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 DISCOURSE 
 
 PREACHED IX 
 
 THE PLYMOUTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH 
 
 OF CHICAGO, 
 SABBATH AFTERNOON, JUNE 1, 1856, 
 
 BY THE PASTOR; 
 
 REV. J. E. ROY. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY VOTE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 PRIXTED &Y 
 
 WRIGHT, MED1LL, DAY & CO., TRIBUTE OFFICE. 
 1856. 
 
$nm~~\tx Sintggk att& \n *§thni 
 
 DISCOURSE 
 
 PREACHED IN 
 
 THE PLYMOUTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH 
 
 OF CHICAGO, 
 
 SABBATH AFTERNOON, JUNE 1, 1856, 
 
 BY THE PASTOR, 
 
 X 
 
 v- 
 
 REV. j/e?ROY. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY VOTE OE THE CHUKCH. 
 
 PRt\TED HY 
 
 WRIGHT, MEDILL, DAY & CO., TRIBUNE OFFICE. 
 1856. 
 
KANSAS; 
 
 HER STRUGGLE AND HER DEFENSE. 
 
 "And the king of the South shall be moved with choler, and shall come forth 
 and figiit with him, eves with the king of the north ; and at the time of the 
 end shall the king of the south push at him, and the king of the north shall 
 come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and 
 with many ships, and he shall enteb into the countries and shall overflow 
 and pass over." — Dan. xi, 11, 40. 
 
 In this chapter the prophet foretells with great accuracy 
 the mighty conquests of Alexander, the division of his 
 realm, at his death, not in his family, but among his four 
 generals, and then the final subsidence of these four em- 
 pires into two great rivals. These two kingdoms were 
 Egypt and Syria, with their dependencies. Egypt was 
 ruled by the line of kings called the "Ptolemies," and 
 Syria by the " Selencidse," the sons of Selencus. Egypt, 
 from its location, was called the South, and Syria the 
 North. In this chapter the prophet further describes the 
 continual contests going on between the South kingdom 
 and the North kingdom, through several generations of 
 kings. Our text represents the South as offensive and 
 ao'oressive, and the North at first forbearing, at last roused 
 
 Co C 1 / 
 
 up, and then overwhelmingly victorious in defense and 
 protection. 
 
KANSAS — HER STRUGGLE 
 
 You already understand my theme to be " The Strug- 
 gle between Freedom and Slavery, between the South 
 and the North." 
 
 Such a struggle exists; it began long since, and has 
 only been increasing in strength and desperation up to 
 the present time. Though some have denied the fact, 
 and others, knowing it, have endeavored to ignore it, yet 
 now it has become the most evident fact in our national 
 history. At the present time no issue elicits so much 
 thought, and talk, and planning as this. No issue among 
 the American people concentrates so much of energy and 
 determination as this. It is the question which now sways 
 the American mind to one side or the other. 
 
 Political parties are just now expending all their skill 
 and power to bring the entire mass of the voters in the 
 country into rank and file upon one side or the other of 
 this line. The press, both religious and secular, either 
 by its warm advocacy or by its neutral favorings, is for 
 freedom or for slavery, and just in proportion to its ear- 
 nestness and its distinctive character is it considered up 
 with the spirit of the times. In the commercial world, 
 cotton is versus independence, and the cotton king rules 
 with an iron scepter. In the church, this is the great 
 question that agitates Conference, and Assembly, and 
 Association. During the last two weeks this bone of con- 
 tention has been picked by the three largest ecclesiastical 
 bodies in the United States. All our benevolent publish- 
 ing and missionary institutions are rocking upon this rest- 
 less volcano. And now, at last, the evidence has come 
 that must convince the most skeptical of the existence 
 of this struggle, and that must quickly determine the 
 position of even the most conservative. We are reminded 
 of the old injunction, "the king's business demands haste." 
 
AND HER DEFENSE. 
 
 Whether we muster under the king of the South or the 
 king of the North must now be speedily decided. The 
 recent outrages in Kansas and in the United States Sen- 
 ate are only the text taken for this occasion, out of a long 
 chapter upon this very subject, from the book of our 
 national history. 
 
 Then, to understand the text well, though it is so evi- 
 dently self-interpreting, we must study the context. If 
 we would get the full force and expression of the pas- 
 sage, we must view it in its relation to the whole subject; 
 we must consider its author, its spirit and its times. It 
 will not bethe effort of this discourse to excite horror and 
 indignation in your minds at the commission of such out- 
 rageous crimes. That were a work of supererogation. I 
 doubt not your cheeks already tingle with shame and your 
 righteous indignation burns in your breasts. This hum- 
 ble effort would rather seek to help us to a clearer under- 
 standing of the struggle now going on, and to decide in a 
 calm and deliberate manner our solemn responsibilities in 
 the same. No man is fit to engage in this contest until 
 he has stanched his anger and concentrated his energy, 
 physical, mental and moral, upon the mighty issue. 
 
 Taking, then, these occurrences as our text, let us go 
 back to the beginning of the chapter and trace the thread 
 of connection up to the present crisis. 
 
 It is no weary journey through tomes of history and 
 tradition, back to our Freedom's birtli-day. Our fathers, or 
 our fathers' fathers, rocked the cradle of the infant Inde- 
 pendence, and they have told the story to us. How that 
 her mother, like the woman in the Apocalypse, was driven 
 from her native home into the wilderness, "where she 
 had a place prepared of God," to bring forth her child — 
 how that, in the midst of deprivation, and persecution, 
 
6 KANSAS— HER STRUGGLE 
 
 and sorrow, her birth-pangs were long and heart-rending. 
 They have told us of their joy over their first-born, such 
 as none but those who have felt it can know. They have 
 told us of the toil, and hardship, and execration which 
 was heaped upon them by their cruel step-father, and how 
 he tried to kill them, just because they would call the 
 child their own. 
 
 But now, would God that I could take a garment upon 
 my shoulders, and go backward, and cover the disgrace of 
 that day. Our fathers were ashamed of it; they would 
 have hidden the fact forever, if they could. A foundling 
 was left at their door — the offering of Despotism was im- 
 posed upon them, to be adopted along with the child of 
 Freedom. They were of entirely different natures; there 
 was no likeness between them; they were antagonistic, 
 and, like the sons of the patriarch, they were first found 
 one having his hand upon the heel of the other, and how 
 true has been the prediction in both cases, " the one shall 
 be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the 
 younger." 
 
 Our fathers knew not what to do; they had not cour- 
 age to kill the thing, though they tried their best to do 
 so, while some demanded that he should live. And so 
 they made the first compromise ; they would not kill him 
 right out, but they refused to christen him, and so his 
 name does not appear in the Constitution; and they also 
 refused to make any provision for his support or protec- 
 tion, but they even resolved to put him on such a regimen 
 that they supposed he would absolutely die out in about 
 twenty years; they cut off the foreign supply and really 
 thought that would be the best and surest way to get rid 
 of the creature. 
 
