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AFFAIRS IN KANSAS. - ASSAULT
ON MR. SUMNER. - REPLY TO MR. BUTLER, AND RESULT. - NO SUPPLIES FOR
SUBJUGATING KANSAS.
THE collisions between
the free people and the slave-holders in Kansas, consequent on the
passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in May, 1854, were becoming more and
more violent and sanguinary. On that broad and distant field the
defenders of slavery were committing the most barbarous atrocities upon
the settlers from the North, and substantiating practically the truth,
that free and slave labor cannot harmoniously co-exist in the same
State. Antagonist in their nature, the success of one is the destruction
of the other. The outrages of the border ruffians, who were murdering
unoffending men and carrying the polls by force for slavery, roused the
Northern people to great excitement; and they demanded speedy and
decisive action on the part of the national executive. Instead of
extending protection to the injured, party, the administration fanned
the fire of the aggressors. Mr. Wilson now came grandly up to the
occasion.
A message from the
president to the Senate, enclosing an iniquitous report of the secretary
of state on the existing state of affairs in Kansas, drew forth from him
in the Senate, Feb. 18 and 19, 1856, one of the boldest defences of the
outraged people, one of the sternest rebukes of border violence, which
had yet been made. "Mr. President," said he, "the senator from
Connecticut (Mr. Toucey) closes his speech with the assumption that
there may be those in the country who do not wish the president to
preserve order; and he is pleased to say, that, if the executive does
so, their ' vocation' will be gone. Let me say to the senator from
Connecticut, that the 'vocation' of those to whom lie alludes is not
fawning, abject servility to power. No, sir: they do not
'Bend to power, and lap
its milk.'
"If the senator from
Connecticut alludes to those who have opposed the uncalled-for and
wanton repeal of the Missouri prohibition; if he alludes to those who
condemn the policy of the administration in Kansas; if he intends to
charge the intelligent, patriotic men who sympathize with the wronged
and outraged people of Kansas, bravely struggling to preserve their
firesides and altars, their property and lives, against the armed
aggressions of lawless invasions from Missouri, with a disposition to
violate or resist the laws of the country, or to cherish sectional
animosity and strife, - he makes a charge unsupported by even the shadow
of truth; and here and now, to his face, and before the Senate and the
country, I pronounce the charge utterly unfounded. If he intends to
insinuate a charge of that character against me, I promptly meet it; and
before the Senate I brand it as it deserves.
"The senator from
Connecticut, with an air of confident assurance, calls for facts.
Evidently possessed with the vast knowledge embodied in these documents
sent here by the executive, the senator assumes the air and tone of one
entitled to speak by authority; and he invites us to deal in facts. Sir,
he shall have facts; for it so happens that the friends of those who are
struggling in Kansas to protect their lives; their property, their all,
against unauthorized power and lawless violence, know something of the
facts which have transpired there. All knowledge, sir, of affairs in
Kansas, is not in the keeping of the executive and hi senator from
Connecticut. The tree of knowledge, sir, was not planted in the
executive garden; and I sometimes think, if it had been, its forbidden
fruit would have been more secure than were the fruits of that tree
plucked by our first parents.
The senator from
Connecticut commends us to the. consideration of this correspondence;
and the senator from California (Mr. Weller) asks us to print ten
thousand extra copies of it to be scattered broadcast over the land. I
now say - and I can establish what I say before any committee of
investigation, so that no man can question the declaration - that this
correspondence utterly and totally misstates and misrepresents the state
of affairs in Kansas. These documents, sir, are made up of telegraphic
despatches, of letters, of statements, of orders, written by Gov.
Shannon and others, on the rumors of the hour, in a large territory, at
a time when the people were deeply agitated by all sorts of reports that
flew over the land in rapid succession. We are called upon now to
publish these rumors, - rumors that turned out to be exaggerated or
false, - rumors recognized arid admitted to be false by the governor of
the Territory in his conversation and in his treaty with the citizens of
Lawrence. Yes, sir, the Senate is now called upon to print and send over
the country, as official documents, these stupendous misrepresentations
of facts. They will carry a gigantic falsehood to the American people.
He who reads only these documents has no accurate knowledge, no true
conception, of the actual condition of affairs in Kansas at the time
covered by them.
"The year 1854 opened
upon a vast territory lying in the heart of the continent, extending
from thirty-six degrees thirty minutes on south to the possessions of
the British queen on the north; from the borders of Missiouri, Iowa, and
Minnesota, on the east, to the summits of the Rocky Mountains on west.
Over that territory, larger than the empire of Napoleon, when, at the
head of the grand army, he gazed upon that 'ocean of flame' that wrapped
the minarets, turrets, and towers of the ancient capital of the czars,
the republic, on the 6th of March, 1820, engraved in letters of living
light the sacred words, 'Slavery shall be and is forever prohibited.'
Slavery, with hungry gaze, glared upon the forest and prairie, hill and
mountain, lake and river, of that magnificent region it was forever
forbidden to enter. Fixing its glittering eye upon that paradise,
consecrated by the nation to freedom and free institutions for all,
hallowed forever to free men and free labor, the slave-power, in the
person of the late president of the Senate, the soul of these border
aggressions; demanded that this heritage of free labor should be opened
to the withering footsteps of the bondman. Sir, with hot haste you
grasped this domain of freedom, and flung it to the slave propaganda.
Your administration, in answer to the stern protest of the free laboring-men
of the country, whose heritage it was, mocked them with the delusive
promise that the actual settlers were to shape, mould, and fashion the
institutions of Kansas and Nebraska. Two years have passed, and your
'squatter sovereignty' is proved a delusion and a cheat. Laws more
inhuman than the code of Draco, forced upon the actual settlers of
Kansas by armed invading hosts from Missouri, are now to be enforced by
United-States dragoons. The Constitution, framed by a convention of the
people, is spurned from the halls of Congress; the convention that
formed it is pronounced 'spurious' by the senator from Connecticut; and
the people who ratified it are branded as traitors by the administration
and its subalterns.
"By the theory of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, Mr. President, the actual settlers were to decide
the transcendent question, whether freedom should bless, or slavery
curse, the virgin soil of those vast Territories lying in the central
regions of the continent. The sons of the free States, of Puritan New
England, of the great central States, and of the North-west, - men who
call no man master, and who wish to make no man slave, - were invited to
plant upon the soil of Kansas those institutions that have blessed,
beautified, and adorned the homes of their childhood. The sons of the
South - from regions once teeming with the rich fruits of fields now
blasted, blighted, and withered by the sweat of untutored and unrewarded
toil - were invited to plant, if they could, the institutions that had
dishonored labor in their own native States upon the unbroken soil of
Kansas. Sir, the people of the North and the people of the South had a
legal and moral right to go there when they pleased, how they pleased,
and with whom they pleased; in companies, or in single families; under
their own direction, or under the auspices of emigrant-aid societies in
the North or the South.
