I regret, with all this company, the absence of Mr. Whitman of Kansas,
whose narrative was to constitute the interest of this meeting. Mr.
Whitman is not here; but knowing, as we all do, why he is not, what
duties kept him at home, he is more than present. His vacant chair
speaks for him. For quite other reasons, I had been wiser to have stayed
at home, unskilled as I am to address a political meeting, but it is
impossible for the most recluse to extricate himself from the questions
of the times.
There is this peculiarity about the case of Kansas, that all the right is
on one side. We hear the screams of hunted wives and children answered
by the howl of the butchers. The testimony of the telegraphs from St.
Louis and the border confirm the worst details. The printed letters of
border ruffians avow the facts. When pressed to look at the cause of
the mischief in the Kansas laws, the President falters and declines the
discussion; but his supporters in the Senate, Mr. Cass, Mr. Geyer, Mr.
Hunter, speak out, and declare the intolerable atrocity of the code.
It is a maxim that all party spirit produces the incapacity to receive
natural impressions from facts; and our recent political history has
abundantly borne out the maxim. But these details that have come from
Kansas are so horrible, that the hostile press have but one word in
reply, namely, that it is all exaggeration, ’tis an Abolition lie. Do the
Committee of Investigation say that the outrages have been overstated?
Does their dismal catalogue of private tragedies show it? Do the private
letters? Is it an exaggeration, that Mr. Hopps of Somerville, Mr. Hoyt of
Deerfield, Mr. Jennison of Groton, Mr. Phillips of Berkshire, have been
murdered? That Mr. Robinson of Fitchburg has been imprisoned? Rev. Mr.
Nute of Springfield seized, and up to this time we have no tidings of his
fate?
In these calamities under which they suffer, and the worst which threaten
them, the people of Kansas ask for bread, clothes, arms and men, to save
them alive, and enable them to stand against these enemies of the human
race. They have a right to be helped, for they have helped themselves.
This aid must be sent, and this is not to be doled out as an ordinary
charity; but bestowed up to the magnitude of the want, and, as has been
elsewhere said, “on the scale of a national action.” I think we are to
give largely, lavishly, to these men. And we must prepare to do it.
We must learn to do with less, live in a smaller tenement, sell our
apple-trees, our acres, our pleasant houses. I know people who are making
haste to reduce their expenses and pay their debts, not with a view to
new accumulations, but in preparation to save and earn for the benefit of
the Kansas emigrants.
We must have aid from individuals,—we must also have aid from the state.
I know that the last legislature refused that aid. I know that lawyers
hesitate on technical grounds, and wonder what method of relief the
legislature will apply. But I submit that, in a case like this, where
citizens of Massachusetts, legal voters here, have emigrated to national
territory under the sanction of every law, and are then set on by
highwaymen, driven from their new homes, pillaged, and numbers of them
killed and scalped, and the whole world knows that this is no accidental
brawl, but a systematic war to the knife, and in defiance of all laws and
liberties,—I submit that the governor and legislature should neither
slumber nor sleep till they have found out how to send effectual aid and
comfort to these poor farmers, or else should resign their seats to those
who can. But first let them hang the halls of the state-house with black
crape, and order funeral service to be said for the citizens whom they
were unable to defend.
We stick at the technical difficulties. I think there never was a people
so choked and stultified by forms. We adore the forms of law, instead of
making them vehicles of wisdom and justice. I like the primary assembly.
I own I have little esteem for governments. I esteem them only good in
the moment when they are established. I set the private man first. He
only who is able to stand alone is qualified to be a citizen. Next to the
private man, I value the primary assembly, met to watch the government
and to correct it. That is the theory of the American State, that it
exists to execute the will of the citizens, is always responsible to
them, and is always to be changed when it does not. First, the private
citizen, then the primary assembly, and the government last.
In this country for the last few years the government has been the chief
obstruction to the common weal. Who doubts that Kansas would have been
very well settled, if the United States had let it alone? The government
armed and led the ruffians against the poor farmers. I do not know any
story so gloomy as the politics of this country for the last twenty
years, centralizing ever more manifestly round one spring, and that
a vast crime, and ever more plainly, until it is notorious that all
promotion, power and policy are dictated from one source,—illustrating
the fatal effects of a false position to demoralize legislation and put
the best people always at a disadvantage;—one crime always present,
always to be varnished over, to find fine names for; and we free
statesmen, as accomplices to the guilt, ever in the power of the grand
offender.
Language has lost its meaning in the universal cant. _Representative
Government_ is really misrepresentative; _Union_ is a conspiracy
against the Northern States which the Northern States are to have the
privilege of paying for; the _adding of Cuba and Central America_ to
the slave marts is _enlarging the area of Freedom_. _Manifest Destiny_,
_Democracy_, _Freedom_, fine names for an ugly thing. They call it otto
of rose and lavender,—I call it bilge-water. They call it Chivalry and
Freedom; I call it the stealing all the earnings of a poor man and the
earnings of his little girl and boy, and the earnings of all that shall
come from him, his children’s children forever.
But this is Union, and this is Democracy; and our poor people, led by the
nose by these fine words, dance and sing, ring bells and fire cannon,
with every new link of the chain which is forged for their limbs by the
plotters in the Capitol.
What are the results of law and union? There is no Union. Can any citizen
of Massachusetts travel in honor through Kentucky and Alabama and speak
his mind? Or can any citizen of the Southern country who happens to think
kidnapping a bad thing, say so? Let Mr. Underwood of Virginia answer.
Is it to be supposed that there are no men in Carolina who dissent from
the popular sentiment now reigning there? It must happen, in the variety
of human opinions, that there are dissenters. They are silent as the
grave. Are there no women in that country,—women, who always carry the
conscience of a people? Yet we have not heard one discordant whisper.
In the free states, we give a snivelling support to slavery. The judges
give cowardly interpretations to the law, in direct opposition to the
known foundation of all law, that _every immoral statute is void_. And
here of Kansas, the President says: “Let the complainants go to the
courts;” though he knows that when the poor plundered farmer comes to the
court, he finds the ringleader who has robbed him dismounting from his
own horse, and unbuckling his knife to sit as his judge.
The President told the Kansas Committee that the whole difficulty grew
from “the factious spirit of the Kansas people respecting institutions
which they need not have concerned themselves about.” A very remarkable
speech from a Democratic President to his fellow citizens, that they
are not to concern themselves with institutions which they alone are to
create and determine. The President is a lawyer, and should know the
statutes of the land. But I borrow the language of an eminent man, used
long since, with far less occasion: “If that be law, let the ploughshare
be run under the foundations of the Capitol;”—and if that be Government,
extirpation is the only cure.
I am glad to see that the terror at disunion and anarchy is disappearing.
Massachusetts, in its heroic day, had no government—was an anarchy.
Every man stood on his own feet, was his own governor; and there was no
breach of peace from Cape Cod to Mount Hoosac. California, a few years
ago, by the testimony of all people at that time in the country, had the
best government that ever existed. Pans of gold lay drying outside of
every man’s tent, in perfect security. The land was measured into little
strips of a few feet wide, all side by side. A bit of ground that your
hand could cover was worth one or two hundred dollars, on the edge of
your strip; and there was no dispute. Every man throughout the country
was armed with knife and revolver, and it was known that instant justice
would be administered to each offence, and perfect peace reigned. For the
Saxon man, when he is well awake, is not a pirate but a citizen, all made
of hooks and eyes, and links himself naturally to his brothers, as bees
hook themselves to one another and to their queen in a loyal swarm.
But the hour is coming when the strongest will not be strong enough. A
harder task will the new revolution of the nineteenth century be than was
the revolution of the eighteenth century. I think the American Revolution
bought its glory cheap. If the problem was new, it was simple. If there
were few people, they were united, and the enemy three thousand miles
off. But now, vast property, gigantic interests, family connections, webs
of party, cover the land with a network that immensely multiplies the
dangers of war.[150]
Fellow citizens, in these times full of the fate of the Republic, I
think the towns should hold town meetings, and resolve themselves into
Committees of Safety, go into permanent sessions, adjourning from week to
week, from month to month. I wish we could send the sergeant-at-arms to
stop every American who is about to leave the country. Send home every
one who is abroad, lest they should find no country to return to. Come
home and stay at home, while there is a country to save. When it is lost
it will be time enough then for any who are luckless enough to remain
alive to gather up their clothes and depart to some land where freedom
exists.
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