 Such was the origin of Freedom and of Slavery, and 
 
AND HER DEFENSE. 
 
 such were the feelings in regard to them. Slavery existed 
 here, not by any agreement of the men of the Revolution, 
 but in spite of and against their protest. The system 
 was not indigenous to the American soil; it was an exotic; 
 it belonged to monorchism. No one need think that the 
 Puritans came through what they did to forge fetters for 
 human limbs. They had a sublimer mission; it was, to 
 found here what the world had never seen — a church 
 without a pope and a State without a king. Even in the 
 Southern States there was then more or less of opposition 
 to the system. In Prince George's County, Virginia, 
 June, 1774, a general meeting resolved "that the African 
 slave trade is injurious to the colony, because it obstructs 
 the population of it by freemen, prevents manufacturers 
 and other useful people from settling, and occasions an 
 annual increase in the balance of trade against the colony." 
 Because it obstructs the population of it by freemen ! 
 How wonderfully has that been verified to this day. At 
 a similar meeting in Fairfax County, Virginia, about that 
 time, George Washington in the chair, it was "resolved 
 that it is the opinion of this meeting, that during our pre- 
 sent difficulties and distress, no slaves ought to be im- 
 ported into any of the British colonies; and in this con- 
 nection, we take this opportunity of declaring our most 
 earnest wish to see an entire stop put to such a wicked, 
 cruel and unnatural trade." They had no idea of putting 
 it under the perpetual safeguard of the Union. Similar 
 views were declared by the State of Georgia, in 1775, 
 condemning the whole system of slavery. An address 
 was sent to the king, remonstrating against the traffic in 
 slaves, and signed by the representatives of each of the 
 colonies ; and among these names was that of the immortal 
 Washington. 
 
KANSAS — HER STRUGGLE 
 
 Mr. Madison, who is sometimes called the Father of 
 the Constitution, when an attempt was made to introduce 
 slavery into the Constitution, said: "It must not be so, 
 because we intend this Constitution to be the great char- 
 ter of human liberty to the unborn millions who shall 
 enjoy its protection, and who should never see that such 
 an institution as slavery was ever known in our midst." 
 And it was not done. Those men never dreamed of per- 
 petuating slavery, much less of giving it a home in the 
 Constitution. They knew that slavery was a lie; they 
 meant that it should cease. Upon the very bell which 
 called those old men together in Independence Hall, at 
 Philadelphia, and which still hangs there, I have read 
 these words, inscribed : " Proclaim liberty throughout all 
 the land, to all the inhabitants thereof." Such was the 
 prevailing spirit of those times, which was reaffirmed in 
 1789, when Congress unanimously ordained that slavery 
 or involuntary servitude should be forever excluded from 
 all the territory they then had, viz: all that north-west 
 of the Ohio river. It was that wise ordinance that has 
 secured the blessing of liberty, and prosperity, and great- 
 ness to the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and 
 Wisconsin. 
 
 Meantime, the value of the productions of slave labor, 
 sugar and cotton, was very much enhanced, and this 
 became a stimulus to those who already held slaves to 
 hold on to them. Besides, a rivalry for political ascend- 
 ancy began to appear, such that there was now a desire 
 to add new States to each of the respective classes, the 
 slave-holding and non-slave-holding States. And then 
 the prohibition of the slave trade did not work so effect- 
 ually as they expected in diminishing slavery, for it con- 
 tinued to grow. Now the antagonism manifest itself. 
 
AND HER DEFENSE. 9 
 
 Louisiana, already having slavery under its old French 
 organization, is demanded as a slave State, and was so 
 received. Then came up the question of receiving the 
 Territory of Missouri as a State : Shall it be free or slave? 
 The House and the free States said free, and the Senate 
 and the slave States said slave. Freedom and Slavery 
 grappled, the former claiming the spirit of the fathers and 
 the Constitution, and the precedent of the North-West 
 Territory, the latter claiming its equal right and furiously 
 demanding it. Here Freedom crippled and Slavery gained 
 a victory. Before, the whole was consecrated to liberty; 
 now, only half, and half disconsecrateel to Slaveiy. Maine 
 was received a non-slave-holding and Missouri a slave- 
 holding State, and provision was made for the future upon 
 the same scale — all below 36° 30' for Slaveiy, and all 
 above for Freedom. 
 
 Now Slavery takes courage and gloats upon the idea 
 of supremacy in the government. It was once sectional, 
 and expected itself to die; now it awakes with the sud- 
 den ambition of becoming national and perpetual. And 
 forthwith Florida must be bought of Spain, and then an 
 exterminating warfare carried on against the Indians 
 there, to make more room to work and whip the wretched 
 slave. And scarcely is this accomplished when plans are 
 put on foot to rescue from Mexico the province of Texas, 
 to make it a slave plantation. Now, again, Freedom 
 rouses; she remonstrates, she makes a feeble resistance, 
 but all to no avail. Texas was received into the Union 
 with slavery perpetual and provision for four new slave 
 States, to be carved out of her territory. Then a quar- 
 rel was picked with Mexico, by provocation and aggres- 
 sion, in order to acquire new soil to satisfy the increasing 
 
10 KANSAS — HER STRUGGLE 
 
 demand of the slave power. Freedom resisted, but was 
 again overcome. 
 
 With the meanness and insolence of tyranny, the slave 
 power compelled the government to refuse to acknowledge 
 the independence of Hayti, where slaves have become 
 freemen. 
 
 This slave system has forced our government to seek 
 compensation for slaves escaped to foreign countries, or 
 else to seek the surrender of fugitives, thus ignobly bow- 
 ing our American institutions to assert in foreign coun- 
 tries the right of traffic in human flesh. This slave- 
 ocracy, having once disavowed the foreign slave trade, 
 has all the while kept up the infamous home slave trade, 
 and now, with its increasing insolence, demands the 
 restoration of the old hellish commerce. 
 
 Waxing powerful, it dared to enter the halls of Con- 
 gress and lay its ruffian hand upon the right of petition. 
 Freedom resisted, and John Quincy Adams made his 
 name immortal, if by nothing else, by his triumph, alone, 
 in spite of censure, and persecution, and exposure of life. 
 But even this victory was sought to be overthrown, a 
 short time since, when three thousand respectable citizens 
 of New England dared to use the right of petition. Then, 
 as if to outrage all humanity, to violate the Constitution, 
 and to compel the very citizens of the North to become 
 slave hunters, and to make our broad, free domain a slave 
 hunting ground, the Fugitive Slave Law was forced upon 
 us, that denies these fundamental principles of our gov- 
 ernment, trial by jury and habeas corpus. Here, too, the 
 North come to a stand, but was over-mastered by the 
 despotism of the South. 
 
