13 to “ trample on the principles and guarantees of the Constitution, by the extension of slavery into free territory through the direct legislation of the General Government. ’’Was ever accusation more groundless and utterly unfounded, than this against the South ? The South never asked Congress, by legislation, to extend slavery; nor has it ever been done by any such legislation. All that the South ever asked, or now asks, is, to leave the question to be settled by those who are to be affected by it. General James Watson Webb, the editor of this paper, (the Courier and Enquirer,) was a delegate to the late Philadelphia convention, the object of which was to embody this sectional movement of the North against the South. Ih that convention he made a speech. From that speech, as reported in the New York Times, we ■ are not left to inference as to what is the design and intention of the leading spirits controlling it. In speaking of the people the convention represented, he says: “They ask us to give them a nomination which, when put fairly before the people, will unite public sentiment, and, through the ballot-box, will restrain and repel this pro-slavery extension, and this aggression of the slave- ocracy. What else are they doing? They tell you that they are willing to abide by the ballot-box, and willing to make that the last appeal. If we fail there, what then! We will drive it back, sword in hand, and so help me God! believing that to be right, I am with them. [Loud cheers, and cries of ‘Good!’]” This was in no common town or city meeting. But it was in that great northern sectional convention lately assembled at Philadelphia, that these sentiments received such bursts of applause. TJiere is, I say, no mistaking the object of the leaders of this movement. They evidently intend to use this Kansas question to make as much political capital out of it as they can to aid them in carrying the election, by which means they hope to get power to “ crush out” the South, as they suppose; but, if they fail in the election, then they are, sword in hand, to join the revolutionists in Kansas. * In the first editorial I read frbm, in this mammoth sheet, (the Courierand Enquirer,) issued the 26th instant, and written, doubtless, by General Webb himself, who seems to be the Magnus Apollo of the Black Republican hosts,.are these significant, as well as studied, words: “ The remedy is, to go to the polls, and through the ballot-box repudiate the infamous platform put forth at Cincinnati, andover which the black flag of slavery waves with characteristic, impudence; and failing in this, do as our father did before us—stand by our inalienable rights, and drivgjpaek with arms those who dare to trample upon our inheritance. There is no boasting and no threat in this. It is the calm language of honest, conscientious, and determined freemen, wafted to us by every breeze from the West; and they are already acting in strict conformity with their avowed determination.” Now, sir, I care as little for these belligerent manifestoes of this redoubtable general of the Courier and Enquirer, as I did two years ago for the “ blazing” and “ incendiary” bulletins of his cotemporary of the Tribune. I refer to them only to show the purposes at work; and I put the question directly to this House: Are you going to allow this subject to be used for any such purposes ? If you want Kansas admitted as a beginning to the end, is to provide for as fair an expression of the popular will of the Territory as human ingenuity can devise. By the expression of that will, when thus made, I shall abide, let it be which way it may. For your bill as it stands, I can never vote. Against the'substitute 1 offer, who can raise any objection that is in favor of disposing of this question upon principles of fairness, of justice, of law, of -order, and of the Constitution? I present the distinct issue between, these two measures to the House and the country. I am constrained, Mr. Speaker, tb believe that all this clamor we hear about “ free Kansas,” and “down-trodden Kansas,” and “bleeding Kansas,” arises much more from a desire-and hope of exciting by*it sectional hate and the alienation of one portion of the Union from the other, than from any wish to have even “ free Kansas” admitted into the Union, or from any conviction that a majority of the people there are in favor of this Topeka constitution. The object-, lam constrained to believe, is not so much to get another State added to the Union, as it is to use the question to produce a severance of those States now united. Why these violent denunciations against one whole section of the Confederacy? Why is such unbridled vituperation indulged ip, towards southern men and southern institutions? Why these shouts of joy in New York on the announcement that “civil Avar” was raging in Kansas? What other construction can be put upon the movement of a late sectional convention held in Philadelphia to nominate party candidates for President and Vice President? What is the meaning of all these appeals to the passions and prejudices of the people of the northern States, exciting them to rise up against their southern brethren ? Is it not part and parcel of that same spirit which proclaimed that it were better that the Capitol should blaze by the torch of an incendiary, and wild disorder ensue, than that the free people of Kansas and Nebraska should regulate their own domestic institutions in their own way? That is all that the advocates of the Kansas bill asked; that is all it was designed to effect; and .that is all I this day ask this House to join me in carrying out in good faith to the letter and spirit. To show the House and the country, some of the grounds for ^ny belief touching the ulterior objects of some of those who are joining in this “ Kansas cry” at the North, I ask attention to an editorial of the New York Courier and Enquirer of the 26th instant. In this, that editor says: “ We are in the midst of a revolution, the origin of which is sectional, and its avowed object to gratify the grasping ambition of the slave power; and a civil war waged in behalf of freedom and in resistance of'slavery extension is a fitting accompaniment of an attempt on the part of the South and their co-laborers of the North, to trample on the principles and guarantees of the Constitution, by the extension of slavery into free territory through the direct legislation Of the General Government.” Here it is announced that we areinthe “midst of a re.volutiori, the origin of which is sectional.” But most strange to say, the cause of it is charged upon the South; and stranger stilly that cause is asserted to be an attempt on the part of the South
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