The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1858-05-06


already elected, because that Congress would
vote for it if you do not anticipate them, to
save to yourselves the credit of stanching the
wounds of bleeding Kansas, and establishing
forever the cause of Freedom.
All this will happen, unless you send armies
to suppress such proceedings in Kansas. Well,
l should like to see the bill introduced into
Congress now, to levy or supply an army to
subJugate freemen and extrpste Freedom in
Kansas. That game is ended. You cannot
even pass bill to maintain, or rather to re-
gam, your authority in Utah against polygs'
mists, without infinite trouble. / think / can
take up the roll, and give the yeas and nays
from the tree Ststes. l think my honorable
friend from Pennsylvania Mr.. BIGLER will
vote aye, because he always stands squarely up
to the Administration 1t is a tower of strength
to the patriotic statesman. 1t ia calculated to
fortify his courage and sustain his devotion to
popular liberty and human rights-so long as
it lasts. think that my honorable friend from
California Mr.. GwN will give his vote for
this new army bill, for, like myself, he is apt
to favor appropriations, and not very particu.
lar about the objects to which they go. But,
then, think the favorable responses will end
| rather think my honorable friend from Ohio
Mr.. PUGH will hesitate for want of instruc.
tons. My two excellent friends from New
Jersey Messrs. WRIGHT and THOMSON would
be found in the negative on that vote, because
things are manifestly coming to close quarters
in New Jersey. As to my honorable friends
from Indiana, they will of course be absent,
securing reflections.
support of this policy, in the contest before you,
because, for the first time, you will go before
the people of the United States stripped naked
of every pretence of equality or impsrtiaity
between Freedom and Slavery, much more of
that virtue which is the only mantle that can
now cover and conceal political faults in this
country-devotion to Freedom and free labor.
The honorable Senator from Illinois, Mr..
DOUGLAS, the honorable Senator from Mich
gan, Mr.. STUART, and the honorable Sena.
tor from California, Mr.. BRoDERIcK with their
associates in the House, and the honorable
Senator from Kentucky, Mr.. CRIrrENDEN,
and the honorable Senator from Tennessee,
Mr.. BELL, have stripped you bare of all pre-
fences to fairness in the exercise of maintain
ing your own avowed policy of popular sover-
eighty. You will go before the people no longer
in the character of party that balances equal
ly between Freedom and Slavery, but in the
detested character of party intervening for
Slavery against Freedom. You will meet in the
elections, not as heretofore, two or three fac.
tons, giving you triumph by their divisions,
which you could not win by your own numbers,
but one party only, and that party combined,
resolute, and animated by q sincere, deep, and
common devotion to the principles it main
tains. On the other hand, you yourselves no
longer united, will reach the polls in Jealous
divisions, and under different standards-one
faction wanting Slavery, absolutely and without
regard to partisan success or popular consent,
the other hesitating and hating on the position
OF no Slavery anywhere, unless the people
choose it.
Mr.. President, let nae try for moment to
lift this debate up from these temporary, ephem-
eral, and collateral incidents, to that height of
argument where it belongs. The sixteenth
century dawned on the decay Throughout Eu-
rope and the world of slave civilization, de-
rived from early antiquity, and left as legacy
by the Latin or Southern States of the CONT
nent of Europe, on the fall of the Roman EN-
pire. But it dawned also upon the rise of q
new and better civilization-the civilization Of
Freedom-the civilization since developed of
the German and Scalvonic races the civiliza.
ton of Germany and of England, of Scotland,
and Ireland, and Switzerland; in short, the
now well-de6ned civilization of Western Eu-
rope.
The principle of the old Latin civilization,
which was passing away, was that labor must
be involuntary; must be secured by fraud and
force, and must be converted into property,
and bought and sold as merchandise. The
new civilization was based on the principle of
the freedom of labor, that it must be voluntary,
and that it should be not only political power,
but that it should even become the ascend
ant and dominating political power throughout
the world. While Portugal and Spain proved
themselves competent to open and lead the
great career of discovery, and the one revealed
interior and southern Africa, and the other
America, to the eyes of an astonished world,
these two nations were, less than any Others
qualified TO insugarate civilization on either
continent. The Portuguese, with cupidity
and cruelty unparalleled, doomed Africa TO
remain perpetually in the barbarism with which
she had been cursed from her earliest history,
by establishing there the African slave trade,
in which ten men were sold in exchange for
one horse; and the Spaniards compelled Amer.
lea to receive, and for while to remain encum.
bered with the civilization of labor by African
slaves, captured and sold to them by the Por
tuguese. Our Constitution and our Union came
into being seventy years ago, in q copjuncture
when it was necessary to decide between those
two systems of civilization found existing to-
gether within our borders. The States which
have founded or adopted the new civilization
are before you. Contemplate them, and say
whether the world has ever seen countries 30
perfect and so prosperous. You see, also, the
States which were founded on or have retained
the old declining civilization of the Roman
Empire.
All our new States have to choose between
the two systems. We have a voice, at least an
influence, in determining their decision. You
are bent on forcing that old and e6ste civiliza-
ton upon new regions where political and social
evil has until now been unknown.
This question in regard to Kansas ought to
have been settled ffty-fve years ago, in 1903.
when Kansas was added to the national terri
tory by the treaty with France, as part of the
Louisiana purchase. 1t was omitted then. 1t
required in 1920, and then it was we'll and
wisely settled, by defeating Kansas forever to
impartial Freedom. In 1854, you repealed that
law, but the law you thus repealed was a statute
of the Almighty, written upon the rivers and
prairies and rocks of Kansas, as we'll as in the
very constitution of American society. All you
have done since consists of fruitless efforts 10
carry the illjudged repeal of q benignant policy
into effect, in defiance of the laws of nature. In
what you have done heretofore, You have had
what the whole world received as an excuse. 1t
was the action indeed of the slave States, but
it was not on their own motion. The sugges.
ton came TO them from Senators from the free
States, and it was not in human nature that they
should resist it.
$50, in 1856, when Kansas came here q as
free State under the Topeka Constitution, and
you rejected her, you still had the show of an
excuse, for those same representatives of the
free States assured You that the people of the
free States would acquiesce. But you are now.
after having failed in these efforts to establish
Slavery in Kansas, persisting in and receiving
thsm without that excuse. Two of those Sen |
ators, one of them the leader in the repeal OF
the Missouri Compromise, the other hardly less