 Then is renewed the struggle upon the Missouri Com- 
 promise. Heretofore the South had received all her 
 
AND HER DEFENSE. 11 
 
 advantage from that compromise, and the North had 
 received nothing but the nominal possession of a howling 
 wilderness, inhabited only by wild animals and savages. 
 But now Ahab looks over into the vineyard of Naboth; 
 it is near his domain; it is a fertile region; emigration 
 begins to pour in; and Ahab, in violation of all right, and 
 in violation of a solemn compact, robs his neighbor. Here 
 the North again resisted, with remonstrance, and petition, 
 and appeal, and press, and pulpit, and forum, but all to 
 no avail. As always before, the victory turned upon the 
 side of oppression. Mark, here, another step of usurpa- 
 tion in regard to the national territory. At first, not a 
 foot of national domain under slavery; then, the ordi- 
 nance of '87 consecrated every foot of newly acquired 
 territory to perpetual freedom ; then, in the Missouri 
 Compromise, half was given up to slavery, and now, 
 by the Nebraska Act, the whole is thrown open to the 
 blight, and curse, and misery of chattelhood in man. 
 
 Now, my hearers, let us pause a moment and consider 
 who it is that has done all this. Is it the thirteen mill- 
 ions of freemen in the North? Is it the six millions of 
 whites in the South ? Nay ; the largest share of them, 
 the laboring white poor, are as abject as the very 
 slaves that toil by their side. " White slaves " was the 
 contemptuous term by which Gov. Robert Wickliffe, of 
 Kentucky, was pleased to designate them, and so they 
 are considered. 
 
 Who, then, are the persons that usurp so much author- 
 ity and sway in our government ? They are the slave- 
 holders. And how many are they ? Fortunately for the 
 truth, but shamefully for the cause of freedom, the last 
 census reveals that the whole number of this class, men, 
 women and children, all told, is only three hundred and 
 
12 KANSAS— HER STRUGGLE 
 
 forty-seven thousand. Of these the larger share are small 
 slave-holders, leaving only 92,000 persons as the owners 
 of the great mass of slaves. 92,000 ! Less than the 
 present population of Chicago ! Yet this is the power 
 that has controlled our nation, and, at this very hour, is 
 the supreme authority in this country. It is sometimes 
 called the Black Power, or Slave Power. But Charles 
 Sumner has given its proper name, the Slave Oligarchy. 
 It is the government of the few, and they are the genu- 
 ine specimen of Oligarchs. It is this Slave Oligarchy 
 that lias made all of the encroachments upon freedom of 
 which I have been speaking. It is this Slave Oligarchy 
 that has brought slavery from being local to being claimed 
 as national. It is this Slave Oligarchy that has perverted 
 our government from the principles of Washington, and 
 Jefferson, and Madison, and Henry to the policy of 
 Pierce, and Douglas, and Atchison, and Stringfellow. It 
 is this Slave Oligarchy that has elected our presidents. 
 It is this that has controlled our Congress. It is this that 
 has given the speakers their chairs, with one honorable 
 exception in the present House. It is this Slave Oligar- 
 chy that appoints our foreign ministers and places our 
 judges upon the supreme bench. It is this that appoints 
 all our postmasters and all our government officials. It 
 is the Slave Oligarchy that compels the North, besides 
 paying their own postage, to pay a large surplus for the 
 deficiency of the South ; and then it is this same power 
 that has robbed the mail of our letters and papers. It is 
 this that subsidizes the national press. Indeed, there is 
 nothing in the national government which the Slave Oli- 
 garchy does not appropriate. The power that has ruled 
 this nation is as pure a despotism as ever insulted God 
 or man. 
 
AND HER DEFENSE. 13 
 
 Such is the nature of slavery, and such has ever been 
 its legitimate working. The recent atrocities in Kansas 
 and in Washington, that have electrified the people of the 
 North by a double shock from the east and from the west, 
 are but the natural working out of the system of slavery. 
 These outrages are simply another step in the develop- 
 ment of the nature of slavery. This is not an abnormal 
 or accidental occurrence, but a legitimate part of the sys- 
 tem. It is but carrying out the original plot. The same 
 spirit has ever existed, but it has only lacked the power 
 and opportunity, which are improved upon the first 
 occasion. 
 
 Taking as data the nature of slavery and its actual 
 course thus far, these later results might have been cal- 
 culated long ago, with as much certainty as the astrono- 
 mer fixes the time and manner of an eclipse. Given the 
 terms of proportion, a boy, in arithmetic, could no more 
 surely get the fourth than that this very result has fol- 
 lowed from the means which have been at work. Good 
 men had worked out this problem long before it came. 
 They have feared, they have trembled, they have warned. 
 Martyrs to American liberty are no new persons. Sup- 
 pression of the free press is no new thing. 
 
 Slavery is no more ugly and hateful now than it has 
 ever been. Its nature has received no new character- 
 istic. It has only taken courage by success. It has 
 only grown insolent by the subserviency of the North. 
 It is while the freemen have slept upon the pillow of per- 
 sonal liberty that the enemy has been sowing tares, and 
 now the fruit appears. The North is industrious and 
 enterprising ; the South lives upon the products extorted 
 from slave labor; while the North has been building roads, 
 turning out manufactures, cultivating the soil, driving 
 
14 KANSAS— HER STRUGGLE 
 
 commerce, securing her own comfort in schools, churches, 
 and societies, and, in short, according to her natural pro- 
 clivity, minding her own business, the South has spent 
 all her leisure in managing and manouvering to increase 
 the power of slavery and to fasten it perpetually upon 
 our American institutions. We had not yet waked up to 
 the extent of the influence which had already been thus 
 secured by the Slave Oligarchy. We had been accus- 
 tomed to consider that the unfortunate three millions of 
 Africans in the South were the only subjects of Ameri- 
 can slavery. This ought to have been enough, to arouse 
 us to a desperate effort in their behalf; but, as this did 
 not suffice, we are brought literally to feel for them as 
 bound with them. The chain is to be thrown about North- 
 ern freedom, and we are compelled to recognize the fact 
 that slavery does exist in these United States and in the 
 North, and we are compelled to see what the Slave 
 Oligarchy mean to do. 
 