"Sir the honorable
senator from Missouri (Mr. Geyer), in his remarks the other day upon the
resolution of inquiry submitted by me, made the extraordinary
declaration, that the 'disorders' which he admits have existed on the
borders are to be attributed to an extraordinary organization, called an
'Emigrant-aid Society,'- the first attempt in the history of this
country to take possession of an organized Territory, and exclude from
it the inhabitants of other portions of the Union.' I am amazed that the
senator from Missouri should make such a declaration on the floor of the
Senate. When and how did the Emigrant-aid Society 'attempt to take
possession of an organized Territory, and to exclude from it the
inhabitants of other portions of the Union'? Will the senator tell us
when that 'attempt' was made? Will he tell us where it was made? Will he
tell its how it was made? I challenge the senator to give us one single
fact to sustain the declaration he has so unjustly made against men of
stainless purity. The senator avows that men from his State 'have passed
over the borders;' but they have done so, he tells us, 'to protect the
ballot-box from the attempt of armed colonists to control the elections
there.' When and how were the ballot-boxes assailed by 'armed colonists'
from the North? I call upon the senator from Missouri, I challenge any
senator, to furnish one fact, one single authenticated fact, to sustain
this assumption.
"Sir, the Emigrant-aid
Society of New England has violated no law, human or divine. Standing
here before the Senate and the country, I challenge the senator from
Missouri, or any other senator, to furnish to the Senate one fact, one
authenticated fact, to show that the Emigrant-aid Society has performed
any illegal act, any act inconsistent with the obligations of
patriotism, morality, or religion. The President of the United States
has arraigned before the country these emigrant aid societies; the
organs of the administration have assailed them; and now the senator
from Missouri here, on the floor of the Senate, renews the assault, Sir,
I defy any supporter of the administration, any apologist of Atchison,
Stringfellow, and their followers, to give us one act of the directors
of the New-England Emigrant-aid Society hostile to law, order, and
peace. I know most of these gentlemen thus wantonly assailed; and I know
them to be law-abiding, order-loving, conservative men. I defy the
senator from Missouri, the senator from Connecticut, or the chief
magistrate at the other end of the avenue, to show, here or elsewhere,
that the Emigrant-aid Society ever violated a law of this country, or
performed an act which could not receive the sanction of the laws of God
and man. They have sent no paupers or criminals to Kansas: they have
simply organized a system by which persons wishing to go to Kansas may
go in small companies; and by going together, and starting at a
particular time and place, may have the cost of their fare reduced about
thirty-three per cent. This company has built a hotel in Kansas; has
sent some saw-mills there; has aided in establishing schools and
churches. That is the extent of offence, - no more, no less.
"Mr. President, on the
29th of July, 1854, within sixty days after the passage of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, a meeting was called at Weston, Mo., by the
'Platte-county Self-defensive Association.' Resolutions were adopted,
declaring that the association, whenever called upon by any of the
citizens of Kansas Territory, will hold itself in readiness to assist in
removing any and all emigrants who go there under the auspices of the
Northern emigration-aid societies.
"Before the feet of the
first emigrants who went there under the auspices of the Emigrant-aid
Society pressed the soil of Kansas, this 'Platte-county Self-defensive
Association,' under the guidance of B. F. Stringfellow, proclaimed to
the world its readiness to cross into Kansas and remove actual settlers
from their new homes. Under the lead of this lawless association other
meetings were held in Western Missouri, and resolutions adopted in favor
of carrying slavery into Kansas, and in denunciation of emigrants from
the free States who should go there under the auspices of the
emigrant-aid societies.
On the 9th of August,
more than two months after the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, a few
persons went into that Territory from the East. They went there under
the auspices of that society referred to the other day so unjustly by
the senator from Missouri. Early in the autumn of 1854 the Missouri
guardians of Kansas crossed over into the Territory, and, by force of
arms, endeavored to drive from their homes the few persons who had begun
the little settlement at Lawrence. But these Platte-county-Association
heroes found a little band of about thirty New England men, under the
lead of Charles Robinson, - the Miles Standish of Kansas, - ready to
meet the issue with powder and ball; and they retreated to their homes,
preferring to live to fight another day.
The senator from
Connecticut referred with an air of triumph to the election which took
place on the twenty-ninth day of November, 1854. On that day Mr.
Whitfield was elected - and triumphantly elected - a delegate from that
Territory. No one ever questioned the fact that he had a majority of the
legal voters of the Territory on that day; but, in addition to that
fact, men familiar with the Territory declare that he received the votes
of more than a thousand inhabitants of Missouri who crossed the line and
voted on that occasion.
"I hold in my hand, sir,
a paper drawn up and signed by Gen. Pomeroy, - a gentleman of
intelligence, of personal honor, whose veracity no man who knows him can
ever question. From this memorial, addressed to Congress, I quote the
following words concerning the election of the 29th of November, 1854: -
"'The first ballot-box
that was opened upon our virgin soil was closed to us by overpowering
numbers and impending force. So bold and reckless were our invaders,
that they cared not to conceal their attack. They came upon us, not in
the guise of voters to steal away our franchise, but boldly and openly,
to snatch it with a strong hand. They came directly from their own
homes, and in compact and organized bands, with arms in hand, and
provisions for the expedition, marched to our polls; and, when their
work was done, returned whence they came. It is unnecessary to enter
into the details: it is enough to say, that in three districts, in which
by the most irrefragable evidence there were not a hundred and fifty
voters, - most of whom refused to participate in the mockery of the
elective franchise, - these invaders polled over a thousand votes.'
"An examination of
details will reveal the extent of this fraud. In the seventh election
district of Kansas, six hundred and four votes were cast on the 29th of
November, 1854: of these Whitfield received five hundred and
ninety-seven, - all but seven. Three months afterwards the census was
taken, and there were only fifty-three voters in the seventh district.
Who went there to vote? Organized, armed, disciplined men from the State
of Missouri; and all the votes but seven in that district were given for
Mr. Whitfield. Does the senator from Missouri call that 'protecting the
ballot-box against armed colonists'? In the eleventh district, on the
same day, two hundred and thirty-seven votes were given. In February
following, when the census was taken, there were but twenty-four voters
in that district, which, three months before, had given Whitfield two
hundred and thirty-seven votes, - all but three of the whole number
cast; and, within thirty days after the census was taken, three hundred
and twenty-eight votes were given in this district having only
twenty-four voters. Yet the senator from Missouri gravely informs the
Senate that Missourians only crossed over the borders 'to protect the
ballot-boxes against armed colonists' sent there under the auspices of
emigrant-aid societies. That these Missourians crossed the line and
voted on that day for Whitfield, no one doubted; but he had a majority
of the voters of the Territory, and for that reason his election was not
contested. That is the answer to the senator from Connecticut, who has
built his argument on that fact.
"The character of this
invasion will appear in an extract from a speech made by one of these
modern heroes (Gen. Stringfellow), who, according to the senator from
Missouri, crosses over into Kansas to protect the ballot-boxes from the
armed colonists from the free States. This speech was made just before
the declaration of Nov. 29, 1854, to which the senator from Connecticut
has referred with so much confidence, at St. Joseph, Mo. In that speech,
Gen. Stringfellow said, - 'I tell you to mark every scoundrel among you
that is the least tainted with free-soilism or abolitionism, and
exterminate him. Neither give nor take quarter from the damned rascal. I
propose to mark them in this house, and oil present occasion, so that
you may crush them out.'
