7 we ask indemnification; and what remains to us and our citizens, we throw upon you for prob ction, trusting that under the flag of our Union, and within the folds of the Con- sti.ution. we may ootain safety. SAMUEL C. POMEROY, WM. Y. ROBERTS, LYMAN ALLEN, S. B. PRESTON, JOHN A. PERRY, A. H. MALLORY, C. W. BABCOCK, JOEL GRuWN. Yet, after all these declarations by men who had violated no law, and who had proposed, in a written communication to the Governor and Marshal, of 17th of May, to deliver their arms, if desired, “to Colonel Sumner, so soon as he should quarter in the town a body of United States troops sufficient for their protection, to be retained by him as long as such force shall remain,” Lawrence was sacked, and its public buildings and printing presses destroyed. Where is there a man under arrest in Kansas, or with any civil process against him, who has shot down men there for freedom of speech, or who has destroyed printing presses, burned the dwellings of peaceable and defenceless citizens, and sent their wives and children into the wilderness, to find protection with the savage, against their’less-merciful pursuers? Where is the man who has been arrested by your guardians of law , and order for any of these outrages and wrongs ? Under the sanction of officers of the law, citizens have been stopped upon the highways, their persons searched and papers seized, without any legal process ; their property taken and confiscated; and they, unless engaged in the work of making Kansas a slave State, compelled to carry , a pass, signed by some official of the Territory, in order to save themselves from robbery or murder by these conservators of law. Thus are American freemen, on American soil, reduced to, the condition of a Southern slave, who must have his master’s written pass in order to leave the plantation. With the shout of law and order you lay in ashes the houses of peaceable citizens, destroy their printing presses, and with cannon batter , down their public buildings. With the shout of law and order you disarm the citizen, while the Constitution of his country declares that the right “ to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” With the shout of law and order you search and take from the houses and persons of the citizens, without legal process, their papers and effects, when the Constitution of the country declares that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated ; ” and no search shall in any case be made without a warrant issued on oath, describing the place to be searched, or the person or thing to be seized. With the shout of law and order you seize law-abiding citizens, and by mob law exile them from their homes, for declaring that Slavery is an evil, and ought to be pro- I hibited by law, while the Constitution guaranties 1 freedom of speech and of the press. With the shout of law and order you arrest and put in chains order-loving citizens, on a charge of high treason, for peaceably assembling and petitioning the Government for a redress of grievances— thus"trampling upon all law and the most sacred guarantees of the Constitution of your country. Law and order is the excuse of despotism, the world over, for all its enormities. It was to preserve law and order that Poland was blotted from the map of nations, and the dungeon and the rack silenced the voice of patriotism in Hungary. To preserve law and order, the streets of Naples are crowded with chained gangs, and its quarries are covered with galley-slaves, guilty of no offence save that they hate oppression and love liberty. For the same reason, some of the noblest sons of France are to-day pining in hopeless exile, and Siberia is full of hearts too large to be contained by their native land. The law and order that reigns over the graves of crushed humanity is more to be dreaded than all else; it is the order of death. Order reigns in desolation—reigns everywhere, when you close the mouths of men, either by brute force or under the sanction of law. The scaffold sends its victim to a quiet rest, and order reigns over his grave. The order of Kansas is the order that reigned in Warsaw on the 7th of September, 1831, when, with its streets red with the best blood of its citizens, and the shrieks of liberty stifled as her last votary fell, Paskiewitch sentto the Czar his memorable dispatch, “ Order reigns in Warsaw.” The satrap of this Administration in Kansas exhibits a like love of law and order with his prototype, whose example, with becoming propriety, he might well imitate, if he succeds in crushing out in Kansas the spirit ofliberty, by sending a like dispatch to his superior, “ Order reigns in Kansas." Law and order enlist in the service of any master who, for the time being, chances to hold the sceptre of power. They are just as efficient for oppression and wrong as for freedom and right. When enlisted in behalf of despotism, I pay no homage at their shrine. But liberty and law are the twin divinities who guard the rights of man, and watch over his happiness. At their altar, all good men will lay their offerings. But the law and order of despotism is to be execrated the world over; and the day has passed away when outrage and wrong are to be vindicated by the cry of law and order. In view of the wrongs and outrages perpetrated upon the people of Kansas, the patriot may well exclaim, in the language of Madame Roland on ascending the scaffold: “ Oh, Liberty, what crimes have been committed in thy name 1 ” Mr. Speaker, were there no precedent for the admission of a State under like circumstances, those surrounding this case would, of themselves, be sufficient to establish one. Truth, justice, and humanity, need no precedents ; they make them. It is old abuses and time-sanctioned wrongs that entrench themselves behind formulas. Why should an American legislator hesitate in the performance of any act that his judgment approves, for want of a precedent ? The existence of the Republic, and its whole history, is in violation of all precedent. There is not one of the universally-recognised truths of to-day, but what was the rankest heresy when, first proclaimed, and the fagot and the , 76 -
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=