 My friends, I know not how to approach this recent 
 development of slavery with any appropriate terms of 
 description. I know that the Slave Oligarchy of 92,000 
 men are at this moment wielding the entire power of this 
 National Government to advance their own designs. I 
 know that the entire force of this administration is used 
 in treason to liberty, and in the support of the blackest 
 despotism that ever saw the sun. Hemoving the land- 
 mark of liberty, 36° 30', was in contemptuous violation 
 of national honor and national good faith. And when it 
 was pretended that the country was thrown open to all 
 alike, from the South and from the North, to choose what- 
 ever institutions they might prefer, then for the govern- 
 ment by its strong arm to interfere and say, as it has 
 said, freedom shall not go there, slavery only shall, the 
 
AXD HER DEFENSE. 15 
 
 terms hypocrisy, and meanness, and injustice don't begin 
 to cover such conduct. 
 
 When an armed invasion from a neighboring State take 
 possession of the ballot box upon the day appointed for 
 the sovereigns of Kansas to express their will for their 
 own government ; when those freemen are driven from 
 their elective franchise, the very boon for which our 
 fathers bled and died ; when the legislature thus elected 
 by Border Ruffians is acknowledged, and defended by 
 the President in two messages to Congress, this is de- 
 claring, by the national organ, that our free institutions 
 are a sham and a failure, and that the usurpations of the 
 slave-ocracy shall be sustained. 
 
 The children of the North were invited by the parental 
 government to go and make their homes in that wilder- 
 ness, that by causing it to bud and blossom, they might 
 bring honor, and wealth, and power into the national fam- 
 ily, all with the implied promise of protection to person, 
 property and rights — protection which the government 
 was under obligation to furnish, and which has been se- 
 cured to emigrants to all other territories. And what is 
 more, as if to invite confidence and assurance of safety, 
 there were already upon the ground old, strong and well 
 known fortifications for the country, so that in case of 
 invasion from the savages on the west, they would be 
 guarded by this friendly protection. But, when they were 
 invaded by the savages of Missouri, what must have 
 been their consternation to find that their very defense 
 was their destruction. 
 
 So loyal were they to the parent government that, 
 even in the face of their injuries, they repeated their 
 attestations of submission to any federal law or authority, 
 and were willing even, at the command of government, to 
 
16 KANSAS — HER STRUGGLE 
 
 deliver up arry of their men, or of their arms, and yet 
 those same United States forces, under positive orders, 
 stood by and defended the savages in their plunder, and 
 arson, and murder, at Lawrence. And when the same 
 outraged men were gathering at Topeka to avenge them- 
 selves upon their invaders, then the United States forces 
 were ready to prevent their organizing. But I arraign 
 the powers that be more for what they have not done 
 than for what they have. They have not protected their 
 good and loyal subjects. Only one word from the com- 
 mander-in-chief to that United States fort would have 
 been enough to have saved all this outrage, and disgrace, 
 and blood. If the invaders had been warned that the 
 United States would protect her citizens upon her own 
 national territory, they would never have dared what 
 they did ; or, if they did, once would have been enough. 
 Freemen are there shot down and their murderers allowed 
 to go at large. When Kozta, only a partially natural- 
 ized citizen, was jeoparded in his rights, the United 
 States government was very quick to furnish him redress ; 
 when some poor slave has got out of his yoke of bondage, 
 and is making his way to some land of liberty, orders 
 from head-quarters tingle along the wires to every £>art 
 of the country to catch the poor, degraded, despised 
 victim of oppression. But to defend a freeman in Kansas 
 is beyond the power of the United States, just because 
 it is beyond their disposition. Many an American, 
 traveling in the old world, has complained of the annoy- 
 ance of passes from country to country. But we have 
 now got far beyond this, for here a freeman, to travel in 
 his own territory, must get a pass from some United 
 States officer ; and even that is violated, and the violation 
 submitted to by the authorities. A judge upon the 
 
AND HER DEFENSE. 
 
 17 
 
 bench, a tool of the administration, makes up his jury, 
 and alters and fills it up, all upon the simple principle of 
 empanneling other tools of the slave power, and then he 
 charges them to find every man guilty of treason who 
 has done just what he was invited to do, just what other 
 territories have done, just what many precedents have 
 authorized, viz : organizing a State government, with 
 constitution and laws. 
 
 But the greatest outrage of all is the attempt to enforce 
 the laws of that pseudo-legislation. In comparison with 
 these, the laws of Draco are redeemed from the single 
 notoriety they have had for the last twenty-four hundred 
 years. 
 
 These laws make it a death offense to carry away any 
 slave from his master to make him free, and also a death 
 offense to aid in persuading any slave to escape for his 
 freedom. It is a felony punishable by five years' impris- 
 onment at hard labor, to print, circulate or publish any 
 book, paper, pamphlet or magazine containing any senti- 
 ment calculated to induce slaves to escape from their 
 masters. 
 
 It is likewise a felony for any free person, by speaking 
 or writing, to assert that persons have not the right to 
 hold slaves there, or to circulate any book containing any 
 denial of the right of any person to hold slaves in the 
 territory. 
 
 By these laws, no person ''conscientiously opposed to 
 holding slaves " is allowed to sit on jury. All officers of 
 the territory are obliged to swear to sustain the Fugitive 
 Slave Law and the organic law of the territory. And 
 all persons are required to take an oath to support the 
 Fugitive Slave Law before they are allowed to vote. 
 According to these laws it would be death to do what 
 3 
 
18 KANSAS— HER STRUGGLE 
 
 many of this congregation have done, to hide the outcast, 
 help him on his way, to feed the hungry, to clothe the 
 naked. Freedom of speech, freedom of thought and free- 
 dom of the press are all smitten down at once. Jeffer- 
 son would be a felon in Kansas, to say to a slave " I have 
 sworn, upon the altar of my God, eternal hostility to 
 tyranny in every form, over the mind and body of man." 
 
 Patrick Henry would be a felon, to say, in the pres- 
 ence of a slave, "Give me liberty or give me death." 
 Ah, it would be felony there to read to slaves, or circu- 
 late among them, a book containing these words of our 
 Declaration: "All men are born free and equal, and 
 endowed with the inalienable rights of life and liberty," 
 — a felony to point a slave to that article of the Consti- 
 tution which says, "We, the people, in order to establish 
 justice," the inalienable right of man, " do ordain." And 
 yet these are the laws which the federal authorities are 
 trying to enforce upon the free consciences and free hearts 
 of free men. But the crime is not so much that these 
 laws were made by a false legislature, and that they are 
 so horrid in themselves, as that they are approved and 
 accepted by the United States government, which is 
 demanding their enforcement. It is not the Border Ruf- 
 fians that deserve our execration so much as the federal 
 administration. They are only the secondary, while this 
 is the primary. They are the tools, willing and obedient, 
 of a corrupt power. The lions that rend the martyrs are 
 not so much to blame as the public authorities that furnish 
 them with their prey. 
 
 And the embodiment of all this usurpation and tyranny 
 is the chief magistrate of this Union. The Slave Oli- 
 garchy have devised the scheme and dictated the meas- 
 ures, but he is their willing; and obedient executive. The 
 
AND HER DEFENSE. 19 
 
 powerful influence of his office, as president of one of 
 the mightiest nations on the globe, is all subsidized in the 
 support of such usurpation. 
 