'Crush them out' is the
language. You will remember, sir, that the Attorney-General of the
United States -a man who spent the dew of his youth and the vigor of his
early manhood in assailing democratic statesmen, and who is now giving
the mature years of his life to undermining and perverting democratic
principles - sent an edict to Massachusetts, pending the election in
1853, that the president 'was up to the occasion,' and intended to crush
out the element of abolitionism.' Gen. Stririgfellow, like the
president, is 'up to the occasion.' He has caught up the word of the
attorney-general. He is going to mark the free-soilers, he says, that
you may 'crush them out.' I think his success, sir, will be about equal
to the success which followed the efforts of the president and Gen.
Cushing in 'crushing out the element of abolitionism.' The elections of
the last two years have shown who is the crusher and who is the crushed.
Gen. Stringfellow continues: -
"'To those who have
qualms of conscience as to violating laws, state or national, the time
has come when such impositions must be disregarded, as your rights and
property are in danger; and l advise you, one and all, to enter every
election district in Kansas, in defiance of Reeder and his vile
myrmidons, and vote at the point of the bowie-knife and revolver.
Neither give nor take quarter, as our cause demands it. It is enough
that the slaveholding interest wills it, from which there is no appeal.
What right has Gov. Reeder to rule Missourians in Kansas? His
proclamation and prescribed oath must be repudiated. It is your interest
to do so. Mind that slavery is established where it is not prohibited.'
"Qualms of conscience as
to violating laws, state or national.' No, sir, that will never do!
'Such impositions must be disregarded.' 'Every election district in
Kansas must be entered by one and all,' and they must 'vote at the point
of the bowie-knife and revolver.' Is that the way these border gentlemen
pass over the line, according to the senator from Missouri, to protect
the ballot-boxes against the armed colonists'?
"Qualms of conscience
about violating laws, state or national,' were given up; and they
'entered into every election district in Kansas, in spite of the
proclamation of Reeder,' and made the election of Whitfield doubly sure.
The Senate will remember that the senator from Missouri assures us that
Missourians only crossed the borders to 'protect the ballot-boxes
against the armed colonists' from the East. Sir, I commend to the
especial consideration of the senator from Missouri the advice of Gen.
Stringfellow, to give up all 'qualms of conscience as to violating laws,
state or national,' and to enter every election district in Kansas.' Is
that the way Missourians 'protect the ballot-boxes over the borders' ?
"I proceed now with the
facts. The census of Kansas was taken, by the direction of Gov. Reeder,
in February, 1855; and then there were eight thousand five hundred
inhabitants, and two thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven legal
voters, in the Territory. At the ensuing election, - on the 30th of
March, 1855, - four thousand voters from the State of Missouri passed
into that Territory and gave their votes. Lawrence, according to the
census, was entitled to less than five hundred votes. But, sir, nine
hundred and fifty were cast although nearly one-half the legal voters of
Lawrence, if we are to believe the testimony of some of their most
respectable citizens, refused to vote on that day. More than eight
hundred Missourians, armed to the teeth, led by Col. Young, a lawyer of
Western Missouri, went to Lawrence, the home of the New-England men so
often assailed and so much misrepresented in the documents before us.
Col. Young made a speech declaring that he would vote, or would shed his
blood. He took the precaution, however, to swear in his vote. He had
more regard for his life than he had for his conscience.
"'In the Lawrence
district, speeches were made to them by leading residents of Missouri,
in which it was said that they would carry their purpose, if need be, at
the point of the bayonet and bowie-knife; and one voter was fired at as
he was driven from the election ground. Finding they had a greater force
than was necessary for that poll, some two hundred men were drafted from
the number, and sent off, under their proper officers, to another
district; after which they still polled from this camp over seven
hundred votes.'
"Gen. Pomeroy says that
in the fourth and seventh districts, along the Sante Fe road, -
The invaders came
together in one armed and organized body, with trains of fifty wagons,
besides horsemen, and, the night before election, pitched their camp in
the vicinity of the polls; and having appointed their own judges in
place of those who, from intimidation or otherwise, failed to attend,
they voted without any proof of residence. In these two
election-districts, where the census shows one hundred voters, there
were polled three hundred and fourteen votes.'
"In the Leavenworth
district, hundreds of men breakfasted in Missouri, voted in Kansas, and
returned on the same day to Missouri. While, the voting was going on,
one of their leaders made a speech, in which he told the Platte county
boys that they must stand aside, and let the Clay county boys vote
first, because they had the farthest to go in returning to their homes;
and the Platte-county boys of Missouri stood aside, and allowed the
Clay-county boys of Missouri to vote first and go home.
This memorial declares
that:
Hundreds of men came
together in the sixteenth district, crossing the river from Missouri the
day before election, and encamping together, armed and provisioned, made
the fiercest threats against the lives of the judges, and during the
night called several times at the house of one of them for the purpose
of intimidating him, declaring in the presence of his wife that a rope
had been prepared to hang him: and although we are not prepared to say
that these threats would have been carried out, yet they served to
produce his resignation, and give these invaders, in the substitution,
control of the polls; and, on the morning of the election, a steamboat
brought from the town of Weston, Mo., to Leavenworth, an accession to
their number of several hundred more, who returned in the same boat
after depositing their votes. There were over nine hundred and fifty
votes polled, besides from a hundred to a hundred and fifty actual
residents who were deterred or discouraged from voting; while the census
returns show but three hundred and eighty-five votes in the district a
month before. Not less than six hundred votes were here given by these
non residents of the Territory, who voted without being sworn as to
their qualifications, and, immediately after the election, returned to
Missouri; some of them being the incumbents of important public offices
there.'
"I will now, sir, quote
what Gen. Pomeroy says of the election in the eighteenth district; and I
ask the attention of the senator from Missouri to this statement : -
"'In the eighteenth
election district, where the population was sparse, and no great amount
of foreign votes was needed to overpower it, a detachment from Missouri,
from sixty to a hundred, passed in with a train of wagons, arms, and
ammunition, making their camp the night before the election near
Moorestown, the place of the polls, without even a pretext of residence,
and returning immediately to Missouri after their work was done; their
leader and captain being a distinguished citizen of Missouri, but late
the presiding-officer of the Senate of the United States, and who had
bowie-knife and revolver belted around him, apparently ready to shed the
blood of any man who refused to be enslaved. All these facts we are
prepared to establish, if necessary, by proof that would be considered
competent in a court of justice.'
"Gen. Pomeroy expresses
the opinion:
'That not less than three
thousand votes were given by these armed invaders, who came organized in
bands, with officers and arms, and tents and provisions, and munitions
of war, as though they were marching upon a foreign foe instead of their
own unoffending fellow-citizens. Upon the principal road leading into
our Territory, and passing several important polls, they numbered not
less than twelve hundred men; and one camp alone contained not less than
six hundred. They arrived at their several destinations the night before
the election, and having pitched their camps, and placed their sentries,
waited for the coming day. Bazaze-wazons were there, with arms and
ammunition enough for a protracted fight, and among them two brass
field-pieces ready charged. They came with drums beating, and flags
flying; and the leaders were of the most prominent and conspcious men of
their Sate.
How very considerate it
was, Mr. President, in these 'prominent and pious men,' with their
baggage-wagons and cannons and rules and drums and flying flags, to lead
the men of Western Missouri over into the forrests and prairies of
Kansas to protect the ballot-boxes from those dangerous men, the armed
colonists of New England.
