The Crime Against Kansas

repelling the authority of this example, I repel also the trite argument founded on the earlier example of England. It is true that our mother country, at the peace of Utrecht, extorted from Spain the Assiento Contract, securing the monopoly of the slave trade with I man; against him is an immortal princip the Spanish Colonies, as the whole price of all | With finite power he wrestles with the infinil the blood of great victories; that she higgled and he must fall. Against him are strond at Aix-la-Chapelle for another lease of this battalions than any marshaled by mortal a? exclusive traffic; and again, at the treaty of Madrid, clung to the wretched piracy. true, that in this spirit the power of the mother nature in all her subtle forces; against him country was prostituted to the same base ends in her American Colonies, against indignant protests from our fathers. All these things now rise up in judgment against her. Let us not follow the Senator from South Carolina to do the very evil to-day, which in another generation we condemn. As the Senator from South Carolina is the Don Quixote, the Senator from Illinois [Mr. Douglas] is the squire of Slavery, its very Sancho Panza, ready to do all its humiliating offices. This Senator, in his labored address, vindicating his labored report—piling one mass of elaborate error upon another mass—constrained himself. as you will remember, to unfamiliar decencies of speech. Of that address J have nothing to say at this moment, though before'! sit down I shall show something of its fallacies. But I go back now to an earlier occasion, when, true to his native impulses, he threw into this discussion, “for a charm of powerful trouble,” personalities most discrei ditable to this body. I will not stop to repel tab imputations which he cast upon myself; but I mention them to remind you of the “sweltered, venom sleeping got,” which, with I The occasion requires it from the beginnin other poisoned ingredients, he cast into the I' ’ ’ ” ' ‘ It has been well remarked by a distinguish- pl other tilings I historian of our country, that, at the Ithuri . " " ' touch of the Missouri discussion, the slave i ue<l his rescript, requiring submission to the terest hitherto hardly recognized as a distinl m-ped Power ot Kansas; and this was element in our system, started up portentous ai xmipanied by a manner—all his own—such dilated, with threats and assumptions whid befits the tyrannical threat. Very well, are the origin of our existing national politic I tell him now that he This was in 1820. The discussion ended wit any such submission. The the admission of Missouri as a slaveholdii Power at his back, is State, and the prohibition of Slavery in i „....... ."’P'V1’ ’ g territory west of the Missi He shrinks from noth- sippi, and north of 36° 30', leaving the cond Like Danton, he may cry, “ Vaudace! tion of other territories south of this line < toujours I'awlace! ' but even his subsequently acquired, untouched bv tl The arrangeinent. Here was a solemn act c who, with legislation, called at the time a compromise 1 t i 14- __________ . I cauldron of this debate. Standing on this floor, the Senator IOC i Senator t cannot Seuatm enforce but he is not strong enough for this the remainin Ue is bold. imr compass this work. DCmator copies th 4 I British officer, >aid that with the hilt of his tword lie would cram the stamps ” down the md he will similar failure / with civil 1 American peopl He may convulse this 1. Like the ancient madman, lie may set tire to this vast Temple of Constitutional Liberty, grander than Ephesian dome; but he cannot enforce obedience Lu that tyrannical Usurpation. The Senator dreams that he can subdue t North. He disclaims the open threat, but 1 conduct still implies it. How little tl Senator knows himself, or the strength of t cause which he persecutes ! He is but a mor. —the inborn, ineradicable, invincible sea; It is ments of the human heart: against him 7 O । God. Let him try to subdue these. But I pass from these things, which, thou belonging to the very heart of the discussid are yet preliminary in character, and press once to the main question. I 1. It belongs to me now, in the first pla; to expose the Crime against Kansas, in j origin and extent. Logically, this is 1 beginning of the argument. I say Crime, d deliberately adopt this strongest term, as b| ter than any other denoting the consuming transgression. 1 would go further, if langur; could further go. It is the Crime of Grin —surpassing far the old crimen maj estat pursued with vengeance by the laws of Bon and containing all the crimes, as the greai contains the less. I do not go too far, whei call it the Crime against Nature, from whi the soul recoils, and which language refuses describe. To lay bare this enormity, I nc proceed. The whole subject has already I come a twice-told tale, and its renewed recii will be a renewal of its sorrow and sham but I shall not hesitate to enter' upon Mr. covenant, a compact, first brought forward i this body by a slaveholder—vindicated b slaveholders in debate—finally sanctioned b slaveholding votes—also upheld at the tim by the essential approbation of a slaveholdin President, James Monroe, and his Cabinet, o whom a majority were slaveholders, including Calhoun himself; and this compromis was made the condition of the admission o:

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