 The impersonated form of American liberty impeaches 
 him of treason to freedom. The spirits of '76, in behalf 
 of Kansas, impeach him of all the tyranny of the British 
 king. " He has sent hither swarms of officers to harrass 
 our people, and eat out their substance. He has com- 
 bined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign 
 to our Constitution, giving his assent to their acts of pre- 
 tended legislation. He has abdicated government here 
 by declaring us out of his protection and waging war 
 against it. He has excited domestic insurrection among 
 us and endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontier 
 the merciless savages. Our repeated petitions have been 
 answered only by repeated injury." All these charges 
 have a "fearful particularity" in the executive oppressions 
 of Kansas. 
 
 My hearers, leaving now this struggling people, despair- 
 ing of rightful protection from this Democratic tyrant, let 
 us follow her, all bloody and scarred, yet cheerful and 
 buoyant, with her Republican Constitution in her hand, 
 up to seek redress and protection by admission into the 
 Union of States. She knocks at the door of the Senate, 
 not with a tremulous hand, but confident in the righte- 
 ousness of her cause. She is not welcomed in ; she is 
 repulsed; objections of informality are trumped up by the 
 same omnipresent enemy that had crushed her at home. 
 In the modesty of her virgin character she is ridiculed 
 and tormented. But there the champions of Freedom 
 espouse her cause. And now it is the time for the son 
 of Massachusetts to stand up in defense of free Kansas. 
 In the dignity and grandeur of a noble man and a true 
 
20 KANSAS— HER STRUGGLE 
 
 patriot, himself the very impersonation of Freedom, for 
 two days he stood upon the basis of free speech and plead 
 the cause of the new State. In words of burning light 
 he described the crime against her, the concentration of 
 desertion, conspiracy, invasion and murder, " and ending 
 at last in the perfect subjugation of a generous people 
 to an unprecedented usurpation. Turning aghast from 
 the crime, which, like murder, seemed to confess itself, 
 ' with most miraculous organ,' " he canvassed with " min- 
 gled shame and indignation the four apologies of tyranny, 
 of imbecility, of absurdity and infamy, in which it had 
 been wrapped, marking especially the false testimony, 
 congenial with the original crime against the Emigrant 
 Aid Society." Then he "noted in succession the four 
 remedies, of tyranny, of folly, of injustice and civil war, 
 and of justice and peace," which last was sustained as 
 the only true remedy. The enemy were confounded ; 
 the shame of their crime was exposed ; their arguments, 
 and evasions, and sophistries were annihilated; their 
 remedies were stamped with execration, and themselves, 
 pierced with the arrows of exposure and riven by the 
 lightning-flashes of truth, were filled with malice and 
 rage at their own imbecility compared with that Colossus 
 of American grandeur. 
 
 But still the slave power must triumph ; if not in one 
 way, it must in another ; and so an armed savage creeps 
 into the Senate Chamber and falls upon his victim, giving 
 him no chance for self-defence, knocks him down upon 
 the floor with one stunning blow, and then continues to 
 pound that senseless body until his bludgeon was beaten 
 into shivers. This attack had many aggravations, with 
 not one single mitigation. It was premeditated. An- 
 other ruffian stood by brandishing a cane, with a pistol 
 
AND HER DEFENSE. 21 
 
 under his skirt, to keep off a defense. Douglas, of 
 giant infamy, stood by with his hands in his pocket. 
 It was upon the Senate floor, aplace consecrated to 
 free speech and personal safety. The victim was a 
 most perfect gentleman, almost the idol of the North, 
 so that the blows laid upon him were meant for every 
 Northern freeman. The ruffian dared to appear in his 
 seat the next morning with a self-justification. The 
 Senate appointed merely a milk-and-water committee to 
 look into the matter. It was a direct expression of insult 
 and contempt for Massachusetts ; but most ignominiously 
 of all, it was a blow deliberately and intentionally aimed 
 at free speech and freedom in the North. It was no 
 freak of passion ; it w T as no hasty accident in the heat of 
 debate ; it was a predetermined plan for the slave-driving 
 South to try its lash upon the noblest specimen of the 
 Northern freeman. It was meant to teach the North who 
 their masters are. 
 
 This and the Kansas crime reveal a new step in the 
 policy of slavery : that physical force must and shall be 
 used to carry out its measures. The instigator of all 
 this crime, a short time since, ventured to divulge the 
 secret policy, when he declared to this first victim, " We 
 will subdue you, sir;' and no one knows but this very thing- 
 was in his mind at the time. Every man of the Slave 
 Oligarchy in the House and in the Senate voted against 
 a committee even to enquire into this outrage, and their 
 language was, " Brooks has done right ;" " Sumner has 
 got what he deserves." A court subsidized by slavery let 
 the ruffian loose upon the paltry bail of $500. The South- 
 ern press teems with approval of the conspirators and with 
 the foulest vituperation of the unfortunate man. They 
 say this is the only way the Abolitionists can be controlled. 
 
22 KAXSAS— HER STRUGGLE 
 
 They recommend to follow it up upon Seward and others. 
 Indeed a testimonial is to be presented from his own con- 
 stituents to the cowardly assassin. When the murderer 
 Herbert came into the House to take his seat, every 
 representative from a Slave State, and every supporter 
 of the Administration save one, voted that the matter of 
 a murder by a Southerner was not worth inquiring into. 
 When a veteran editor, because of his tendencies toward 
 freedom, was beaten upon the grounds of the capitol by a 
 Southern member, the subject was not even referred to 
 in the House which had been so disgraced by the insolent 
 bully. 
 
 Thus slavery has w&rJced itself out. Those inhuman 
 laws of Kansas ; the determination to force slavery into 
 a territory against the wishes of the actual citizens ; the 
 power that is used to crush out liberty from that region, 
 and the recent demonstrations at Washington — all these 
 but furnish an illustration to the world of what slavery 
 is ; and perhaps for this reason God has suffered these 
 men to act out its spirit. Slavery is based upon force, 
 and causes slaveholders to rely upon force for its defense ; 
 and force it will use, whether upon black man or white 
 man, whether South or North. 
 
 Besides, slavery has now divulged its long secret plan 
 to subvert the principles and ultimately to change the form 
 of our government; to drive freedom of the press, of 
 speech — all freedom — out of the land. Already she has 
 turned the whole North into a hunting ground for slaves, 
 and subsidized for this work every national officer. Al- 
 ready she has insolently declared that she will call the 
 roll of her slaves in the shadow of Bunker Hill Monu- 
 ment. Already she demands, and it is feared the Su- 
 preme Court will grant the demand, to bring her slaves 
 
AND HER DEFENSE. 23 
 
 unmolested to the North, to remain here as long as she 
 pleases. Already she has torn up the landmark of 
 freedom, and taken possession of a mighty domain of 
 free soil. Already she has announced and commenced 
 the work of subduing the North. 
 