Sir, the gentleman from
Connecticut wishes to know why the seats of the legislators of
Missourian were not contested I will tell him. Mr. Phillips, a young
lawyer of Leavenworth, not himself a candidate, took measures to have
the seat of the member from the sixteenth district contested: and what
was the result? He was taken over into Missouri and lynched because he
dared, simply on patriotic grounds, to dispute the right of the member
to his seat, upon which he had been voted by these armed men from
Missouri.
'Sir. the whole power and
patronage of this government, from the time when the Kansas and Nebraska
Act went into operation to this hour has been given to crush out the
freemen of Kansas, and to plant the institution of slavery on that
virgin soil.
"The officers of the
United States in the territory of Kansas - the judges, the district
attorney, the secretary, and the Marshall - are all slave-State men; and
their influence has been in favour of making Kansas a Slave State. Gov.
Reeder, who undertook to protect the people in their legal rights, was
stricken down under the pretence that he had been speculating in the
public lands. Of twenty-.one officers of the Federal Government in the
Territory, nineteen are slave-State men, and one is a free-State man;
but already he is marked by Atchison, and another designated for his
place. Within the last ten days, men from Kansas have called upon the
executive to remonstrate against this striking-down of a public officer
simply for the crime of being in favor of free institutions.
When I yielded the floor
yesterday for an adjournment I was speaking of the election of the 30th
of March, 1855. The result of that election was, that the nineteen
districts in Kansas were carried by the proslavery party, and that more
than six thousand votes were given in that Territory, where, thirty days
before, there were less than three thousand voters.
"The question was put
yesterday by the honorable senator from Connecticut why the governor
gave certificates of election on that occasion. I will simply say, that
Gov. Reeder, in the cases brought before him, did refuse to deliver the
certificates; that he made the refusal in the presence of the men who
claimed them with bowie-knives and revolvers in their belts, and amidst
threats of his life; and, while he read the statement, he held a cocked
revolver in his hand for necessary self-defence. There were a few
devoted friends around him, expecting to see him murdered on that
occasion. In the cases not at the time contested in the cases where at
the time no one dared to raise a question, in the cases where at the
time a contest was neglected, the certificates were given. A new
election was ordered in those cases where the certificates were set
aside; and, in pursuance thereof, the people elected representatives and
councillors, and commissions were issued to them. They met on the second
day of July at Pawnee; and both branches of the legislature, without
examining the facts, and positively refusing to do so, voted out the men
chosen by the people of Kansas, and voted in the men originally chosen
by the Missouri invaders. This legislature thus chosen moved the place
of meeting from Pawnee to Shaw. nee Mission against the consent of the
governor, who refused afterwards to recognize it as a legislature. They
went on, and passed the laws which are now brought here. Some of those
laws are as inhuman as any code ever presented for the government of a
conquered people.
"When the legislature assembled, when it turned out the men who had been
legally chosen, when it brought in the men imposed on the Territory by
armed invaders from a neighboring State, when it removed to the Shawnee
Mission, when it was repudiated by your governor sent there by this
administration, then it was that the freemen of Kansas assembled in
their family meetings, and declared against the legality of this
legislature and its acts. A convention of the people was called. That
convention assembled, and framed a constitution; the people ratified it;
and that constitution is now submitted for the action of the Congress of
the United States. The senator from Connecticut denounces it as a
'spurious convention.' Sir, this convention was the act of the people of
Kansas in their sovereign primary capacity. They accepted the doctrine
of squatter sovereignty. They accepted the doctrines laid down by
Madison, by Marshall, by Story, by Judge Wilson, by Buchanan and Wright,
and the chiefs of the Democratic party, in the days when the Democratic
party paid some little regard to the principles of popular government.
"Sir, the senator from Connecticut denounced
this act of the people as a 'spurious convention.' in 1836, the freemen
of Michigan, disregarding the action of their legislature, came together
in their primary capacity, framed a constitution, sent that constitution
to Congress, and that constitution was carried through the Senate by the
votes of Benton, Buchanan, Wright, and the chiefs of the Democratic
party; but that was in the days of Andrew Jackson, when it was supposed
the people of this country had retained the rights guaranteed to them by
the fundamental laws of the country. Sir, Andrew Jackson did not
denounce the movement as an insurrectionary one, although they refused
to receive the officer whom he sent to them. The Congress of that day
did not denounce those men as traitors to the country, as the men of
Kansas are denounced in the documents before us, ten thousand extra
copies of which we are asked to publish. No, sir; no! This is the first
time in the history of this country when the people have assembled in
their primary capacity, and exercised their right - their inborn,
natural right - to change their government at their pleasure, and have,
for such an act, been held up as traitors by the government of the
country. "Sir, the
Democracy in both branches of Congress sustained the doctrines
maintained by the suffrage party in Rhode Island; and it so happens,
that, when Gov. Dorr took refuge in the old Granite State, among the
first who recognized the doctrines which he maintained was the man who
is chief magistrate of the United States, and who now denounces the
freemen of Kansas, and holds up to the country, as violators of the law,
men who are, on the 4th of March next, to be arrested if they dare
assemble in their legislative capacity and choose two United-States
senators to come and implore us to receive Kansas into this sisterhood
of States, and thus save this fair Territory from bloodshed and ruin.
Yes, sir, this man, who now characterizes as 'revolutionary' what has
already been done by the people of Kansas, and warns them that further
action 'will become treasonable insurrection,' welcomed Gov. Dorr to the
capital of New Hampshire oil 14th of December, 1842, in a series of
resolutions, declaring, that 'when the people act in their original
sovereign capacity, they are not bound to conform to forms not
instituted by themselves;' that 'the day of free government would never
dawn upon the eyes of oppressed millions if the friends of liberty
should wait for leave from tyrants to abolish tyranny.'
Sir, in pursuing this history, I have
followed the order of time; and I am now brought to speak of another
invasion from Missouri, - all which took place on the 1st of October
last, when Gen. Whitfield was elected. I state here - on authority of
gentlemen, some half-dozen of whom are within the sound of my voice, and
who will prove it under oath before your committee if you will permit
them to do so - that hundreds of men went over from Missouri, and voted
in that election.
"The invasion - the fourth invasion, of which we have heard so much in
these papers from the executive department—grew out of the cold-blooded
murder of a man by the name of Dow, at Hickory Point, by one Coleman.
Mr. Branson and his neighbors took the mortal remains of the murdered
Dow froth the highway, where he had lain for hours, and consigned them
to his last resting-place. The murderer has never been tried nor
arrested. Branson, with whom Dow had lived, was arrested on
peace-warrant by Sheriff Jones, and rescued by some fifteen of his
neighbors and friends. Then it was that the stories were manufactured,
that a thousand men were organized at Lawrence, armed with Sharpe's
rifles and cannon, ready to resist the authorities. There were not then
more than three hundred Sharpe's rifles in Lawrence, and not one cannon.
There was no armed soldiery in Lawrence when these charges were made:
there were armed men there; but they were not embodied. Of the men who
aided in the rescue of Branson, - all which might take place in any
State, at any time, without any governor thinking of calling out the
armed militia, much less the forces of the United States, - only two
ever lived in Lawrence; and they were not in at that time. The reports
mentioned in these despatches about burning buildings have turned out to
be exaggerated and misrepresented.
