Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1857-06-10
speech of senator Wilson at Topeka.

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Speech of senator Wilson Mt Topeka.
Gen. Wilson spoke several times to sponta-
neously gathered meetings of the people,
during his recent hurried visit to Kansas.
Everywhere he was received with enthusiasm
The whole population, men, women and
children, turned out to greet and hear him.
OF what he said, the following report of his
speech at Topeka, will furnish proper idea
Senator Wilson commenced by thanking
the audience for the honor they had done
HIM, and for their cordial greetings. He had
come to Kansas on no political mission. He
had no advice to give the people concerning
any particular mode of action. He had entire
confidence in the fidelity of the people of the
Territory to the cause of freedom, and in their
capacity to decide for themselves the best
modes Of action to secure the objects they
had in view, and to vindicate their own rights,
without interference from friends or foes out
of the Territory. He had come to the Terri
tory to see the country so cherished in the
hearts Of the lovers of liberty, and to see the
people whose heroic endurance of wrongs and
outrages had won the affections of the men
who loved justice and freedom and loathed
wrong and oppression. He could assure the
men, aye the women of Kanzas, that the
people Of New England, of the great central
states of the West, cherished in their bosoms
the profoundest admiration of their self
sacrificing constancy and devotion. Around
tens of thousands of christian firesides,
prayers daily ascend to Almighty God for
Kanz4s and the people of Kanzas. They
lived in the affections and the memories of
the people of the North, and were borne in
in their prayers to the God of Peace, Liberty
and Justice. The fields of Kanzas which
had been pressed by the heel Of Border
Rufianism and Redeemed by the blood of Bar
Der, Brown, Hoyt, Phillips, Buffum, and
many other victims of the hand of violence,
were dear to the lovers Of freedom-the peo-
pie of Kansas who had resisted aggression,
adhered to principle, and endured outrage,
were endeared TO them by thousand associ-
atoms. The people of the North having failed
before the nation to secure Kansas to freedom
by national legislation, looked now hopefully
to the people of the Territory to secure the
admission of Kanzas as a free State. 10 aid
IN the work they had contributed thousands
of dollars, and encouraged their brave sons
and noble daughters to leave their homes, bid
farewell to the haunts of childhood and as
soeiations of kindred and frienes, to come to
this land and endure the privations incident
to a new country, to restore these glorious
fields and Territory, once consecrated for ever
to freedom for all men, to freedom again.
The hopes, the efforts, the sacrifices, the
prayers of the people OF the North, he felt
confident, would be crowned with success.
The heroic devotion, the enduring constancy,
the unwayerng fidelity of the men and
women of Kansas, would save her, would
yet overthrow the infamous code imposed
upon the territory by an armed usurpation,
although 1t was recognized, sanctioned, and
upheld by an administration that had Just
passed away, and IFS successor. Kansas was
consecrated to freedom. The slave power
looked upon these beautiful fields with hun
cry eyes Congress, in obedience to the will
of that power, opened this glorious land, the
fit abode of toillng freemen to the blighting
footsteps of the bopdmen. Hordes of lawless
invaders poured over the Missouri, seized
your government forced upon you hateful
laws, established slavery, supported their acts
by armed invading legions, Redeemed your
fields with blood, and ilumined your skies
with the light of sacked and burning abodes
of freemen. The government recognized and
now sustains the usurpaton. But all the
deeds of violence will ANONYMOUSLY fail. In
spite of all the acts of border rufiianism, in
spite of the efforts Of political power, in spite
of all the seductions of office, the freemen of
Kanzas will win a glorious triumph. They
had already settled the question--settled it
by their fidelity, devotion, sufferings. Thou
sands of men, with motives as pure and aims
as lofty as ever swayed the heart of the Pur
itans, had rushed 10 these fields, and, bv their
intelligence, their industry, their strength and
their fixed resolve, had made it impossible to
continue slavery in this fair Territory. Bor.
der ruffanism may do its worst, the Blu
chanan administration may reward with Off
cial position the men from whose hands the
spots of blood will not out, but all the efforts
of power, all Establishments and seductions
will fail to perpetuate human slavery in KAN
zas. A cunningly devised plan, which closed
against the actual settlers of the season the
ballot boxes, which has enrolled men beyond
the Missouri, on the other side of the line. A
plan so carried out that the people are made
poweress in the choice of delegates to the
Convention, viii not accomplish the object of
making Kanzas a slave State.
All, all of the appliances would fail. be-
cause the people were true to the great prin-
ciples, to the mighty impulse, that brought
them into the Territory; and by their deeds,
by the daily beauty Of their lives, they were
winning over to freedom many who came
here to blast these rich fields with savery.--
He should return home with the conviction
that neither fraud nor violence, nor the blan-
dIshments Of power, could perpetuate in Kan
zas the odious and infamous code of slave
| laws that darkened the statute book of the
| Territory. These laws had received the sane.
ton of the national government, but thew will
90 down before the people. The census Ia
| kers had found but twenty. five thousand in.
habitants and nine thousand voters in the
Territory. In fifteen counties they would NOT
find either inhabitants or voters. They would
not find the throng Of men and women before
him, because they were all for free Kansas !.
but all these things avail nothing. The free
State men would not be overcome longer =,
They-have it in their power to take peaceful.
| ly the government and shape the future of the
| Territory, aud they would do it in their own
way and in their own time. Their friends in
the States, who had responded to their an.
peals in the days of their misfortunes, who
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