12 the distinguished Senator from Michigan, [Mr. Stuart,] and the youthful, but most brave Senator from California, [Mr. Broderick.] The late Mr. Clay told us that Providence has many ways for saving nations. God forbid^ that I should consent to see Freedom wounded, because my own lead or even my own agency in saving it should be rejected. I will cheerfully co-operate with these new defenders of this sacred cause in Kansas, and I will award them all due praise, when we shall have been successful, for their large share of merit in its deliverance. Will you tell me that it is difficult to induce the Senate and the House of Representatives t.o take that short backward step? On the contrary, the hardest task that an Executive dictator ever set, or parliamentary manager ever undertook, is to prevent this very step from being taken. Let the President take off his hand, and the bow, bent so long, and held to its tension by so hard a pressure, will relax, and straighten itself at once. Consider now, if you please, the consequences of your refusal. If you attempt to coerce Kansas into the Union, under the Lecompton Constitution, the people of that Territory will resort to civil war. You are pledged to put down that revolution by the sword. Will the people listen to your voice amid the thunders of your cannon ? Let but one drop of the blood of a free citizen be shed there, by the Federal army, and the countenance of every representative of a free State, in either House of Congress, will blanch, and his tongue will refuse to utter the vote necessary to sustain the army in the butchery of his fellow-citizens. ciple, one fundamental principle, has been faithfully preserved, namely: That the new States must come voluntarily into the Union ; they must not be forced into it. “Unite or Die,” was the motto addressed to the States in the time of the Revolution. Though Kansas should perish, she cannot be brought into the Union by force. . So long as the States shall come in by free consent, their admission will be an act of union, and this will be a Confederacy. Whenever they shall be brought in by fraud or force, their admission will be an act of consolidation, and the nation, ceasing to be a Confederacy, will become in reality an Empire. All our elementary instruction is wrong, or else this change of the Constitution will subvert the liberties of the American people. You argue the consent of Kansas from documentary proofs, from her forced and partial acquiescence, under your tyrannical rule, from elections fraudulently'conducted, from her own con- tumaoy, and from your own records, made up here against her. I answer the whole argument at once: Kansas protests here, and stands, by your own confession, in an attitude of rebellion at home, to resist the annexation which you contend she is soliciting at your hands. Sir, if your proofs were a thousand times stronger, I would not hold the people of Kansas । bound by them. They all are contradicted by I stern fact. A> people can be bound by no ac- I tion conducted in their name, and pretending to. their sanction, unless they enjoy perfect freedom and safety in giving that consent. You have held the people of Kansas in duress from the first hour of their attempted organization as a community. To crown this duress by an act, at once forcing Slavery on them, which they hate, and them into a union with you, on terms which they abhor, would be but to illustrate anew, and on a grand scale, the maxim— Practically, you have already one intestine and Territorial war. A war against Brigham Young in Utah. Can you carry on two, and confine the Strife within the Territories? Can you win both ? A wise nation will never provoke more than one enemy at one time. I know that you argue that the Free State men of Kansas are impracticable, factious, seditious? Answer me three questions : Are they not a majority, and so proclaimed by the people of Kansas ? Is not this quarrel, for the right of governing themselves, conceded by the Federal Constitution ? Is the tyranny of forcing a hateful Government upon them, less intolerable than three cents impost on a pound of tea, or, five cents stamp duty on a promissory note ? You say that they can change this Lecompton Constitution when it shall once have been forced upon them. Let it be abandoned now. What' guaranty can you give against your own intervention to prevent that future change ? What security can you give for your own adherence to the construction of the Constitution which you adopt, from expediency, to-day ? What better is a Constitution than a by-law of a corporation, if it maybe forced on a State to-day, and rejected to-morrow, in derogation of its own express inhibition ? I perceive, Mr. President, that, in the way of argument, I have passed already from the ground of expediency, on which I was standing, to that of right and justice. Among all our refinements of constitutional learning, one prin “Prosperum etfelix scelus, virtus vocatur.” Mr. President, it is an occasion for joy and triumph, when a community that has gathered itself together under circumstances of privation and exile, and proceeded through a season of Territorial or provincial dependence on distant central authority, becomes a Stater, in the. full enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, and rises into the dignity of a member of this Imperial Union. But, in the case of Kansas, her whole existence has been, and it yet is, a Trial, d tempest, a clfeos— and now you propose to make her nuptials a celebration of the funeral of her freedom. The people of Kansas are entitled to save that freedom, for they have won it back when it had been wrested from them by invasion and usurpation. Sir, you are great and strong. On this continent there is1 no Power can resist you. On any other, there is hardly a Power that would not reluctantly engage with you—but you can never, never conquer Kansas. Your power, like a throne which is built of pine boards, and covered with purple, is weakness, except it be defended by a people confiding in yea, because satisfied that you are just, and grateful for the freedom that, under you, they enjoy.
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