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, with no faculty higher than servility to Slavery—whom the President, in his 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 dumb; but the proclamation was circulated throughout the border bounties of Missouri; and Platte, Clay, Carlisle, Sabine, Howard, and Jefferson, each of them, contributed a volunteer company, recruited from the road sides, and armed with • * weapons which chance afforded—known as the “shot-gun militia”—with a Missouri )fficer as commissary general, dispensing radons, and another Missouri officer as general- n-chief; with two wagon loads of rifles, pelonging to Missouri, drawn by six mules, rom its arsenal at Jefferson City; with seven pieces of cannon, belonging to the United States, from its arsenal at Liberty; and this prmidable force, amounting to at least 1,800 .nen, terrible with threats, with oaths, and with whisky, crossed the borders, and encamp- i(d in larger part at Wacherusa, over against Sie doomed town of Lawrence, which was now hreatened with destruction. With these invaders was the Governor, who by this act levied fyar upon the people he was sent to protect, fe camp with him was the original Catiline of fee conspiracy, while by his side was the ^ocile Chief Justice and the docile Judges, put this is not the first instance in which an (njust Governor has found tools where he flught to have found justice. In the great im- jeachment of Warren Hastings, the British r.rator, by whom it was conducted, exclaims, j.i words strictly applicable to the misdeed I few arraign, 11 Had he not the Chief Justice, ye tame and domesticated Chief Justice, who f/aited on him like a familiar spirit?” Thus qas this invasion countenanced by those who rtould have stood in the breach against it. Lor more than a week it continued, while deadly conflict seemed imminent. I do not /(veil on the heroism by which it was encoun- Lred, or the mean retreat to which it was impelled; for that is not necessary to exhibit f e Crime which you are to judge. But I | jnnot forbear to add other additional features, ’ rnished in the letter of a clergymen, written y the time, who saw and was a part of what describes : H Our citizens have been shot at, and in two instances fH'dered, 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. 3 early 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. Pay 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 ga?g 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 defe/nce of our homes and lives V But the catalogue is not yet complete. On the 15th of December, when the people assembled to vote on the Constitution then 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 irruption was made into this unhappy Territory. But I leave all this un< told. Enough of these details has been given. Five several times and more have these invaders entered Kansas in armed array, and thus five times and more have they trampled upon the organic law of the Territory. But 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, was 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. Thus was all security of person, of property, and of labor, 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 was 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 can he no true Freedom. Nor shall I say too much, when I declare that security, guarded of course by its offspring, Freedom, is the true end and aim of government. Of this indispensable boon the people of Kansas have thus far been 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
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