The Hillsdale standard. [volume] (Hillsdale, Mich.) 1851-1909, 1856-03-18


ty, were required by pitiful crew of wretch
es thrust over the border of the State for 9
mere purpose of violence, to accept these
laws that outrage every institution of the
land, and every historic antecedent of oul
country, or be cut down and shot. 1t was
thought perhaps that these sturdy settlers
could be made to throw up the undgested
milk of liberty as easily as they do who dis
grace New England in the chief places Of
government at Washington. But the men Of
Kansas were men of stomach. They had di-
gested every crunib of libery. 1t had gone
into their blood and bones. 1t had fashioned
their heart and conscience. 1t had made
men and Christians Of them.
When the ill-gathered rabble drew near to
Lawrence, threatening to raze it to the
ground unless they would yield up every SEN
timent of honor and fall down before Satan
and worship him, the men of Lawrence rails
ed their defsnses, took their arms, determin-
ed to beat off violence by force.
That courage saved them. The rifle bro't
peace. Had they been unarmed had they
been puslanimous, had they had such Chris
tians as infest the North, who justify arms
for tyrants, but inveigh against selfdefense
on the side of freedom we should have had
a monstrous tragedy of violence and blood.
The storm was held back but not dispersed.
The same men are still in Kansas, face to
face. The same ruthless assault from the
South will be renewed. The same manly
breasts will meet the war. Already we hear
the muttering in the clouds of those thunder
voices which will yet roll over the prairies and
reverberate along the Alleghanies! There is
but little time, but that little may save US
from civil war 1t is spark now. A foot
may tread it out. But if it kindles, it will
sweep the plairies in sheets of fame.
The foot that should tread it out was bred
among the New Hampshire hills. But the
shadow of the Government black as mid
night, falls upon Free-State men; its lurid
smile is with the aggressor. When God
stood among the oppressed, Egypt was dark
and Goshen was light. In our day Rulers
cast the blaze Of full favor upon Egypt, and
the scorn and blacknoss of their wrath upon
the land of Goshen!
Who then are these armed men that al
ready confront each other and between whom
this whole land is called to decide? How
have they come into this Territory, and what
are their errands? On the one side are the
representatives of civilization, on the other
Of barbarism. On the one side stand the
men of liberty, Christianity, industry, arts,
and of universal prosperity; on the other are
the waste aud refuse materials of worn ont
Slave-State populatiou--men whose ideas of
society and civilization are comprised in the
terms, rifle, horse, hound, slave, to-
bacco and whiskey; beyond these there is
nothing but an annual uproarous camp-meet-
ing where they, get just enough religion to
enable them TO find out that the Bible justi-
ies all the immeasurable vice and wrongs of
slavery. The Free-State mon come hither
with books and newspapers, with free Schools
with Lyceums, with churches, and the whole
retinue Of benefcent institutions Of Chris
tian civilization.
The Slavc-State men come without books,
without enough education to read if they had
them, without schools or n wish for them
They come with statutes framed for making
free thought sin, free speech penitentiary
offence, a free press punishable with death if
it in the least loosens the bonds OF oppres-
sion.
The men of the North come with rare in-
dustry; with mechanic arts, with all improv-
cd Implements of husbandry. They build
towns; they found cities; they convert will
derness to garden, and will transmit to
coming generation an inheritance such as Old
England and such as New England never
saw.
The men Of the South, reared where la
Dor was disgrace, are without mechanic
arts, without habits of industry, without or
ganizinr tendencies, without the creative !
force which builds up new societies. They
come to curse the land with a system Of hus-
bandry earth detes,s as well it may, for the
foot Of the slave burns the soil like fire. 1t
is the agriculture Of exhaustion. 1t is tho
Of impoverishment. If the South |
inoculates the State with her leprcsy, the |
plains of Kansas are fiirer and richer to-day
as a wilderness than they ever will be again.
For Slavery robs first the slave and then
the soil It sucks the blood from everything
it touches. And nothing can fatten upon it,
except the cunning few that sit upon the mid
die of the web--overswollen spiders--while
the rest swing in the edges thereof, mere
skeleton insects.
The men of the North come upon the best,
and the men Of the South upon the worst err
rand that ever engaged men. Peace, and
light, and love, aud hope, and JOY, 60 with
the one--war and blood, cruelty, wasting
and despair 60 with the other,
The representatives of civilization have
come lawfully, peacefully, to become actual
settlers. The representatives Of barbarism
have come unlawfully violently, with no in
tent of residence, but only to put the sword
to the throat of frcemen, and the brand to
their dwellings, and then leave TO the slow
Of slavery this stained victory.
There was never so stfong an appeal TO
public sympathy as that which is presented
In the case of Kansas FREQ settlers. Their
emigration was a mission Of mercy, full Of
the ripest fruits Of Christianity. Their con-
duct has been noble. They have borne hard
ships without faltering; they have borne out
ragc and persecution with patience, returning
good for evil. They have suffered wrongs
manifold and infinitely provoking, without
retaliation. When aggression on one occasion
was pushed so sorely that their patience failed.