On the strength of these reports, however,
Gov Shannon sent his letter of the 28th of November to the president;
and on the next day he issued that fatal proclamation, which fomented,
at the time, the invasion from Missouri; and this was followed by his
telegraphic despatch of the 1st of December. Here let me say, that in
this letter, proclamation, and despatch, Gov. Shannon shows that he is
not a man who comprehends his position or his duties. He was excited and
frightened by the reports and rumors he relied upon. During this period,
when he ordered out the militia and telegraphed the president,
despatches, founded on were sent into Missouri: and the result was, that
from one thousand to two thousand armed men came from Missouri into
Kansas; and they were incorporated into that 'little force of less than
four hundred men,' spoken of in these despatches from Kansas, which
rallied to the call of the officers of the militia. Sir, if the people
of Kansas had been with the governor, if they had sympathized with him
in his ill-starred movements, if they had believed that law and order
were in danger, would they not have rallied to his support? On occasion,
the arsenal of the United States in Western Missouri was broken open;
arms were stolen, and carried into Kansas. Nothing is said about this
robbery in these reports. Missourians broke open this arsenal, and.
stoIe cannon, ammunition, and muskets, for the purpose of going on a
marauding invasion; and the late president of the Senate was compelled -
so great was the danger - to hasten after them to keep them from hurting
somebody Yet not a word is said about it in these despatches. Sir, if
the freemen of Kansas had broken open that arsenal, and had stolen even
a gun-flint, you would have had a proclamation from your governor and
your president, and the army of the United States would have been called
out to put them down. But it was the organized men of the blue lodges in
Western Missouri who did it. They have been, and now are, permitted to
violate all law with impunity. Woodson, the secretary of Kansas, urged
on these lawless men from Missouri by assuring them that 'there is no
doubt in regard to having a fight; and, if we are defeated this time,
the Territory is lost to the South.'
The invading hosts from Missouri encamped on
the Wakarusa, within about six miles of beleaguered Lawrence. In marked
contrast to the inconsiderate folly of Shannon was the prudent, firm,
and heroic bearing of Gen. Robinson. Throughout the whole contest his
prudence was signally manifested; and, in the opinion of many, the
country was saved from bloodshed and civil war by his action. On 7th of
December your governor tells you he went to Lawrence; but he does not
tell you the whole story. He did go to Lawrence, and he met the Lawrence
men, and the Lawrence women too; and he saw the inflexible determination
of the one, and the calm devotion of the other. He told gentlemen who
directed the affairs of Lawrence, that they had been misrepresented;
that they misunderstood each other; and then, after two days of
conference and negotiation, he made a treaty. The first sentence of the
treaty acknowledges that the governor and the people of Lawrence had not
understood each other. Here is a man who asked the president for the
army of the United States; who ordered out the militia, and incorporates
into the militia of Kansas, by the showing of these papers, from a
thousand to fifteen hundred Missourians; and then, after doing this, he
went to Lawrence. And what did he find? People who flew to arms simply
to protect their homes and their firesides against an armed invasion of
two thousand men who were threatening with oaths to burn their city and
to blot them out from existence. I say, Gov. Shannon made a treaty with
Gen. Lane (known to some senators here) and with Gen. Robinson (a man
who, I hope, is hereafter to be known to senators) and this treaty
closes with the agreement, on the part of Gov. Shannon, that he will use
his influence to secure to the citizens of Kansas remuneration for any
damages sustained by the sheriff's posse in Douglas County; that he has
not called upon persons residents of any other States to aid in the
execution of the laws; and that he has not any authority or legal power
to do so, nor will he exercise any such power; and that he will not call
on any citizen of another State who may be here. In these negotiations
he agreed to waive the question of the validity of the laws of the
Territorial legislature. Then he issued an order to Lane and Robinson to
incorporate into the service of Kansas the militia of Lawrence, and
directed them 'to use the enrolled force for the preservation of the
peace, and the protection of Lawrence and vicinity' against the armed
men on the banks of the Wakarusa.
"Mr. President, this treaty, which Shannon
signed with Lane and Robinson on Sunday, the 9th of December, 1855, will
stand a perpetual confession of his incapacity and folly; this order,
giving Lane and Robinson authority 'to use the enrolled force' —with
those famed Sharpe's rifles—'for the preservation of peace, and the
protection of Lawrence and vicinity' against the armed bands his fatal
proclamation had summoned, will stand a living testimony that the men of
Lawrence were the guardians of law. Yes, sir, that treaty and that order
will stand, an eternal expression at once of error and repentance.
"After signing these evidences of his own
humiliation, he returned to the camp on the Wakarusa, and then, to the
leaders of the crew he had drawn together, proclaimed his truce with the
men of Lawrence. Back to their homes in Missouri sauntered these baffled
bands of lawless desperadoes, cold, sullen, dispirited. They came to the
banks of the Wakarusa big with threats of vengeance upon the free-State
men of Lawrence: they returned with bitter curses upon the imbecile
governor whose proclamation had drawn them from their homes. Gen.
Stringfellow whose pure taste the senator from South Carolina can vouch
for, denounced the treachery of Shannon. Capt. Leonard, the leader of
one of these gangs of border banditti, through the columns of 'The St.
Joseph Gazette' declares that your governor 'raises a storm', and then,
to quell it, Judas-like professes his special friendship, first for one
party, and then, I conjecture, for the other. But, however this may be,
he descends to the despicable position of a common liar both to the one
party and the other.
"You may search the records of the country
from the settlement at Jamestown to this day, and you call no instance
of such incapacity, folly, and superadded criminality, as Wilson Shannon
displayed on that occasion, or such an utter disregard of the rights of
the people as was manifested by the border settlers of Missouri.
This administration has now clothed Wilson
Shannon - whose incompetency has been made manifest to the world - with
the civil and military authority, and with all the power of the
government to execute the laws and to maintain order in the Territory.
The duties assigned this officer in the present critical condition of
affairs on your frontiers are of the gravest and most weighty char-
actor. Sir, your administration -by the wanton repeal of the Missouri
prohibition, by the failure to protect tile actual residents of Kansas
in their rights, and by the blundering acts and criminal remissness of
the official authorities - has brought the nation to the perilous edge
of civil strife. Sir, this administration owes it to the country, whose
peace is in danger this day, to intrust the responsible and delicate
duties of governor of Kansas to a prudent, judicious, sagacious
statesman, - a man of individual honor and personal character, in whom
the people call the fullest confidence. Wilson Shannon is not that man.
The man could descend to degrading companionship around the gaming-
tables of those saloons of Sail Francisco (described by that experienced
traveller, Madame Ida Pfeiffer, as the most disolute she had ever seen
in her our of the globe) with Mexican greasers, the escaped convicts of
the British penal colonies, and the desperadoes of the Old World and the
New; the man who could - while Kansas was overrun by armed bands
summoned around Lawrence by his own reckless letters, despatches, and
proclamations; while civil war lowered over the people intrusted to his
care; while an honored citizen, stricken down by the assassin, lay cold
in death, and a devoted wife was weeping over his mortal remains— make
himself the humiliating object of the derision of his enemies, and of
the pity of his friends, by an exhibition of gross intoxication, - is
not the man to whom the American people would intrust the affairs of
Kansas.
"I call the attention of the Senate, Mr.