 Thus we have sketched the struggle between slavery 
 and freedom in this country, from the beginning to the 
 present crisis. Inherently antagonistic, there has been 
 a perpetual hostility between them. Slavery has been 
 making continual aggressions, and in every attack has 
 been successful. In the struggle, freedom has not gained 
 one substantial victory. And every triumph of slavery 
 has been increasingly flagrant. Every success has em- 
 boldened its insolence ; the Slave Oligarchy don't know 
 what it is to be defeated, while freedom has become ac- 
 customed to humiliations and submissions. Nor is this 
 crisis the ultimatum, the climax of Southern usurpation. 
 It is but the sounding of the second angel, by which " a 
 great mountain, burning with fire, was cast into the sea." 
 An invading army of slavery is cast into Kansas ; and 
 when shall that sea of blood be dried up ? There remain 
 yet five angels to sound. 
 
 BUT WHAT MUST WE DO ? 
 
 The first thing is, to prat/ to God. 
 
 That is a species of practical atheism prevailing at 
 present which separates God from the governorship of 
 nations, and makes Him indifferent to their conduct. 
 Nothing is clearer than that for the first 4000 years of 
 our race God gave especial attention to the management 
 of nations and of governments. He dealt with nations in 
 prosperity and in judgment, with rewards and with pun- 
 ishments, just as He did with individuals. He dealt with 
 
24 KANSAS— HER STRUGGLE 
 
 them hy name and by character. He dealt with nations 
 and with national sins. He delivered oppressed nations 
 from their oppressors. He exalted and He debased. 
 And did the closing of the canon of scripture close God's 
 connection with nations for care and for government ? 
 The history of the Christian era is as full of the marks 
 of God's dealing with nations as the era of inspiration. 
 In the origin of this nation God's hand is as distinctly 
 seen as in the origin of the Jewish nation. The devel- 
 opment of the Revolution was a peculiar and emphatic 
 mark of the hand of God, as much as the deliverance of 
 Israel. The mission God gave this nation for freedom 
 and religion was as distinct as the mission of the Jews in 
 Palestine. God designed this nation for a model of gov- 
 ernment, for the herald of universal freedom, for the mis- 
 sionary of the world. For this purpose He has given us 
 unwonted power and prosperity. For this purpose He 
 has given us the influence and standing of one of the 
 mightiest nations on the globe. 
 
 But God sees that we have not fulfilled our mission. 
 The independence which He secured to us we have not 
 used in spreading liberty, but rather the power and pros- 
 perity He has given us has been prostituted to the fur- 
 therance of despotism. In the very heart of our domain 
 and of our government has grown up the vilest system 
 of usurpation and tyranny that God ever looked upon. 
 God's image has been debased in the person of His poor 
 enslaved. God's authority has Jbeen contemned. Our 
 very religion has been made to throw its sacred mantle 
 over this God-defying system. Our very Constitution, 
 that was ordained to secure liberty, has been impressed 
 to secure, intensify and extend slavery. Never were a 
 nation so ungrateful as we have been. And does God 
 
AND HER DEFENSE. 25 
 
 not regard this ? Does He not feel this insult and dis- 
 honor ? I believe God is greatly incensed at this nation. 
 He has a controversy with us. how great has been 
 His forbearance ! Not only has the South usurped this 
 iniquity, but the North have yielded to it when it was 
 in their power to have prevented it all. The North have 
 stood by and seen the despoiling of liberty with scarcely 
 a remonstrance — yea, the body of the North have joined 
 hands with man-stealers and with the betrayers of Amer- 
 ican freedom. 
 
 We have alloived the encroachments of slavery. We 
 have suffered the pillaging of the citadel of our liberties. 
 We deserve to be slaves, and God knows it ; and so He 
 has allowed the recent demonstration to make us feel 
 what the slaves have long been suffering. God has allow- 
 ed the Border Ruffian and the national assassin to try 
 the lasso of slavery upon the necks of freemen, to give 
 us warning. God has been trying to save us, as a nation, 
 from infamy. He has been trying to rouse us to a sense 
 of our responsibility and our guilt, by holding the burn- 
 ing sun of His goodness before the icy mountain of our 
 ingratitude. He has been trying to stimulate our national 
 pride by leaving us the last nation in the support of bond- 
 age. He has been trying to make our national greatness 
 put us to shame for our nation's disgrace. God has 
 allowed the South to go on with a long succession of out- 
 rages and enormities that have exhausted all power of 
 insult and injury, in order to arouse the North to inde- 
 pendence. But all to no effect. At last He is compelled 
 to allow the whisperings, yea, the muttering thunders 
 of civil war to greet our ears. That we may be warned 
 of our own coming degradation and enthraldom, He has 
 brought us to taste the bitter portion of those whom we 
 4 
 
20 KANSAS— HER STRUGGLE 
 
 have neglected and despised. God is threatening His 
 judgments. Can He he appeased? Yes. And how? 
 By our repentance and doing our duty henceforth. Some 
 of us have mourned over these things. But " how deep 
 would that mourning go if we should arise ahove our 
 national pride and national self-complacency, and look at 
 our guilt as it appears before God ! " We must repent 
 and mourn for our sins in the sight of God. 
 
 Then we can again appeal to Him for help as our fath- 
 ers did. Then we can have God on our side ; and this 
 must be, or all our plans will fail. We must seek to please 
 God first of all. We must put ourselves into His plans ; 
 we must then do all His designs require. A most hope- 
 ful feature of the present crisis is, that it has driven the 
 praying ones to God. They feel shut up to Him. All 
 at once our prayer meetings have for their burden the 
 desire of help from God for Kansas and for freedom. All 
 at once the spirit of our public worship resolves itself 
 into an acknowledgement of the sovereignty of God, into 
 humiliation before Him and imploration of His help. 
 
 We must pray for the slaves ; we must pray for our 
 brethren in Kansas ; we must pray that God would lay 
 His hand upon their enemies ; we must pray God to nul- 
 lify the counsel of our rulers ; we must pray for wisdom 
 to direct us what to do. 
 
 But, besides uniting in prayer, we must be united in action. 
 This has always been our defeat, that we were not united. 
 The South are a unit upon this subject. No side issues are 
 allowed to interrupt the harmony or massiveness of their 
 action. In solid phalanx they march for " one idea," and 
 that it is that has always secured them victory. But in 
 the North various issues have distracted our movements. 
 And we have had different methods for our different 
 
AND HER DEFENSE. 27 
 
 issues. But has not the time come for us to lay aside all 
 minor differences and unite upon the one, only, grand 
 issue, of national freedom? All other questions are 
 swallowed up in this. There is no other leading issue 
 before the people of the United States — there is none 
 other in Congress. The South unite because slavery is 
 the basis of their system; it is, to them, their all. But, 
 is not freedom as much the basis of our system ? and is 
 not that, to us, our all ? The rapid, lengthy, hastening 
 strides of the slave power are compelling us to this; 
 there is no other way for us. It is for ourselves, liberty 
 or slavery. The Slave Oligarchy that have so long ruled 
 this government hate freedom, only for themselves ; they 
 hate the free institutions of the North, and they are de- 
 termined to make an end of them. And in their exter- 
 mination they mean to be no respecters of persons. This 
 they have shown by making the man who was the first 
 among us and nearest our hearts the first victim of na- 
 tional assassination. The meaning of that act, as respects 
 Northern freemen, was the same as when Nero " wished 
 that the whole people of Rome had but one neck, so that 
 he could kill them all at one blow." We are then looked 
 upon as a unit, by our enemies, and shall we not be a unit, 
 for our mutual defense ? 
 
 Some have been a long time enlisted in this cause, and 
 they have fought for it as best they could ; but this is 
 now no time for them to complain of past grievances, or 
 throw stones upon the new recruits. They have labored 
 long to get slavery before the people as the issue, and 
 now just that is coming to pass. Behold the fruit of 
 labor ! Neither is it any longer the time for those more 
 recently joining this issue, to stigmatize those more radi- 
 cal as "Abolitionists" No man in this country has done 
 
28 KANSAS— HER STRUGGLE 
 
 so much to redeem this title from reproach as Charles 
 Sumner. And it is destined yet to become a title of 
 honor — all the more noble for the odium heaped upon it. 
 At the ballot box we must be united. We must vote for 
 principles and for principles in our men. That little box 
 has been styled the palladium of our liberties. It is the 
 home of our freedom ; it is the right arm of our power ; 
 it is the repository of our God-given rights. We must 
 protect it more sacred than the ancients their household 
 deities. We must use it under a sense of our responsi- 
 bility to God, to our country and to humanity. 
 
 Is there no danger in this quarter, and no need of union 
 at the ballot box and in its defense, when just the thing 
 which was done at the Kansas election has been done in 
 the State north of us by the same southern power which 
 foisted a bogus governor, a tool of slavery, into the chair 
 of freemen's sovereignty? 
 
 The same will be done in Illinois, and Massachusetts, 
 and all our States, if we do not unite to check the en- 
 croachments of this insolent despotism. But what shall 
 we do for our brethren in Kansas, whose liberties have 
 been throttled, whose property is destroyed, and whose 
 lives are in jeopardy ? 
 
 After calm deliberation I am prepared to answer, 
 Defend them by force. 
 
 The matter is reduced simply to a question of self-de- 
 fense. That principle God has put within us ; it is a 
 responsibility of our divine constitution. I need not 
 argue it. A wife and a babe look to me for protection, 
 and I am untrue to my manhood, unfaithful to my God, 
 if I do not defend them in time of peril. An armed 
 invasion directed by the slave power is determined to 
 drive freedom and freemen out of Kansas, by powder 
 
AND HER DEFENSE. 29 
 
 and ball. To defend these thousands of freemen there, 
 or even to defend freedom for Kansas alone, is not the 
 question. That were enough ; but the principle of our 
 American liberties is again brought to the test. It is the 
 same issue over again which our fathers in the Revolution 
 met and decided so gloriously. It is the issue of despot- 
 ism against our national freedom. I can put it upon no 
 other basis. The enemy comes from a different quarter, 
 but is still the same enemy of our American liberty. 
 Indeed it seems more imperious than that noble move- 
 ment. There are much greater grievances ; there are 
 greater aggravations ; there is more at stake. The num- 
 ber of persons in abject chattel slavery is now greater 
 than the original number who fought for freedom ; then 
 there are, besides, 20,000,000 of freemen to be defended. 
 Kansas has become the Thermopylae of our national 
 freedom. Her defeat is our defeat. Weighty events in 
 history are made to turn upon single points. A victory 
 of three hundred Spartans decided the fortune of a 
 mighty nation. A Gideon, with three hundred chosen 
 men, made an era in the history of Israel. The South- 
 ern Oligarchy have chosen the battle field and the time : 
 Kansas, and now. The taking of Sevastopol decided the 
 result of a war in which nearly all the nations of Europe 
 were embroiled. Kansas is now the Sevastopol of wa- 
 vering despotism and freedom. If we meet the issue 
 there it may save us hundreds of battles all along the 
 line of our free domain. For this is the question : Shall 
 we defend ourselves in Kansas now, or wait till Illinois 
 is in jeopardy? The same policy and power that opened 
 a passage for slavery into Kansas through the Missouri 
 Compromise can just as well, by and by, annul the Ordi- 
 nance of 1787, and then we shall have to see Kansas 
 
30 KANSAS— HER STRUGGLE 
 
 scenes enacted all over these five glorious North-Western 
 States. It is not only the question of the freedom of the 
 black slaves, but whether we ourselves shall be reduced 
 to a more degraded bondage than our fathers were deliv- 
 ered from. We may as well look at the matter calmly 
 now, and decide whether we will be freemen or slaves. 
 
 We, the people of the United States, have united 
 together for mutual protection — we have appointed an 
 agent to perform that function for us — that agent is our 
 national government ; and now that our agent has failed 
 to protect a part of our commonwealth, whose is the 
 business and whose the responsibility to defend them but 
 ourselves ? If we do not, we make ourselves responsible 
 to Kansas for all the wrongs of the government. Yes, 
 who are the sovereigns — the people, or the government ? 
 Has that old American idea of individual royalty died 
 out of our blood, and out of our principles ? 
 
 Besides, the unborn millions that are to swarm across 
 the continent from Kansas to the Pacific, will look to 
 us as the authors of their blessings, or their miseries, 
 according as we now decide for that territory. There 
 are to be six new States there by and by — New Mexico, 
 Oregon, Washington, Utah, Nebraska and Kansas — and 
 their fate will, in all probability, be decided by the result 
 now. These embryo States are like lambs huddled 
 together in a thicket, while wolves, hungry and fierce, 
 prowl about them, now that they have got a taste of 
 blood. Shall we deliver those innocents out of the jaws 
 of wild beasts? Are we always to be satisfied with 
 mere impulse and indignation ? Is it enough, with pro- 
 voking ludicrousness, ever to be whining our grievances 
 without redressing them ? We blustered when Texas was 
 received, but we did nothing else. We denounced the 
 
AND HER DEFENSE. 31 
 
 Mexican war, but no more. We boiled over at the Fugi- 
 tive Slave law, and soon all was quiet again. We became 
 highly excited at the Nebraska perfidy, but very soon 
 quietly acquiesced. And now our indignation is up to 
 boiling point, and shall we do any thing more ? Or shall 
 we sink ourselves loAver in our own self-respect, and 
 deeper in the contempt of all who look upon us, by cool- 
 ing off again into acquiescence ? 
 
