here
denounce: “Had he not the Chief Justice, the tamed and domesticated
Chief Justice, who waited on him like a familiar spirit?”[74] Thus
was this invasion countenanced by those who should have stood in the
breach against it. For more than a week it continued, while deadly
conflict was imminent. I do not dwell on the heroism by which it was
encountered, or the mean retreat to which it was compelled; for that
is not necessary in exhibiting the Crime which you are to judge. But I
cannot forbear to add other features, furnished in a letter written at
the time by a clergyman, who saw and was part of what he describes.
“Our citizens have been shot at, _and in two instances
murdered_, our houses invaded, hay-ricks burnt, corn and other
provisions plundered, cattle driven off, all communication
cut off between us and the States, wagons on the way to us
with provisions stopped and plundered, and the drivers taken
prisoners, and we in hourly expectation of an attack. _Nearly
every man has been in arms in the village._ Fortifications
have been thrown up, by incessant labor night and day. The
sound of the drum and the tramp of armed men resounded through
our streets, _families fleeing with their household goods for
safety_. Day before yesterday the report of cannon was heard
at our house, from the direction of Lecompton. Last Thursday
one of our neighbors,--one of the most peaceable and excellent
of men, from Ohio,--on his way home, was set upon by a gang of
twelve men on horseback, and shot down. Over eight hundred men
are gathered under arms at Lawrence. As yet no act of violence
has been perpetrated by those on our side. _No blood of
retaliation stains our hands. We stand, and are ready to act,
purely in the defence of our homes and lives._”
The catalogue is not yet complete. On the 15th of December, when the
people assembled to vote on the Constitution submitted for adoption,
only a few days after the Treaty of Peace between the Governor on the
one side and the town of Lawrence on the other, another and fifth
irruption was made. But I leave all this untold. Enough of these
details has been given.
Five several times and more have these invaders entered Kansas in
armed array, and thus five several times and more have they trampled
upon the organic law of the Territory. These extraordinary expeditions
are simply the extraordinary witnesses to successive, uninterrupted
violence. They stand out conspicuous, but not alone. The spirit of
evil, in which they had their origin, is wakeful and incessant.
From the beginning it hung upon the skirts of this interesting
Territory, harrowing its peace, disturbing its prosperity, and keeping
its inhabitants under the painful alarms of war. All security of
person, property, and labor was overthrown; and when I urge this
incontrovertible fact, I set forth a wrong which is small only by the
side of the giant wrong for the consummation of which all this is done.
Sir, what is man, what is government, without security, in the absence
of which nor man nor government can proceed in development or enjoy
the fruits of existence? Without security civilization is cramped and
dwarfed. Without security there is no true Freedom. Nor shall I say too
much, when I declare that security, guarded of course by its parent
Freedom, is the true end and aim of government. Of this indispensable
boon the people of Kansas are despoiled,--absolutely, totally. All
this is aggravated by the nature of their pursuits, rendering them
peculiarly sensitive to interruption, and at the same time attesting
their innocence. They are for the most part engaged in the cultivation
of the soil, which from time immemorial has been the sweet employment
of undisturbed industry. Contented in the returns of bounteous Nature
and the shade of his own trees, the husbandman is not aggressive;
accustomed to produce, and not to destroy, he is essentially peaceful,
unless his home is invaded, when his arm derives vigor from the soil he
treads, and his soul inspiration from the heavens beneath whose canopy
he daily toils. Such are the people of Kansas, whose security has been
overthrown. Scenes from which Civilization averts her countenance
are part of their daily life. Border incursions, which in barbarous
ages or barbarous lands fretted and harried an exposed people, are
here renewed, with this peculiarity, that our border robbers do not
simply levy blackmail and drive off a few cattle, like those who acted
under the inspiration of the Douglas of other days,--they do not seize
a few persons, and sweep them away into captivity, like the African
slave-traders, whom we brand as pirates,--but they commit a succession
of deeds in which border sorrows and African wrongs are revived
together on American soil, while, for the time being, all protection is
annulled, and the whole Territory is enslaved.
