The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-10-06
PECK TO KANsANS.
Continued from First Page,

shape and become ideals established
and secured in her rule and polity.
Half centuries seem slow to those
who have not tried them; but for all OF
US, the shuttle flies more and more
swiftly as the years are woven into
| the cloth of human destiny Eighteen
hundred and fifty-four was a memoir
able year. The fates We're loosened;
the map was waiting to be colored; the
eyes of north and south, were fastened
| upon this faireSt region of the Repub-
lie, which all men saw must be the
arena for the deadly clutch of ideas.
How tame, how commonplace, are our
contentious of today. Tariffs and
| trusts seem almost grotesque in their
| littleneSs, when we think of freedom
and slavery. Fifty years ago, the
sinews of men We're strung to the ulti-
mate pitch of endurance for a cause
for the cause. L wonder if we could
| stand such a strain today?
Kansas-Nebraska Bill.
| The Kansas-Nebraska bill, under
which Kansas territory was organized,
did not, as has sometimes been said,
dedicate tbs soil to slavery. 1t did
worse; it tore down the barrier which,
since 1920 had stayed the northward
advance of that institution, and said:
| Freedom with her hands tied may-if
she can-defend herself against slavery
| armed to the teeth, and with the
panoply of the United States upon her."
The chief iniquity of the bill was that
it seemed so fair. 1t declared with an
appearance of judicial impartiality, that
it was the true intent and meaning of
this act not to legislate slavery into
any territory or state, NOE to exclude
it tnerefrom, but to leave the people
thereof perfectly free to form and reg
ulate their domestic institutions i'll
their own way
Surely, that sounded reasonable. What
could be better? The people We're to be
left perfectly free to decide for them
selves whether they would have free
dom or slavery. Wise men have ever
- L. 4-4..-
the words of John Milton-words that
once stirred the heart of Puritan Eng
land to it's depths: Though all the
winds of doctrine were let loose to play
we do ingloriously to misdoubt her
strength. Let her and Falsehood Crap
pie; VINO ever knew Truth put to the
worse, in free and open encounter?'
Your eyes will flash las you note how
Millions grave and lofty eloquence, as
summed that the encounter between
Truth and Falsehood should be free
and OPEN" What it was in Kansas
territory, you know and the world
knows. 1t was not free and OPEN" but
was waged by the friends of freedom,
as best they could, in the imminent
peril of the hour, against an enemy
with the moral and sometimes with the
physical assistance of the government
at it's back. And yet-such is the power
of Truth-the people of this brave city,
and this brave state, are here today,
in peace and happiness, knowing how
beautiful it is to have dreams come
true.
Consider if you will, that great strug-
gle. with which Kansas and the people !
of KaKnsas are indissolubly connected |
All the world loves a fair fight. Ad-
miration for courage is a part of hu- |
man nature It is, perhaps, a relic of
other dayS-days, not so enlightened |
and advanced as these-but there is in
it a certain quality, which, If it ever |
fails u.s. will leave us weak and wither- |
ed The world will not forget the story !
of the Kansas conflict. Freedom was |
here with her innocent smile, calm and /
confident, hoping all things and ready |
to endure all things; and what happen |
ed was this: They put gives upon her
wrists and told her she might win-if |
she could. And she won
What the Struggle Meant.
1t is very prof1tless to speculate upon |
what would have nappened-if some I
thing else had not happened. But we /
help prattling, as men and baDeS
have prattled since language hrst
touched human lips. 1t seems to be an
intellectual necessity to repeat forever
the obstinate questioniIrgs which begin
with if and end only with other IFS
that fail to bring an answer. L once
heard Jeremiah S. Black declare that
If the battle of Tours had gone the
other way the sign of the camel driver
would have blazed all over western Eu-
rope" 1t seems to me-does 1T not
seem to you ?-that if the Kansas con-
iict had gone the other way; if slavery
had triumphed and Kansas in her weeds
Of mourning mad been brought into the
union a slave state, slavery would have
become national, and freedom sectional,
as Abraham Lincoln declared they
would.
And still it was true, we know it
now, slavery was already a lost cause
The centuries had crept slowly along
through darkness to the better light,
ind the intelligence of modern times
had pronounced its doom. The wisdom
If the world, ethical, economic and re-
igiouS, had said No. Long before the
,iVil war where slavery made its final
ight-so grand, so gallant, so magnifi-
,ent-it was but a relic; an anachron-
SIN; an effort to maintain in the nine
zenith century the ideas and the meth
DDS of the fifteenth. 1t died, as all
Kings die when the end comes. The
stars in their courses fight against
Sisera.
1t was perhaps ordained-who can
the free-state cause should
nave it's pivot here by Mt. Dread; and
hat those who struggled to make
always for encoura gement, for light,
md, more than all, for that wise {
counsel without which good causes
anguish and fail. Here was the ,
citadel; and here was the intellectual
center, which was in that contest, as :
n all contests, the real center. Elmer
ION asks: us not man better than
| town ?" And we may we'll answer:
Yea verify, if he be really So" There
Lres men and there. are towns; but
lere was that happy conjunction, in
which town and men were fused and !
blended as if summoned by another c
Virgil, to another and better Arma :
TirumQue- ,
When the Kansas-Nebraska bill be-
anne law in 1854, the great plain out
# which the two territories were z
arved lay open to the sky, unknown,
Mysterious; waiting-as all things
the event. And 1t came.
The act was approved by President {
Pierce. May 80, 1S54,and from that
late, Time, which seems so slow,
ushed onward, always onward, to s
to a11d-ha1rcr,d !.