The Crime Against Kansas

11 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 walks. And such are the people of Kansas, whose Security has been overthrown. Scenes from which civilization .averts her countenance have been a part of their daily life. The border incursions, which, in barbarous ages or barbarous lands, have fretted and “harried” an exposed people, have been here renewed, with this peculiarity, that our border robbers do not simply levy black mail and drive off a few cattle, like those who acted under the inspiration of the Douglas of other days; that they do not seize k lew persons, and sweep them away into Captivity, like the African slave-traders whom brand as pirates; but that they commit a succession of acts, in which all border sorrows and all African wrongs are revived together on American soil, and which for the time being annuls all protection of all kinds, and enslaves the whole Territory. • Private griefs mingle their poignancy with public wrongs. 1 do not dwell on the anxieties which families have undergone, exposed to sudden assault, and obliged to lie down to rest with the alarms of war ringing in their ears, not kiiowng that another day might be spared to them. Throughout this bitter winter, with \he thermometer at 30 degrees below zero, the citizens of Lawrence have been constrained to deep under arms, with sentinels treading their constant watch against surprise. But our jouls are wrung by individual instances. In rain do we condemn the cruelties of another age—the refinements of torture to which men have been 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 steel1 —for kindred outrages have disgraced these borders. Murder has stalked—assassination has skulked in the tall grass of the prairie, and the vindictiveness of nan has assumed unwonted forms. A preacher bf the Gospel of the Saviour has been ridden on u rail, and then thrown into the Missouri, lastened to a log, and left to drift down its muddy, tortuous current. And lately we have had the tidings of that enormity without precedence—a deed without a name—where a candidate of the Legislature was most brutally gashed with knives and hatchets, and then, alter weltering in blood on the snow-clad earth, was trundled along with gaping wounds, to fall dead in the face of his wife. It is common to drop a tear of sympathy over the trembling solicitudes of our early fathers, exposed to the stealthy assault of the savage foe; und an eminent American artist has pictured this scene in a marble group of rare beauty, on the front of the National (Capitol, where the uplifted towahawk is arrested b the strong arm and generous countenance d the pioneer, while his wife and children fin shelter at his feet; but now the tear must If dropped over the trembling solicitudes < fellow-citizens, seeking to build a new Sta in Kansas, and exposed to the perpetu assault of murderous robbers from Missoni Hirelings, picked from the drunken spew ai vomit of an uneasy civilization—in the for of men— Aye, in the catalogue ye go for men; As hounds and gray-hounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, Sloughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves, are called All by the name of dogs; I * leashed together by secret signs and lodgs I have renewed the incredible atrocities of tl Assassins and of the Thugs; showing tf blind submission of the Assassins to the 0 I Man of the Mountain, in robbing Christians < the road to Jerusalem, and showing the heai lessness of the Thugs, who, avowing that mq I der was their religion, waylaid travellers ( the great road from Agra to Delhi; with ti more deadly bowie-knife for the dagger of tl Assassin, and the more deadly revolver for t noose of the Thug. In these invasions, attended by the enti subversion of all Security in this Territoi) with the plunder of the ballot-box, and t pollution of the electoral franchise, I simply the process in unprecedented Crin If that be the best Government, where ; injury to a single citizen is resented as an i jury to the whole State, then must our Go ernment forfeit all claim to any such en nence, while it leaves its citizens thus expose In the outrage upon the ballot-box, even wit out the illicit fruits which I shall soon expoj there is a peculiar crime of the deepest dj though subordinate to the final Crime, whi should be promptly avenged, where royalty i<upheld, it is a s In countr pecial often to rob the crown jewels, which are the emblei of that sovereignty before which the loj subject bows, and it is treason to be found | adultery with the Queen, for in this way m a false heir be imposed upon the State ; but' our Republic the ballot-box is the single pri< less jewel of that sovereignty which we ] spect, and the electoral franchise, out of whi are born the rulers of a free people, is t Queen whom whom we are to guard agaii pollution. In this plain presentment, whet! as regards Security, or as regards Electio there is enough, surely, without proceeds furthei•, to justify the intervention of C< most promptly and completely, to thn his oppressed people the impenetral shield of the Constitution and laws, half is not yet told. But 1 As every point in a wide-spread horia l radiates from a common centre, so everyth!

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=