Private griefs mingle their poignancy with public wrongs. I do not
dwell on the anxieties of families exposed to sudden assault, and
lying down to rest with the alarms of war ringing in the ears, not
knowing that another day may be spared to them. Throughout this
bitter winter, with the thermometer at thirty degrees below zero,
the citizens of Lawrence were constrained to sleep under arms, with
sentinels pacing constant watch against surprise. Our souls are wrung
by individual instances. In vain do we condemn the cruelties of another
age, the refinements of torture to which men were doomed, the rack
and thumb-screw of the Inquisition, the last agonies of the regicide
Ravaillac,
“Luke’s iron crown, and Damien’s bed of steel”;
for kindred outrages disgrace these borders. Murder stalks,
Assassination skulks in the tall grass of the prairie, and the
vindictiveness of man assumes unwonted forms. A preacher of the Gospel
has been ridden on a rail, then thrown into the Missouri, fastened
to a log, and left to drift down its muddy, tortuous current. And
lately we have the tidings of that enormity without precedent, a
deed without a name, where a candidate for the Legislature was most
brutally gashed with knives and hatchets, and then, after weltering in
blood on the snow-clad earth, trundled along, with gaping wounds, to
fall dead before the face of his wife. It is common to drop a tear of
sympathy over the sorrows of our early fathers, exposed to the stealthy
assault of the savage foe,--and an eminent American artist[75] has
pictured this scene in a marble group, on the front of the National
Capitol, where the uplifted tomahawk is arrested by the strong arm
and generous countenance of the pioneer, whose wife and children find
shelter at his feet; but now the tear must be dropped over the sorrows
of fellow-citizens building a new State in Kansas, and exposed to the
perpetual assault of murderous robbers from Missouri. Hirelings, picked
from the drunken spew and vomit of an uneasy civilization, having the
form of men,--
“Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men;
As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are clept
All by the name of dogs,”--
leashed together by secret signs and lodges, renew the incredible
atrocities of the Assassins and the Thugs,--showing the blind
submission of the Assassins to the Old Man of the Mountain in robbing
Christians on the road to Jerusalem, and the heartlessness of the
Thugs, who, avowing that murder is their religion, waylay travellers on
the great road from Agra to Delhi,--with the more deadly bowie-knife
for the dagger of the Assassin, and the more deadly revolver for the
noose of the Thug.
In these invasions, with the entire subversion of all security in this
Territory, the plunder of the ballot-box, and the pollution of the
electoral franchise, I show simply the process in unprecedented Crime.
If that be the best government where injury to a single citizen is
resented as injury to the whole State, what must be the character of
a government which leaves a whole community of citizens thus exposed?
In the outrage upon the ballot-box, even without the illicit fruits
which I shall soon exhibit, there is a peculiar crime, of the deepest
dye, though subordinate to the final Crime, which should be promptly
avenged. In other lands, where royalty is upheld, it is a special
offence to rob the crown jewels, which are emblems of that sovereignty
before which the loyal subject bows, and it is treason to be found in
adultery with the queen, for in this way may a false heir be imposed
upon the State; but in our Republic the ballot-box is the single
priceless jewel of that sovereignty which we respect, and the electoral
franchise, where are born the rulers of a free people, is the royal bed
we are to guard against pollution. In this plain presentment, whether
as regards security or as regards elections, there is enough, without
proceeding further, to justify the intervention of Congress, promptly
and completely, to throw over this oppressed people the impenetrable
shield of the Constitution and laws. But the half is not yet told.
As every point in a wide-spread horizon radiates from a common centre,
so everything said or done in this vast circle of Crime radiates from
the _One Idea_, that Kansas, at all hazards, must be made a Slave
State. In all the manifold wickednesses that occur, and in every
successive invasion, this _One Idea_, is ever present, as Satanic
tempter, motive power, _causing cause_. Talk of “one idea!” Here it is
with a vengeance!
To accomplish this result, three things are attempted: _first_, by
outrage of all kinds, to drive the friends of Freedom out of the
Territory; _secondly_, to deter others from coming; and, _thirdly_,
to obtain complete control of the Government. The process of driving
out, and also of deterring, has failed. On the contrary, the friends
of Freedom there have become more fixed in resolve to stay and fight
the battle which they never sought, but from which they disdain to
retreat,--while the friends of Freedom elsewhere are more aroused to
the duty of timely succor by men and munitions of just self-defence.
