The Kansas herald of freedom., 1855-09-15
RV G. w. BROWN & co.

cover division of the American Union
larger than the other in territory, but
smaller in population.
Now, wholly apart from mems inten-
tional efforts to restrict slavery, God SO
works, that with every census, the dis
proportion in wealth and population be-
tween the slave and free States increases.
The slave States are comparatively weak
er and poorer every year. If We can
find the cause of this. increasing dispro-
portion, We can find the way in which we
can go to work as ''laborers with God"
The amount of this disproportion, and
of its gradual increase, appears in he oil
lowing figures:
In 1870 the States now known as free States
had 5-l5z.5 inhabitants.
The slave St2tcs had 44s5759 -
In Is50 fr States had 13.435,e20 So
- - slave - 1854 ,5U2 .
The two sections nearly equal in 1920
are in 1850 almost as to g.
The cause of this change of proper
ton is readily ascertained. During
these many years, by wonderful Provi-
dence, to which human wit did not, with
this aim, contribute atall, God was bring
ing into the free States great pilgrim
age of free men and women, such as He
is never known to have led from land to
land before. In the great movement of
his children from Egypt to the neighbor-
ing land of Palestine, He led in 40 years
three millions of his people. But in this
latter manifestation of His power, so
great and so still, He has so ordered the
political changes of Europe, the course of
ocean commerce, and the necessities of
Labor and Manufacture in America, that
He has led in twenty years more than
three millions of his children over an
ocean path of 5000 miles, and has
placed them in land where they might
serve his purposes, and-though them
selves very ignorant, often superstitous
and blind-(so were the people whom
Moses led )-may still unconsciously ad
vance His will. Of course they came
to those States where labor is honorable
and not shame. And, because they
came, the States where they came gain
upon the slave States, in the proportion
which has been indicated and, gaining
in population which is a laboring popula-
ton, they gain in wealth as well.
By such means, without any human
effort, prompted by this special purpose,
has God enlarged the numbers and
wealth of the States whose institutions
support human freedom.
What indication does this give as to
the best method of carrying human free
dom further
1. 1t shows, that He is not wholly sat
isfed to leave the triumph of freedom to
the gradual extension of ideas, or to what
is called the ''public opinion of the world. -
He does not trust this more than he did
at the outset of the gospel.
He has, rather, reinforced the free
States by preponderance of wealth and
population, which in any balance of pow
er, sets them far beynd the slave States
Although those whom he has removed
from land to land had themselves nc
such intention, though they were often
weak and Ignorant, He who works His
will even by the means of human weak,
ness, makes their movement contribute tc
his great designs.
& 1t shows that if He needs it, whole
nations can move from continent to con-
tinent And, therefore,
5. 1t bids us enquire, whether that
system of Providence which has given
such increase of strength to freedom
may not go still farther. If the emigra-
ton of the weak, superstitous and igno-
rant, have added thus to the political
might of the Northern States, what may
not the emigration, in the right direction
of Christian men and women do And
if nation can move from continent tc
continent, to fulfill unconsciously great
design of God, is il not possible for men,
working with God, to transport from
place to place of our own America such
bodies of His children as shall carry the
gospel, establish freedom, and work out
the wonderful designs of his will?
III. In the study of these questions
we find that there already exists, as a
remarkable characteristic of the Ameri-
can people, desire to remove from the
places of their birth, and to redeem tc
civilization whatever wilderness may
open before them. 1t is not fair to speal
of this merely rs love of adventure
1t is not, again, simply WEAKNESS of old
habits. These furnish share of motive
but these are not all. 1t is no whim, nc
fancy, no mere passion. 1t is rather &
principle, deeply seated in the American
heart. The American people have beer
taught something of religious history
And it remembers, that whenever Goo
has wished to put the race upon the path
way for his very greatest victories, he
has done it By an Emigration. Itremem
bers how he called Abraham to emigratt
from Ur, and again from Haran, into the
Land of Promise. 1t remembers how
He established His own peculiar people
by means of an Emigration. So also II
political history: the American people
remembers that by Saxon emigration
aud Norman emigration, the nation wa'
created in which constitutional liberty
first found home. And in all its owr
history, religious or political, it learns
that God gave to it its choicest blessings
in Church and Stale, in directing, as de
did, the emigration of its forefathers.
With such memories wrought into all
the training of its youth, and furnishing
the grand work of all It's institutions, the
American people loves the enterprise o.
the pioneer. Its sons move westward
constantly. 1t is not fair to say they arr
weary of home. We ought rather to say
that there is a principle, born in their ma
tional life, which bids them subdue the
wilderness while there is a wilderness to
subdue.
In obedience to this longing, and as
series of other causes springing provt
dentially, from the movements OF com
merce and the arts, there is regular
westward march of the American people,
unhesitatipg and all engrossing as a tide
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