President, to another forray over the borders, - to the fifth Missouri
invasion I mean the irruption into Kansas on the 15th of December, when
the people were called upon to vote upon the constitution framed by that
convention the senator from Connecticut is pleased to pronounce
'spurious.' Along the Missouri border the people in several of the
voting precincts were overawed by threats of impending violence, and
meetings were not holden. At Leavenworth the election was, broken up by
the lawless brutality of men, many of whom had been ordered to
Leavenworth on that day to be formally discharged from service in the
Kansas militia, into which they had been incorporated. At the
dinner-hour, while most of the people were absent from the polls, these
'border ruffians' rushed upon the officers, broke up the meeting, beat
to the earth Witherell the clerk, whose life was saved by the heroic
daring of Brown, since foully murdered, who rushed to his rescue at a
moment when the uplifted axe of the assassin was about to descend upon
his prostrate form.
"On the 22d of December another forray was
made upon freedom at Leavenworth; and the press of Mr. Delahay, which
barely escaped on the 15th, was destroyed. Mr. Delahay is a native of
Maryland, and has been a slaveholder in his native State, in Alabama,
and in Missouri,—a man who has little sympathy with antislavery men. He
is simply one of those moderate, conservative men who believe that 'free
labor is honorable, and slave labor is dishonorable,' and that the
permanent interests of Kansas would be promoted by making it a free
commonwealth.
"Oii the 15th of January the people of
Kansas were called upon to elect officers under the constitution adopted
on the 15th of December. Another assault upon the freedom of the
ballot-box was made at Easton by armed men. The people attempted to
resist the destruction of the ballot-boxes by these marauding squads
that were prowling over the country, insulting the people, and robbing
them of their means of defence. Peaceable, law-abiding citizens were
hunted down, fired upon, and their lives put in imminent peril. Some of
them had to flee to Lawrence, as to a city of refuge, to save themselves
from the vengeance of the prowling assassins. A party of these lawless
desperadoes captured Mr. Brown - who so bravely rescued Witherell at
Leavenworth - and several others; robbed them of their arms; and then,
with hatchets and knives, they fiendishly hacked and cut Brown to
pieces, flung him in a dying condition into a carriage, and bore him to
his home to breathe out his life in the arms of his distracted wife,
another sacrifice to the dark spirit of slave propagandism.
To-day, sir, unless they are on their march,
there are arming and organizing in Western Missouri, in the blue lodges,
in the secret camps, hosts of men for another invasion. Sleepless eyes
are upon these movements organized by Atchison and his subalterns. Gen.
Lane and Gen. Robinson sent to the president, on the 21st of January, a
telegraphic despatch. Gen. Lane - a man who trod the battle-field of
Buena Vista; a man who knows something of what war is; who knows
something of the threats that have been made, and the preparations that
are now making, on the borders of Western Missouri, for another lawless
invasion of Kansas - has appealed to the president for protection. He is
no fanatic. Sir, you cannot call him an abolitionist; at least, not yet.
"The senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Hale)
says he will be one soon. The scenes through which he is passing are
calculated to abolitionize men made of the hardest natures. John Quincy
Adams once said that a man 'has the right to be an abolitionist; and,
being an abolitionist, he violates no law, human or divine.' Gen. Lane
may be an abolitionist; but, sir, he is not one now. On the 21st of
January he asked the president to send the military force stationed at
Fort Leavenworth to protect the people of Kansas against an invasion
which is 'organizing on our border, amply supplied with artillery, for
the avowed purpose of invading our Territory, demolishing our towns, and
butchering our unoffending free-State citizens.'
"Two days after, - on Jan. 23, - Gen. Lane
and Gen. Robinson asked the president to issue his proclamation
forbidding this lawless invasion of their Territory. The senator from
Connecticut flatters himself that those of us who do not approve the
course of the administration will be greatly disappointed to find that
the leaders of the free-State movement in Kansas have implored the
executive to issue his proclamation. Let not the senator from
Connecticut lay the flattering unction to his soul that we are chagrined
by the disclosure of this correspondence. Robinson and Lane, in behalf
of the imperilled people of Kansas, asked the president to issue his
proclamation immediately, forbidding the invasion, which, if carried out
as planned, will stand forth without a parallel in world's history.'
They did not ask the president for his proclamation against the wronged
and oppressed people of Kansas. They asked for bread; the president gave
them a stone: they asked for a fish the president gave them a serpent.
"The president, sir, has issued his
proclamation; but that proclamation is chiefly and mainly directed
against Lane and Robinson, and the liberty-loving, law-abiding
free-State men of Kansas. Like his annual message, in which he softly
spoke of the long series of outrages you will scarcely find paralleled
in the history of Christian States as 'irregularities;' like that
special message, in which the aggressive acts of the Missouri invaders
were covered over with mild and honeyed phrases, and the defensive
measures of the actual settlers treated as insurrectionary acts,
demanding executive censure, - this proclamation will be received on the
Western borders, by the men who by their votes and by their resolves
have dictated law to Kansas, with shouts of approval. Sir, this
proclamation will carry no terror into the blue lodge and secret clubs
of Western Missouri.
"But, sir, we were congratulated yesterday
by the senator from Connecticut that the laws were to be executed, and
order preserved. I call the attention of the Senate and of the country
to the order of the secretary of war. What does this order say to Col.
Sumner? Does it clearly and expressly command him to arrest, at all
hazard, any aggressive movement upon Kansas from Missouri? The secretary
of war informs Col. Sumner that "'The president has, by proclamation,
warned all persons combined for insurrection, or invasive aggression,
against the organized government of the Territory of Kansas, or
associated to resist the due execution of the laws therein, to abstain
from such revolutionary and lawless proceedings."
"Does the secretary, then, direct Col.
Sumner to defend Kansas against 'invasive aggression'? No, sir; no. the
secretary then issues the orders of the government to Col. Sumner in
these terms:-
"'If, therefore, the governor of the
Territory, finding the ordinary course of judicial proceeding and the
powers vested in the United-States marshals inadequate for the
suppression of insurrectionary combinations, or armed resistance to the
execution of the law, should make requisition upon you to furnish a
military force to aid him in the performance of that official duty, you
are hereby directed to employ for that purpose the forces under your
Command.'
"Sir, this is not a direction to Col. Sumner
to use his forces against the armed Missouri invaders. The secretary
tells the colonel that the president has sent out his proclamation
against those movements; but, when he comes to direct the commander of
the force of the United States what to do, he does not order him to use
that force if there shall be an invasion from the State of Missouri. The
secretary shrinks from putting himself against the lawless men who
represent a power in this country that sustains them in their aggressive
acts. Sir, the secretary bends to that power; he bows to these men, who
have no 'qualms of conscience as to violating laws, state or national;'
and we have had nothing but bows to these men for the last eighteen
months from the other end of the avenue.
"The reason why the government has not used
its proper legitimate influences in Kansas for peace, for order, and for
liberty, is the same reason which originally snatched that four hundred
and fifty thousand square miles of free soil, - consecrated forever to
the laboring millions of this country, - and flung it open to the
slave-extending interests.
"Sir, I know that men in the confidence of
the administration have expressed the idea that the administration
intends, if the people's legislature meets on the 4th of March, to
arrest the members the moment they take the oath of office. It is a
well-known fact, sir, - known by those who know anything about affairs
in Kansas,— that they do not intend to pass laws, or interfere in any
way with the legislation of the country; that they intend merely to
assemble, state their grievances to the country, and choose senators to
come here to implore us in God's name to carry out the wishes of the
people, and allow Kansas to take her place in this Union of free
commonwealths. I understand these to be the intentions of the tried and
trusted leaders of the free State men in Kansas. You may arrest Gov.