While defeated in the first two processes, the conspirators succeeded
in the last. By the violence already portrayed at the election of
the 30th of March, when the polls were occupied by armed hordes from
Missouri, they imposed a Legislature upon the Territory, and thus,
under the iron mask of law, established a Usurpation not less complete
than any in history. That this was done I proceed to prove. Here is the
evidence.
1. Only in this way can this extraordinary expedition be adequately
explained. In the words of Molière, once employed by John Quincy
Adams in the other House, “_Que diable allaient-ils faire dans cette
galère?_” What did they go into the Territory for? If their purposes
were peaceful, as has been suggested, why cannons, arms, flags,
numbers, and all this violence? As simple citizens, proceeding to the
honest exercise of the electoral franchise, they might go with nothing
more than a pilgrim’s staff. Philosophy always seeks a _sufficient
cause_, and only in the _One Idea_ already presented can a cause be
found in any degree commensurate with the Crime; and this becomes so
only when we consider the mad fanaticism of Slavery.
2. Public notoriety steps forward to confirm the suggestion of reason.
In every place where Truth can freely travel it is asserted and
understood that the Legislature was imposed upon Kansas by foreigners
from Missouri; and this universal voice is now received as undeniable
verity.
3. It is also attested by harangues of the conspirators. Here is what
Stringfellow said _before_ the invasion.
“To those who have qualms of conscience as to violating laws,
State or National, the time has come when such impositions must
be disregarded, as your rights and property are in danger; _and
I advise you, one and all, to enter every election district in
Kansas, in defiance of Reeder and his vile myrmidons, and vote
at the point of the bowie-knife and revolver_. Neither give nor
take quarter, as our cause demands it. It is enough that the
slaveholding interest wills it, from which there is no appeal.
What right has Governor Reeder to rule Missourians in Kansas?
His proclamation and prescribed oath must be repudiated. It is
your interest to do so. Mind that Slavery is established where
it is not prohibited.”
Here is what Atchison said _after_ the invasion.
“Well, what next? Why, an election for members of the
Legislature to organize the Territory must be held. What did I
advise you to do then? Why, meet them on their own ground, and
beat them at their own game again; and cold and inclement as
the weather was, I went over with a company of men. My object
in going was not to vote. I had no right to vote, unless I had
disfranchised myself in Missouri. I was not within two miles
of a voting-place. My object in going was not to vote, but to
settle a difficulty between two of our candidates; and the
Abolitionists of the North said, _and published it abroad, that
Atchison was there with bowie-knife and revolver,--and, by God,
’twas true! I never did go into that Territory, I never intend
to go into that Territory, without being prepared for all such
kind of cattle._ Well, we beat them, and Governor Reeder gave
certificates to a majority of all the members of both Houses,
and then, after they were organized, as everybody will admit,
they were the only competent persons to say who were and who
were not members of the same.”
4. It is confirmed by contemporaneous admission of “The Squatter
Sovereign,” a paper published at Atchison, and at once the organ of the
President and of these Borderers, which, under date of 1st April, thus
recounts the victory.
“INDEPENDENCE, [MISSOURI,] March 31, 1855.
“Several hundred emigrants from Kansas have just entered our
city. They were preceded by the Westport and Independence brass
bands. They came in at the west side of the public square, and
proceeded entirely around it, the bands cheering us with fine
music, and the emigrants with good news. Immediately following
the bands were about two hundred horsemen in regular order;
following these were one hundred and fifty wagons, carriages,
&c. They gave repeated cheers for Kansas and Missouri. They
report that not an Antislavery man will be in the Legislature
of Kansas. _We have made a clean sweep._”
5. It is also confirmed by contemporaneous testimony of another paper,
always faithful to Slavery, the “New York Herald,” in the letter of a
correspondent from Brunswick, Missouri, under date of 20th April, 1855.
“From five to seven thousand men started from Missouri to
attend the election, some to remove, but the most to return to
their families, with an intention, if they liked the Territory,
to make it their permanent abode at the earliest moment
practicable. But they intended to vote. The Missourians were,
many of them, Douglas men. There were one hundred and fifty
voters from this county, one hundred and seventy-five from
Howard, one hundred from Cooper. Indeed, every county furnished
its quota; and when they set out, it looked like an army.…
They were armed.… And, as there were no houses in the
Territory, they carried tents. Their mission was a peaceable
one,--to vote, and to drive down stakes for their future homes.
After the election some fifteen hundred of the voters sent a
committee to Mr. Reeder to ascertain if it was his purpose to
ratify the election. He answered that it was, and said the
majority at an election must carry the day. But it is not to be
denied that the fifteen hundred, apprehending that the Governor
might attempt to play the tyrant,--since his conduct had
already been insidious and unjust,--wore on their hats bunches
of hemp. They were resolved, if a tyrant attempted to trample
upon the rights of the sovereign people, to hang him.”
6. It is again confirmed by testimony of a lady for five years resident
in Western Missouri, who thus writes in a letter published in the “New
Haven Register.”
“MIAMI, SALINE COUNTY, November 26, 1855.
“You ask me to tell you something about the Kansas and Missouri
troubles. Of course you know in what they have originated.
_There is no denying that the Missourians have determined to
control the elections, if possible_; and I do not know that
their measures would be justifiable, except upon the principle
of self-preservation; and that, you know, is the first law of
Nature.”
7. And it is confirmed still further by the Circular of the Emigration
Society of Lafayette County, in Missouri, dated as late as 25th March,
1856, where the efforts of Missourians are openly confessed.
“The western counties of Missouri have for the last two years
been heavily taxed, both in money and time, in fighting the
battles of the South. _Lafayette County alone has expended more
than one hundred thousand dollars in money, and as much or more
in time. Up to this time the border counties of Missouri have
upheld and maintained the rights and interests of the South in
this struggle, unassisted, and not unsuccessfully._ But the
Abolitionists, staking their all upon the Kansas issue, and
hesitating at no means, fair or foul, are moving heaven and
earth to render that beautiful Territory _a Free State_.”
8. Here, also, is amplest testimony to the Usurpation, by the
“Intelligencer,” a leading paper of St. Louis, Missouri, made in the
ensuing summer.
“Atchison and Stringfellow, with their Missouri followers,
overwhelmed the settlers in Kansas, browbeat and bullied them,
and took the Government from their hands. Missouri votes
elected the present body of men, who insult public intelligence
and popular rights by styling themselves ‘the Legislature
of Kansas.’ This body of men are helping themselves to fat
speculations by locating the ‘seat of Government’ and getting
town lots for their votes. They are passing laws disfranchising
all the citizens of Kansas who do not believe Negro Slavery to
be a Christian institution and a national blessing. They are
proposing to punish with imprisonment the utterance of views
inconsistent with their own. And they are trying to perpetuate
their preposterous and infernal tyranny by appointing _for a
term of years_ creatures of their own, as commissioners in
every county, to lay and collect taxes, and see that the laws
they are passing are faithfully executed. Has this age anything
to compare with these acts in audacity?”
9. In harmony with all these is the authoritative declaration of
Governor Reeder, in a speech to his neighbors at Easton, Pennsylvania,
at the end of April, 1855, and immediately afterwards published in the
Washington “Union.” Here it is.
“It was, indeed, too true that Kansas had been invaded,
conquered, subjugated, by an armed force from beyond her
borders, led on by a fanatical spirit, trampling under foot the
principles of the Kansas Bill and the right of suffrage.”
10. In similar harmony is the complaint of the people of Kansas, in
public meeting at Big Springs, on the 5th of September, 1855, embodied
in these words.
“_Resolved_, That the body of men who for the last two months
have been passing laws for the people of our Territory, moved,
counselled, and dictated to by the demagogues of Missouri, are
to us a foreign body, representing only the lawless invaders
who elected them, and not the people of the Territory,--that we
repudiate their action, as the monstrous consummation of an act
of violence, usurpation, and fraud, unparalleled in the history
of the Union, and worthy only of men unfitted for the duties
and regardless of the responsibilities of Republicans.”
11. Finally, the invasion which ended in the Usurpation is clearly
established from official Minutes laid on our table by the President.
But the effect of this testimony has been so amply exposed by the
Senator from Vermont [Mr. COLLAMER], in his able and indefatigable
argument, that I content myself with simply referring to it.
* * * * *
On this cumulative, irresistible evidence, in concurrence with
antecedent history, I rest. And yet Senators here argue that this
cannot be,--precisely as the conspiracy of Catiline was doubted in
the Roman Senate. “_Nonnulli sunt in hoc ordine, qui aut ea quæ
imminent non videant, aut ea quæ vident dissimulent; qui spem Catilinæ
mollibus sententiis aluerunt, conjurationemque nascentem non credendo
corroboraverunt._”[76] These words of the Roman Orator picture the case
here. As I listened to the Senator from Illinois, while he painfully
strove to show that there is no Usurpation, I was reminded of the
effort by a distinguished logician to prove that Napoleon Bonaparte
never existed. And permit me to say, that the fact of his existence is
not more entirely above doubt than the fact of this Usurpation. This
I assert on proofs already presented. But confirmation comes almost
while I speak. The columns of the public press are daily filled with
testimony solemnly taken before the Committee of Congress in Kansas,
which attests, in awful light, the violence ending in the Usurpation.
Of this I may speak on some other occasion.[77] Meanwhile I proceed
with the development of the Crime.
* * * * *
The usurping Legislature assembled at the appointed place in the
interior, and then at once, in opposition to the veto of the Governor,
by a majority of two thirds, removed to the Shawnee Mission, a place
in most convenient proximity to the Missouri borderers, by whom it had
been constituted, and whose tyrannical agent it was. The statutes of
Missouri, in all their text, with their divisions and subdivisions,
were adopted bodily, and with such little local adaptation that the
word “State” in the original is not even changed to “Territory,”
but is left to be corrected by an explanatory act. All this general
legislation was entirely subordinate to the special chapter entitled
“An Act to punish Offences against Slave Property,” where the One
Idea that provoked this whole conspiracy is at last embodied in
legislative form, and Human Slavery openly recognized on Free Soil,
under the sanction of pretended law.[78] This chapter, of thirteen
sections, is in itself a _Dance of Death_. But its complex completeness
of wickedness without parallel may be partially conceived, when it
is understood that in three sections only is the penalty of death
denounced no less than forty-eight different times, by as many changes
of language, against the heinous offence, described in forty-eight
different ways, of interfering with what does not exist in that
Territory, and under the Constitution cannot exist there,--I mean
property in human flesh. Thus is Liberty sacrificed to Slavery, and
Death summoned to sit at the gates as guardian of the Wrong.
The work of Usurpation was not perfected even yet. It had already cost
too much to be left at any hazard.
“To be thus is nothing,
But to be safely thus.”
Such was the object. And this could not be, except by the entire
prostration of all the safeguards of Human Rights. Liberty of speech,
which is the very breath of a Republic,--the press, which is the terror
of wrong-doers,--the bar, through which the oppressed beards the
arrogance of law,--the jury, by which right is vindicated,--all these
must be struck down, while officers are provided in all places, ready
to be the tools of this Tyranny; and then, to obtain final assurance
that their crime is secure, the whole Usurpation, stretching over the
Territory, must be fastened and riveted by legislative bolt, spike,
and screw, _so as to defy all effort at change through ordinary forms
of law_. To this work, in its various parts, were bent the subtlest
energies; and never, from Tubal Cain to this hour, was any fabric
forged with more desperate skill and completeness.
Mark, Sir, three different legislative enactments, constituting part of
this work. _First_, according to one act, all who deny, by spoken or
written word, “the right of persons to hold slaves in this Territory,”
are denounced as felons, to be punished by imprisonment at hard labor
for a term not less than two years,--it may be for life. To show the
extravagance of this injustice, it is well put by the Senator from
Vermont [Mr. COLLAMER], that, should the Senator from Michigan [Mr.
CASS], who believes that Slavery cannot exist in a Territory, unless
introduced by express legislative act, venture there with his moderate
opinions, his doom must be that of a felon! To such extent are the
great liberties of speech and of the press subverted! _Secondly_,
by another act, entitled “An Act concerning Attorneys-at-Law,” no
person can practise as attorney, unless he _shall obtain a license_
from the Territorial courts, which, of course, a tyrannical discretion
will be free to deny; and after obtaining such license, he is
constrained to take an oath not only “to support” the Constitution
of the United States, but also “to support and sustain”--mark here
the reduplication--the Territorial Act and the Fugitive Slave Bill:
thus erecting a test for admission to the bar, calculated to exclude
citizens who honestly regard the latter legislative enormity as
unfit to be obeyed. And, _thirdly_, by another act, entitled “An
Act concerning Jurors,” all persons “conscientiously opposed to the
holding slaves,” or “who do not admit the right to hold slaves in this
Territory,” are excluded from the jury on every question, civil or
criminal, arising out of asserted slave property,--while, in all cases,
the summoning of the jury is left, without one word of restraint, to
“the marshal, sheriff, or other officer,” who is thus free to pack it
according to his tyrannical discretion.
For the ready enforcement of all statutes against Human Freedom, the
President furnished a powerful quota of officers, in the Governor,
Chief Justice, Judges, Secretary, Attorney, and Marshal. The
Legislature completed this part of the work, by constituting in each
county a Board of Commissioners, composed of two persons, associated
with the Probate Judge, whose duty it is to “appoint a county
treasurer, coroner, justices of the peace, constables, and _all_ other
officers provided for by law,” and then proceeding to the choice of
this very Board: thus delegating and diffusing their usurped power, and
tyrannically imposing upon the Territory a crowd of officers, in whose
appointment the people had no voice, directly or indirectly.
And still the final, inexorable work remained to be done. A Legislature
renovated in both branches could not assemble until 1858: so that,
during this long intermediate period, this whole system must continue
in the likeness of law, unless overturned by the National Government,
or, in default of such interposition, by the generous uprising of an
oppressed people. But it was necessary to guard against possibility
of change, even tardily, at a future election; and this was done by
two different acts, under the _first_ of which all who do not take the
oath to support the Fugitive Slave Bill are excluded from the elective
franchise, and under the _second_ of which all others are entitled
to vote who tender a tax of one dollar to the sheriff on the day of
election; thus, by provision of Territorial law, disfranchising all
opposed to Slavery, and at the same time opening the door to the votes
of the invaders; by an unconstitutional shibboleth excluding from the
polls the body of actual settlers, and by making the franchise depend
upon a petty tax only admitting to the polls the mass of borderers from
Missouri. By tyrannical forethought, the Usurpation not only fortified
all that it did, but assumed a _self-perpetuating_ energy.
* * * * *
Thus was the Crime consummated. Slavery stands erect, clanking its
chains on the Territory of Kansas, surrounded by a code of death,
and trampling upon all cherished liberties, whether of speech, the
press, the bar, the trial by jury, or the electoral franchise. And,
Sir, all this is done, not merely to introduce a wrong which in itself
is a denial of all rights, and in dread of which mothers have taken
the lives of their offspring,--not merely, as is sometimes said, to
protect Slavery in Missouri, since it is futile for this State to
complain of Freedom on the side of Kansas, when Freedom exists without
complaint on the side of Iowa, and also on the side of Illinois,--but
it is done for the sake of political power, in order to bring two new
slaveholding Senators upon this floor, and thus to fortify in the
National Government the desperate chances of a waning Oligarchy. As
the gallant ship, voyaging on pleasant summer seas, is assailed by a
pirate crew, and plundered of its doubloons and dollars, so is this
beautiful Territory now assailed in peace and prosperity, and robbed of
its political power for the sake of Slavery. Even now the black flag of
the land pirates from Missouri waves at the mast-head; in their laws
you hear the pirate yell and see the flash of the pirate knife; while,
incredible to relate, the President, gathering the Slave Power at his
back, testifies a pirate sympathy.
Sir, all this was done in the name of Popular Sovereignty. And
this is the close of the tragedy. Popular Sovereignty, which, when
truly understood, is a fountain of just power, has ended in Popular
Slavery,--not in the subjection of the unhappy African race merely,
but of this proud Caucasian blood which you boast. The profession
with which you began, of _All by the People_, is lost in the wretched
reality of _Nothing for the People_. Popular Sovereignty, in whose
deceitful name plighted faith was broken and an ancient Landmark of
Freedom overturned, now lifts itself before us like Sin in the terrible
picture of Milton, which
“seemed woman to the waist, and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed
With mortal sting: about her middle round
A cry of hell-hounds never ceasing barked
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there, yet there still barked and howled
Within, unseen.”
The image is complete at all points; and with this exposure I take my
leave of the Crime against Kansas.