Slavery Question

11 pence; the disarming and expulsion of peaceful free-^tate settlers by United States troops, and the arrest, imprisonment, and nameless persecutions of innocent men for treason ; the arming of bands of lawless, worthless vagabonds, from the slave states, and enrolling them in the militia of the territory, thus, under color of law, turning loose, to rob, murder, and ravish, without restraint—are all justified and charged over to the account of the' emigrant aid society, for its audacity in presuming to grant free-state settlers facilities for entering the territory of Kansas. This action of that society, is the sole justification set up by all, from the president of the United States, and grave senators, down, down, to the little “ we-mean-to-subdue-you” scrub orator, commanding the advance guard of the free- state slave democracy. Sir, I make no apology for any exertions, however.^ great, on the part of the people of the free states, or any one or more of them, topreoccupy Kansas with free-state settlers. Their fault or guilt in that regard, has not been excess, but the lack of exertion to that end. Why, sir, did the slaveholders and their sham democratic allies presume that all spirit, all devotion to the constitution and the union—nay, all-self respect, all manhood even, had so forsaken that people, that they would give up Kansas a prey to slavery, through the treachery of those whose special duty it was, to guard the interests of freedom, without availing themselves of the poor and only chance left for liberty cm that soil—the chance of outvoting the tools of slavery, by bona fide settlers from the free states ? Well, sir, if they did, it was their own folly. They had no reason to expect such pusillanimity, such degradation from the sturdy and intelligent yeomanry and mechanics of the free states, whatever they may have had reason to expect from such specimens of the cringing sycophants and doughfaces as had wormed themselves into congress and the executive from those States. Nay, sir, they did not expect it. They anticipated competition from that quarter. They challenged and defied it. They reasoned in favor of their squatter-sovereignty humbug, by asserting the superior capabilities of the free states over the slave states, for the immediate occupancy of Kansas by free-state settlers. They taunted those of us, who were unwilling to remove this Missouri restriction, with hypocrisy on this very ground, viz : that on their squatter and popular sovereignty theory, the free states had greatly the advantage in the settlement of the territory, over the slave states. Some of them declared that they expected no advantage for slavery by the repeal. Thus Judge Butler, of South Carolina, (Senate, March 22, 1854 ; Appendix to Congressional Globe, first session Thirty-third Congress, p. 292:) “ If two states should come, into the union f from them, (Kansas and Nebraska,) it is very ‘ certain that not more than one of them could ‘ in any possible event be a slaveholding state ; ‘ and I have not the least idea that even one ‘ would be.” “ As far as I am concerned, I must say that I 1 do not expect that this bill is to give us of the ‘ south anything, but merely to accommodate ‘ something like the sentiment of the south.” No, Mr. Cliairman, it was, then, “ not to make a slave state of Kansas,” but to “ accommodate a southern sentiment,” to which the Missouri restriction was offensive. Oh, how gentle then ! The velvet foot-falls of the cat, before seizing her prey, were not more soft and unalarming. But, Mr. Chairman, notwithstanding all this seeming or real disinterestedness (I do not undertake to determine which) on the part of some of the southern men, there were others who did not view it in that light at all. Mr. B!ell, of Tennessee, (May 24, 1854, Appendix, as above, page 939,) alluding to what had been stated in a caucus of the advocates of the repeal of the Missouri compromise, as to the effect of such repeal upon the entrance of slavery into the territories, says: “ But this broad principle of ‘ squatter sover- ‘ eignty’ was not the idea on which the repeal ‘ clause of this bill was inserted. I was assured 1 then that the South had some interest in it; ‘ that it would secure, practically, a slave terri- ‘ tory west of Missouri; that slavery would go ‘ into Kansas, when the restriction of 1820 was ‘ removed. It was not dwelt on in argument; ‘ but my honorable friend from Missouri knows ‘ that that view was taken by him, [Atchison,] ‘ and I differed from him in regard to it. I 1 thought slavery could not go there ; the honor- 1 able Senator thought it could. “ Mr. Atchison. And I think so still.” This debate, slight as are the glimpses it furnishes, still discloses enough to prove the eager covetings of the slaveholders for Kansas, and that they had already been “ led into temptation” in relation to the question, how the territories could be appropriated to the uses of slavery ? It was then already the “ Naboth’s vineyard” of the slaveholding station of the sham democracy, and they were then, casting about for the means of converting it to the use of slavery. “Atchison thought it could be done,” though Bell doubted. At this conclave,he [Bell] “was 4 assured that the South had some interest in it; ‘ that it would secure, practically, a slave terri- ‘ tory west of Missouri; that slavery would go ‘ into Kansas, when the restriction of 1820 was ‘ removed.” Who that reads that, can doubt that there had been, at that time, a matured conspiracy, of which Atchison was the presiding genius, to repeal the restriction, and instantly to inundate Kansas with slave-breeding emigrants from Missouri ? No one can entertain a reasonable doubt, that the sham democrats in congress from the free states, were at that time, advertised of the existence of such a conspiracy, and had been instructed by their leaders, ‘the slaveholders, to attempt to convert their constituents to the new faith, that opening the territory of Kansas to the legal introduction of slaves, did not tend in the least, to make it a slave state; that the grand discovery of squatter sovereignty, would set all these things right, as by the power of magic. For this conspiracy, there was doubtless a programme, which subsequent developments indi-

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