Robinson and the leaders of the free-State party; you may imprison them
if you will; you may shed the blood of the actual settlers of Kansas:
but you cannot break their spirits, or crush out their hopes. The people
of Kansas are for a free State; and, if it is made a slave State, it
will be by the criminal remissness or direct interposition of this
administration. Leave the people of Kansas free, uninfluenced by your
slave-State officials you have thrust upon them, uninfluenced by foreign
interposition, and they will bring her here clothed in the white robes
of Freedom.
"The senator from Missouri said to us the
other day that the colonists from the East wished to keep others out;
that they wished to get possession of the Territory. Armed men, he said,
had crossed from Missouri to protect the ballot-boxes against the armed
colonists sent there by the Emigrant-aid Society. Did they protect the
ballot. boxes on the 29th of November, 1854, when they went over and
gave fifteen hundred votes? Did they protect the ballot-boxes when they
marched into Kansas on the 30th of March, with cannon, with revolver,
and with rifle, displaced the election of officers, and delivered their
hundreds of votes, and, in a place where there were but fifty-three
voters, cast over six hundred? Did they protect the ballot-boxes when
they went there on the 15th of December, and broke up the meeting at
Leavenworth? Did they protect the ballot-boxes on the 15th of January,
when Brown was murdered in revenge for standing by the ballot-boxes and
protecting them against them?
"Sir, men aided to go there by the
Emigrant-aid Society have never - no, sir, never - at any time, or on
any occasion, interfered with the freedom of voting.
'Whatever record leaps to light,
They never can be shamed.'
"Sir, I see that in the South there are
movements from all quarters to get up emigrant-aid societies. The
senator from Mississippi (Mr. Brown), always frank and manly oil
questions, proposes that Mississippi shall scud three hundred of her
young men and three hundred of her bondmen into that Territory to plan
and shape its future. I say to the honorable senator from Mississippi,
Send your Mississippi young men and your Mississippi bondmen you will
never find, on part of the men who went there from the North under the
auspices of emigrant-aid societies, one single unlawful act to keep you
out or rob you of one of your lawful rights. The men who charge the
emigrants from the North with aggressions upon the men of other sections
of the country utter that which has not the shadow of an element of
truth in it; and they know it, or they are grossly ignorant of Kansas
affairs. This proposition of the senator from Mississippi was followed
by a letter from a representative from South Carolina (Mr. Brooks),
offering to give a hundred dollars, - one dollar for every man they will
send from his section. I say to the senators from South Carolina, that
if the offer of their colleague in the other House is accepted, and if
the hundred men go from South Carolina to Kansas, they will never be
interfered with in the exercise of their legal rights by the men who
have gone there from New England or from the North.
"Atchison, the organizer and chief of those
border movements, thus appeals to the citizens of Georgia to come to the
rescue; for 'KANSAS MUST HAVE SLAVE INSTITUTIONS, OR MISSOURI MUST HAVE
FREE INSTITUTIONS.'
"Sir, to appease the unhallowed desires of
the slave propaganda, you complied with Atchison's demands, and repealed
the Missouri prohibition. You then told the laboring-men of the
republic, whose heritage you thus put in peril, that they could shape,
mould, and fashion the institutions of those future commonwealths.
Animated by motives as pure and aims as lofty as ever actuated the
founders of any portion of the globe, the sons of the North wended their
way to this region beyond the Mississippi. These emigrants did not all
go there under the auspices of emigrant-aid societies: for it is
estimated that not more than one-fourth of the settlers of Kansas are
from New England and New York; that nearly one-half of the dwellers in
that Territory are from Pennsylvania and the North-west.
"Only about one-fourth of the actual
residents of Kansas are from the slave holding States; and many of these
settlers from the South, perhaps a majority of them, are in favor of
making Kansas a free State. That many of these emigrants from the South
are in favor of rearing free institutions will surprise no one who
understands their condition. Most of these emigrants are poor men, and
have felt in their native homes the malign influences which bear with
oppressive force upon free labor. Thirty-five per cent of the emigration
of the slave States has sought homes in the free States; while less than
ten per cent of the emigration from the free States and from the Old
World find homes in the slave States, although those States embrace the
largest as well as the fairest regions of the country east of the Rocky
Mountains.
"Coming from fields blasted by the sweat of
artless, untutored, unpaid labor; from regions once teeming with the
products of a prolific soil, now 'exhibiting,' to quote the language
applied 'with sorrow' to his native country by the senator from Alabama
(Mr. Clay), 'the painful signs of senility and decay apparent in
Virginia and the Carolinas;' witnessing the prosperity of free, educated
labor, - many of these sons of the South meet the men of the North, and
stand with them, shoulder to shoulder, in upholding the institutions of
freedom.
Within the Territory, the men of the North
and the men of the South meet together in council. Northern and Southern
men stood side by side in those assemblages of the people that put the
brand of condemnation upon the acts of the legislature imposed upon
them; Northern and Southern men sat in council in that Constitutional.
Convention the senator from Connecticut now pronounces 'spurious;' and
Northern and Southern men stood side by side in the trenches of
beleaguered Lawrence.
"Leave these men now in Kansas free from
Missouri forrays and administration corruption, and, in spite of the
inhuman, unchristian, and devilish acts to be found in the past
legislation of the Territory, they will bring Kansas here, as they have
done already, robed in the garments of Freedom. Men of the South; you
who would blast the virgin soil of Kansas with the blighting, withering,
consuming curse of slavery; you who would banish the educated,
self-dependent, free laboring-men of the North, to make room for the
untutored, thriftless, dependent bondmen of the South, - vote down the
free-State men of Kansas, if you can; but do not send 'border ruffians'
to rob or burn their humble dwellings, and murder brave men, for the
crime of fidelity to their cherished convictions."
Replying, April 14, to Mr. Douglas, who had
stigmatized Mr. Wilson and his party as "black Republicans," he uses
these heroic, telling words:-
"The senator from Illinois may denounce us
as black Republicans, as abolition agitators, if he thinks such language
worthy of the Senate or of himself; but the issue is being made up in
the country between the people and the slave propaganda. He told us the
other day that he intended to subdue us. I say to that senator, We
accept your issue. Nominate some one of your scarred veterans; some one
who is committed, fully committed, to your policy. You want a candidate
that is scarred with your battles. Well, sir, if he goes into the battle
of 1856, he will not come out of it without scars. You have made the
issue: put your chieftains at the head. No man fitter to lead than the
honorable senator himself in this contest; for his position has the
merit at least of being bold; and I like a bold, brave man who stands by
his declarations. Now, I say to senators on the other side of the
chamber, We will accept your issues. You may sneer at us as abolition
agitators. That may have some little effect in some sections of the
North, but very little indeed. We have passed beyond that. The people of
this country are being educated up to a standard above all these little
sneering phrases. We will accept your issue; but you will not, can not,
subdue us. I tell the honorable senator he may vote us down, but subdue
us never. We belong to a race of men that never were subdued; and, if
anybody undertakes that work, he will find he has taken a rather costly
contract. Subdue us! subdue us! Sir, you may vote us down; but we stand
with the fathers. Our cause is the cause of human nature. The star of
duty shines upon our pathway; and we will pursue that pathway, looking
back for instructions to the great men who founded the institutions of
the republic, looking up to Him whose 'hand moves the stars and heaves
the pulses of the deep.' I tell the senator that this talk about
subduing us and conquering us will not do. Gentlemen, you cannot do it.
You may vote us down; but we shall live to fight another day.
(Laughter.)
Mr. DOUGLAS.:-
"He who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day."
Mr. WILSON. - "We shall not run away to
live: we shall live to run. (Laughter.) We shall go into the conflict in
the coming contest like the Zouaves at Inkermann, 'with the light of
battle on our faces.' If we fall, we shall fall to rise again; for the
arm of God is beneath us, and the current of advancing civilization is
bearing us onward to assured triumph.
"Now, I will tell you what we intend to do.
We shall stand here and vote to defeat the bill reported by the senator
from Illinois, because we believe, by the provisions of that bill,
Kansas can be and will be invaded and conquered. We shall vote for the
admission of this petition, for the admission of all petitions, from the
people of Kansas; we shall vote for the admission of Kansas into this
Union as a free State. If we fail, if you vote us down, we shall go to
the country with that issue. We shall appeal to the people, to the
toiling millions whose heritage is in peril, to come to the rescue of
the people of Kansas, struggling to preserve their sacred rights.
Madness may rule the hour; the black power, now enthroned in the
National Government, may prolong for another Olympiad its waning
influence: but we shall ultimately rescue the republic from the
unnatural rule of a slaveholding aristocracy. Before the rising spirit
of liberty this domination will go down.
"A quarter of a century ago the conquest and
subjugation of the republic was complete. Institutions of learning,
benevolence, and religion, political organizations, and public men, ay,
and the people themselves, all bowed in unresisting submission to the
iron dominion of the slave-power. Murmurs of discontent sometimes broke
upon the ear of the country: here and there a solitary voice uttered its
feeble protest against the domination of a power which had inthralled
the heart, conscience, and intellect of the conquered North; but the
overshadowing despotism of that power was complete. Twenty-five years
have not yet closed since a few heroic men raised the banner of
impartial liberty. Then we had not a single member of the Senate or
House of Representatives. Not a single State legislature was with us.
The political press of the country covered the humble movement with
ridicule and contempt; always excepting 'The New-York Evening Post,'
then conducted by that inflexible Democrat, William Leggett, who went to
a premature grave cheered by the assurance that he 'had written his name
in ineffaceable letters on the abolition record.'
"Twenty years ago the public sneered at and
defied the few proscribed and hunted followers who rallied around the
humble leaders that inaugurated the movement, which, within two years,
has secured a popular majority in the free States of more than three
hundred thousand. We have an overwhelming majority there today against
your policy; and, if that majority is united, we can control the policy
of the country. We shall triumph; we shall enlarge this side of the
chamber; we shall thin out the other. (Laughter.) We have done some of
that work recently in New England. We shall have a majority in this
chamber yet; we shall have a majority in the other House; and we shall
have a man at the other end of the avenue. We shall take the government
of this country, and we shall govern the country as the true Democratic
party.
"Now, sir, I have told the senator from
Illinois what we intend to do; and we have no doubt of doing it. If the
honorable senator wishes, through the coming weeks of this debate, to
throw on this side of the chamber the taunting epithets of 'black
Republicans' and 'abolition agitators', he may find that it is a game
that two can play at. I think he and I and others had better discuss
these grave questions without the application of taunts and epithets."
On the twenty-second day of May, 1836,
Preston S. Brooks, member of the House from South Carolina, came into
the Senate-chamber and made a dastardly assault on Mr. Sumner, who fell
prostrate, under the repeated blows, upon the floor. This act of
violence was occasioned by the senator's able speech, entitled "The
Crime against Kansas," on Mr. Seward's bill for the admission of the
State of Kansas into the Union. Mr. Wilson, at that moment in the room
of Mr. Banks, immediately came into the Senate-chamber, where he found
his colleague stricken down, and weltering unconscious in his blood. He
aided in carrying him to his chamber, placing him upon his couch, and
alleviating his pain. The next day he appropriately called the attention
of the Senate to the assault upon his colleague.
On motion of Mr. Seward, a committee was
appointed: and on the morning of the 27th instant, the floor and
galleries being filled with anxious listeners, Mr. Wilson rose, and in a
few fearless words characterized the assault upon his colleague as
"brutal, murderous, and cowardly;" when Mr. Butler of South Carolina,
with whose family Brooks the assailant was connected, rudely interrupted
him; and cries of "Order, order!" rang through the tumultuous assembly.
Threats of personal violence arose in the confusion; but they had no
terror for him who knew no fear. In the evening he went to Trenton to
speak before the State Convention; and on the morning of the 29th inst.
he received, by the hand of Gen. Joseph Lane of Oregon, a challenge from
Mr. Brooks. Taking up his pen, he at once replied in words which are
memorable as embodying the views of Northern men upon duelling.
WASHINGTON, May 29, half-past ten o'clock.
Hon. P. S. Brooks.
Sir, —Your note of the 27th inst. was placed
in my hands by your friend Gen. Lane at twenty minutes past ten o'clock
to-day.
I characterized on the floor of the Senate
the assault upon my colleague as brutal, murderous, and cowardly. I
thought so then, I think so now. I have no qualifications whatever to
make in regard to those words.
I have never entertained or expressed, in
the Senate or elsewhere, the idea of personal responsibility in the
sense of the duellist.
I have always regarded duelling as the
lingering relic of a barbarous civilization, which the law of the
country has branded as a crime. While, therefore, I religiously believe
in the right of self-defence in its broadest sense, the law of my
country and the mature civilization of my whole life alike forbid me to
meet you for the purpose indicated in your letter.
Your obedient servant,
HENRY WILSON.
This reply to Brooks, so firmly, so tersely,
and so serenely expressed, touched the very key-note of public
sentiment, and was most enthusiastically received through the whole
Northern country. While the right of self-defence was not yielded, the
unlawful practice of duelling was condemned as the remains of barbarism,
and the three strong, pointed words of rebuke, "brutal, murderous, and
cowardly," sent back fearlessly to the challenger. The press, the
pulpit, and men of every political complexion, at the North, indorsed
the action; and those few words, written in a moment from the impulse of
an honest heart, have done something to drive the idea of duelling from
the mind of the nation.
The "cowardly conclave" still beset the
steps of Mr. Wilson, as the following letter indicates; but they had not
the courage to strike:
WASHINGTON, June 2, 1856.
Hon. H. WILSON.
Sir, -A gentleman in constant association
with the South-Carolina members sent to my house last night to inform me
that it was intended to attack you this morning.
Brooks did not leave town on Friday evening,
but was parading among the groups at the president's house on Saturday
afternoon. He probably does not intend to leave until after the action
of the House upon the outrage. I mention these facts for your
information, and to ay that you had better be on your guard.
Very truly, E. HARTE.
On the 13th of June Mr. Wilson made a brave
and manly reply to Mr. Butler's speech of the two preceding days
assailing Mr. Sumner and the State of Massachusetts. The passages we
present will show its spirit and its forensic power: -
"Mr. PRESIDENT,— I feel constrained by .a
sense of duty to my State, by personal relations to my colleague and
friend, to trespass for a few moments upon the time and attention of the
Senate.
"You have listened, