Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1856-03-01
l., 1856.
CBe 5lailp Spel.
SATURDAY, MARCH !, 1856.
KANZAS AFFAIRS.
SPEECH of HON. HENRY WILSON
OF MASSACHUSETTS,
IN THE SENATE, FEBRUARY IS, 1855.
[Repissd bu himssIfl

IN THE SENATE, FEBRUARY Is, 1856.
REFUSED by Aimse!fI
A message from the President of the United
States was received by the Senate, inclosin g
report from the Secretary of State, on the
existing state of affairs in Kanzas.
Mr.. WILSON. Mr.. President, the Senator
from Connecticut (Mr. ToUcEY) closes his
speech with the assumption, that there may
be those in the country vino do not wish the
President to preserve order; and he is pleased
to say that, if the Executive does SO, their
"vocation " viii be gone. Let me say to the
Senator from CONNECTICUT, that the "voca-
ton " of those to whom he alludes is not
fawning, abject servility to power. No, sir /;
they do not
- "bend to power and lap its milk"
If the Senator from Connecticut alludes to
those who have opposed the uncalled for and
wanton repeal of the Missouri prohibition if
he alludes to those who condemn the policy of
the Administration in Kanzas; if he intends
to charge the intelligent patriotic men who
sympathize with the wronged and outraged
people of Kanzas-now brayely struggling to
preserve their firesdes and affairs, their proper
ty and lives, against the armed aggressons of
lawless invasions from Missouri-with dis
position to violate or resist the laws of the
country, or to cherish sectional animosty and
and strife, he makes charge unsupported by
the shadow of truth and here, and now to
his face, and before the Senate and the coun-
try, pronounce the charge utterly unbound.
ed. II he intends, sir, to insinuate charge
Of that character against me, promptly meet
it, and here and now before the Senate brand
it as it deserves.
The Senator from Connecticut, with an air
of confident assurance, calls for facts. Evil
IDENTIFY possessed with the vast knowledge
embodied in these documents sent here by the
Executive, the Senator assumes the air and
tone of one entitled to speak by authority, and
he invites us to deal in facts. Sir, he shall
have facts; for it so happens that the friends
of those who are struggling in Kanzas to pro-
tect their lives their property their all, against
unauthorized power and lawless violence,
know something of tho facts which have tran
spired there. All knowledge, sir, oil affairs in
Kanzas is not in the keeping of the Executive
and his Senator from Connecticut.
The Senator from Connecticut commends us
TO the consideration of this correspondence
and the Senator from California (Mr WELL
LER) asks TO print ten thousand extra copies
of it, to be scattered broadcast over the land.
l now ssy-and l can establish what say be-
fore any committee of investigation, so that no
man can question the declaraton-that this
correspondence utterly and totally misstates
and misrepresents the state of affairs in Kan
zas. These documents, sir, are made up of
Geographic dispatches, of letters, of state
ments, of orders, written by Governor Shan
non and others, on therumors of the hour, in
large Territory, at a time when The people
were deeply agitated by all sorts of reports
that flew over The land in rapid succession. -
We are called upon now to publish these rum
oTs-rumors that turned out TO be exaggerated
or false-rumors recognized and admitted to
be false by the Governor of the Territory in
his conversation and in his treaty with the cit.
liens of Lawrence. Yes, sir, the Senate is
now called upon to print and send over the
country, as official documents, these stupen-
dous Misrepresentation of facts. They will
carry a gigantic talsehood to the American
people. He who reads only these documents
has no accurate knowledge; no true concep-
ton of the actual condition OF affairs in Kan
zas at the time covered by them.
The year 1854 opened upon vast territory,
lying in the heart Of the continent, extending
from thirty-six degrees thirty minutes on the
south to the possessions of the British Queen
on the north, from the borders of Missouri,
VIC CdaAs " SNl4Al-
mits of the Rocky mountains on the vest
Over that territory, larger than the empire of
Napoleon when, at the head of the grand
army, he gazed upon that " ocean of flame"
that wrapt the minarets, turrets, and towers
of the ancient capital of the Cars, the Repub-
lie, on the 9th of March, 1920, engraved in
letters of living light the sacred words, "Slave-
ry shall be, and is forever, prohibited -
Slavery, with hungry gaze, glared upon the
forest and prairie, hill and mountain, lake and
river, of that magnificent region it was forey-
er forbidden to enter. Fixing its glittering
eye upon that paradise, consecrated by the ma
ton to freedom and free institutions for all,
hallowed forever to free men and free labor,
the slave power. in the person of the late
President of the Senate, the soul of these bor-
der aggressions, demanded that this heritage
of free labor should be open to the whitening
footsteps of the bondsman. Sir, with hot haste
you grasped the domain Of freedom, and flung
it to the slave propaganda Sir, your Admin
istration, in answer to the stern protest of the
free laboring men of the country whose heri-
tage it was, Knocked them with the delusiye
promise that the actual settlers were to shape,
mould and fashion the Institutions of Kanzas
and Nebraska. Sir, two years have passed,
and your "squatter sovereignty" is proved a
delusion and cheat. Laws, more inhuman
than the code of Draco, forced upon the actu-
al settlers Of Kanzas by armed invading hosts
from Missouri, are now to be enforced by the
dragons of the United States. The consti-
tutioni framed by a convention of the people,
is spurned from the halls of Congress the
convention that formed it is pronounced "spur-
ious' by the Senator from Connecticut and
the people who ratified it are branded as trait
ors by the Administration and its subalterns.
By the theory of the Kanzas Nebraska act,
Mr.. President, the actu al settlers were to de-
eide the transcendent question, whether free
dom should bless OF slavery curse the virgin
soil of those vast Territories, lying in the CEN
trail regions Of the continent The sons Of the
free States of Puritan New England of the
great central States, and of the Northwest
men who call no man master, and who wish
to make no man slave, were invited to plant
upon the soil of Kanzas those institutions that
have blessed, beautihed and adorned the
homes of their childhood. The sons Of the
South-from regions once teeming with the
rich fruits of fields, now blasted, blighted, and
withered, by the sweat of untutored and UNI
rewarded toil--were invited to plant, if they
could the institutions that had dishonored
labor in their own native States, upon the un-
broken soil OF Kanzas. Sir, the people of the
North and the people Of the South had a legal
and moral right 10 go there, when they pleas.
ed, how they pleased; in companies or i'll SIM
gle families under their own direction, or un-
der the auspices of emigrant aid societies in
the North or the South.
Sir tho honorable senator from Missouri,
(Mr. GEYER), in Lis remarks the other day
upon the resolution Of inquiry submitted by