 Are we to be content with the single notoriety of in- 
 famy in being the last of all the nations in upholding 
 slavery, or rather in becoming ourselves slaves ? France, 
 England and Denmark have abolished their slavery ; and 
 so Morocco, and Tunis, and Madagascar. Austria, Rus- 
 sia and Turkey are all following. To us alone belongs 
 the hateful championship. 
 
 Self-defense is the only way to preserve peace. Imbe- 
 cility now will encourage further aggression. Firmness 
 will vanquish bravado. I believe there is a moral force 
 in Sharpe's rifles. The proof is at Lawrence ; her prepa- 
 ration and her readiness to defend herself did what no 
 negotiation, no entreaty, no argument coidd do. At 
 the second attack moral suasion was tried without rifles, 
 and their town was destroyed and citizens murdered. 
 The influence of merely moral means upon such men is 
 seen by the impression made upon them by that magnifi- 
 cent effort of argument and oratory which only secured 
 at their hands the pounding of the massive brain that 
 conceived it. Anything like a respectable self-defense 
 will secure respect and safety. 
 
 When a wicked government had put forth an edict for 
 the entire destruction of the Jewish nation, Esther and 
 Mordecai set the people all to praying. That was just 
 right; but they also put weapons into their hands for 
 
32 KANSAS — HER STRUGGLE 
 
 defense, and their prayers were only answered in the use 
 of those weapons. Those who did not use the means of de- 
 fense did not have their prayers answered. A missionary 
 has just written from Turkey, where he says he is more 
 free to publish the gospel than he would he in half of 
 the United States, " If the sword was rightly put into 
 the hands of the sons of Levi, when Moses broke the 
 tables and they slew three thousand of the idolatrous 
 Israelites, if in that case they might slay every man his 
 brother and every man his neighbor, how much more 
 clearly may the sons of freedom in Kansas calmly pro- 
 tect their wives and homes from coward brutes." If 
 Neheniiah. and his men might justifiably carry a weapon 
 in one hand to defend themselves from the border ruffians 
 while they built the walls of Jerusalem with the other, 
 may not our brethren who are building the wall of free- 
 dom in Kansas, likewise defend themselves from savage 
 foes ? And is it not our duty to go and help them, even 
 as whole companies came up from Babylon to assist Nehe- 
 miah ? The North have forborne for a long time ; they 
 have long submitted for the sake of peace. But their 
 forbearance will by and by give out, and their pent-up, 
 fiery indignation, which has long been accumulating, and 
 only intensified by the pressure, will by and by " burst 
 forth into a volcano of terror," as in the words of our text, 
 "And at the time of the end" of their forbearance, "shall 
 the King of the South push at him, and the King of the 
 North shall come against him like a whirlwind, with char- 
 iots, and with horsemen and with many ships, and he shall 
 enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over." 
 If the South still persist in rushing this nation on to 
 civil war, that " whirlwind " will sweep from Mason & 
 Dixon's to Florida ; from the Alleghanies to the Rocky 
 
AND HER DEFENSE. 33 
 
 Mountains. The South are rousing up a force now that 
 they have never felt and they know little of. I mean 
 the religious sentiment. Conscience keeps that feeling 
 from organized warfare and from aggression ; hut when, 
 after endurance is no longer a virtue, and conscience 
 interposes no harriers to its courage, hut even hacks it 
 up, giving a spell to all its audacity and fascination to its 
 sanguine chivalry, there is a power that is perfectly irre- 
 sistible. It is this that makes your Cromwells and your 
 Round Heads. It is this that gives them their daring and 
 success. Indeed, when has ever freedom made any ma- 
 terial advance in the world which has not been conquered 
 from a relentless tyranny ? And when has there ever 
 been any achievement of liberty that did not suck its life 
 from the blood of conscientious heroes ? 
 
 Or where has there ever been any yielding of the grasp 
 of despotism which was not wrenched from its very 
 teeth ? The South, trained to drive, taught to subdue, 
 tickled with authority, grown plethoric and insolent by 
 chivalry, will probably never cease their oppression and 
 tyranny until God sends some Moses to accomplish an- 
 other exodus, through fire, and death, and wave ! God 
 has been sending prosperity and mercy until the Pharaoh 
 of slavery has already hardened himself beyond 'the indu- 
 ration of his Egyptian namesake. And now he is trying 
 the severer test of threatening war. But wo be the 
 day when God leads forth His people from the midst of 
 wailings from every house, from the palace of Pharaoh 
 to the little cabin of him who drives a single slave ! 
 
 I do not counsel aggression and insubordination, but I 
 do counsel self-preservation through the defense of Kan- 
 sas. I do counsel the raising of money and men to send to 
 their distress — " settlers who will invade no man's rights, 
 5 
 
34 KANSAS — HER STRUGGLE 
 
 but mil maintain their own." Why do you praise the 
 deeds of your fathers and boast your descent from the 
 blood of '76 ? It is because they were Christian patriots, 
 the world's benefactors. Be worthy sons of your worthy 
 sires. And why do you men always sit at the head of 
 your slips in church, with so much uniformity that it has 
 become an irreversible fashion ? The habit is said to 
 have come down from your fathers, who worshipped God 
 while thus they sat with their family under one arm for 
 protection and their other arm upon a musket, ready to 
 defend themselves against a sudden foe. May not, then, 
 their children truly worship the same God, and yet stand 
 ready to defend themselves where they have gone to 
 plant and cultivate the Puritan principles upon the plains 
 of Kansas ? 
 
 The closing words of that mangled orator whose sweet 
 reverberations of liberty and humanity have scarcely died 
 out of our ears, I am happy to adopt : 
 
 " In just regard for free labor in that territory, which 
 it is sought to blast by unwelcome association with slave 
 labor ; in Christian sympathy with the slave, whom it is 
 proposed to task and to sell there ; in stern condemnation 
 of the crime w r hich has been consummated on that beau- 
 tiful soil ; in rescue of fellow citizens now subjugated to 
 a tyrannical usurpation ; in dutiful respect for our early 
 fathers, whose aspirations are now ignobly thwarted ; in 
 the name of the Constitution, which has been outraged — 
 of the laws trampled down — of justice banished — of hu- 
 manity degraded — of peace destroyed — of freedom crush- 
 ed to the earth, and in the name of the Heavenly Father, 
 whose service is perfect freedom, I make this last appeal." 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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