The Kanzas news., 1858-03-27

4
unaware of the import of the whisperings
| carried on between the President aud the
Chief Justice. and :simbued with veneEation
for both, filed the avenues and gardens far
away as the eye could reach. The Pfesi-
dent addressed them In words as bland as
those which the worst of all the Roman
Emperors pronounced when he assumed the
purple. He announced, vaguely, indeed,
but with self-satisfaction, the forthcoming
extra-juGicial exposition of the Constitu-
ton, and pledged his submission to it as
authoritative and final. The Chief Justice
and his Associates remained silent. The
Senate, too, were ethere-constitutiona Wit
nesses of the transfer of the administra-
tion- They too were silent, although the
promised usurpatioR was to subvert the au-
thority over more than half of the empire
which Congress had assumed cotemporane-
ously with the birth of the nation, and had
enty years. 1t cost the President, under
the circumstances, little exercise of magma
nimity now to promise to the people of Kau-
zas, on whose neck he had, with the aid of
the Supreme Court, hung the milestone of
slavery, fair trial in their attempt to cast
it off, and hurl it to the earth, when they
should come to organize State Government.
Alas that even this cheap promise, utter
ed under such great solemnities, was only
made to be broken
The pageant ended. On the 9Th of March
the Judges, without even exchanging their
silken robes for courtiers' gowns, paid their
salutations to the President in the execu-
tive palace. Doubtless the President re.
ceiVed them as gracious as Charles /. did
the judges who, at his instance, subverted
the statutes of English liberty. On the
9th of March the Supreme Court dismissed
the negro suitor, Dred Scott, to return to
his bondage; and having thus disposed of
that private action for an alleged privats
wrong, on the ground of want of jurisdic-
ton in the case, they proceeded with anus
ing solemnity to pronounce the opinion, that,
if they had had such jurisdiction, still the
unfortunate negro would have to remain in
bondage, unrelieved, because the Missouri
prohibition violates rights of general proper
ty involved in slavery, paramount to the
authority of Congress. A few days later,
copies of this opinion were multiplied by
the Senate's press, and scattered in the name
of the Senate broadcast over the land, and
their publication has not yet been disowned
by the Senate. simultaneously, Dred Scott,
who had played the hand of dummy in this
interesting political game, unwittingly, yet
to the complete satisfaction of his adversa-
~, was voluntarily emancipated; and thus
received from his master, as a reward, the
freedom which the court had denied him as
a right.
The new President of the United States.
having organized this formidable judicial
battery at the capitol, was now ready to be-
gin his active demonstrations of interven-
ton in the Territory. Here occurred not
new want, but an old one revived Gov
ernor for Kanzas. Robert J. Walker, born
and reared in Pennsylvania, a free State, but
long citizen and resident of Mississippi, q
slave State, eminent for talent and industry,
devoted to the President and his party, plau
sible and perseVering. untiring and efficient.
seemed just the man to conduct the fraud
ulent inchoate proceedings of the projected
Lecompton convention to q conclusion, by
dividing the friends of free labor in the Ter
ritory, or by casting upon them the respon-
sibility of defeating their own fsvorite poll
cy by impracticabiity and eontumacy. He
wanted for this purpose only an army and
full command of the executive exchequer of
promises of favor and of threats of punish
see, honorable and capable, of persuasive
ed his Secretary. The new agents soon
found that they had assumed q task that
would tax all their energies and require all
their adroitness. On the one side, the slave
labor party were determined to circumvent
the people, and secure, through the Leeomp-
to convention. slave State. On the 9TH
er hand, the people were watchful, and de-
termined not to be circumvented, and In no
case to submit. Elections of delegates to
that body were at hand. The Legislature
had required census and registry of vo-
ters to be made by the authorities desigha-
ted by itself, and this duty had been only
partially performed in fifteen of the thirty
four counties, and altogether omitted In the
other nineteen. The party of slave labor
insisted on payment of taxes as condition
of suffrage. The free labor party deemed
the whole proceeding void, by reason of the
usurpation practised, and of the defective
arrangements for the election. They diseov-
cred design to surprise in the refusal of
any guarantee that the Constitution, when
framed, should be submitted to the people,
for their acceptance or rejection, preparato-
~ to an application under it for the aduis-
sion of Kanzas into the Union. The Gov
ernor, drawing from the ample treasury Of
the executive at his command, made due ex-
hibitions of the army, and threatened the
people with an acceptance of the Lecomp-
ton Constitution, however obnoxious to
them, if they refused to vote. With these
menaces he judicieusly mingled promises
of fabulous quantities of land for the en-
dowment of roads and education. He dis
pensed with the test oaths and taxes, lamen-
ted the defects of census and registry, and
promised the rejection of the Constitution
by himself by the President, and by Con-
gress, if a full, fair and complete snbmis-
sion of the Constitution should not be made