The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1858-03-14
The Kansas Debate In the Senate-Its Dam
gerOuS Character.

AS the debate in the Senate on the Kansas
question drags its slow length along from day to
day, one is more and more startled by the mark
ed appropriateness of the speeches made to
the question at issue, and alarmed by the ten
dency of the school Of oratory of which they
mast be regarded as symptoms.
The question before the Senate is whether the
State of Kansas shall or shall not be admitted
into the Union. On this question it would have
been fitting and proper for Senators to inquire
whether the proposed new member of the con-
federacy had the requisite population, and had
republican constitution. Debate on these
points, cool business like debate, with refer
ence to figures, would have been suitable and
pertinent; and if the Senate had spent month
in inquiry upon these heads, and another month
in quiet statesmanlike speeches to enforce the
result of their inquiries, no one could have
made the least objection.
Instead Of this however, beginning with
Senator Seward, on the one side and Senator
Hammond on the other, the speakers on both
sides have taken no more notice of Kansas than
of Canada, and have devoted the time allotted
them to simple vituperation of that section of
the Union to which they themselves did not be-
long. Senator Seward begins by taupting the
South with want of democratic spirit, with
the maintenance of system abhorrent
to God and man, and with general social and
political shortcomings. That is his opinion
upon the question whether or no Kansas should
be admitted into the Union. Senator Hammond,
on the other side, is equally to the point. His
opinion is that the laborers of the North are
nothing but white slaves, and that Northern
society generally is so utterly disorganzed that
we shall be soon obliged to fall back for safety
upon the plantation system. This is Senator
Hammond's view about Kansas The other
speakers, on both sides, have with few excep-
tons, followed the same track, and We'd with
each other in utter neglect of Kansas. Each
Northern man has tried to say more severe things
Of the South and the institution of slayery than
his predecessor; and each Southern man has
discharged his volley at the Northern people
and Northern manners with the same good will.
Those Senator's who have found time and space
to say few words about Kansas in the course of
their Trades have been the exception and not
the rule.
To say that debate of this kind is not credit
able to the highest political body in this conn
try is merely to assert what must have occurred
to every one already. II there be any one place
in the country where one might feel certain of
meeting with craftsmanship and common sense,
that place ought, one would suppose, to be the
United States Senate. Yet it seems, from the
Kansas debate. that there is not town or village
political club where public speaking is not con-
Quoted with some regularity, and speakers re-
stricted more carefully to the subject in hand
than is the case in the United States Senate
Ard what good can come of these loose, idle
diatribes against this or that section of the
country by the people Of either? None, evidently;
but they may-they must have the effect Of
sowing bitterness and angry feelings among the
people Of both. They fully justify the appre-
tensions Of those enemies Of the country who see
in our present political debates some signs of
the dissolution Of the confederacy. and of the
final failure Of the experiment of this Union.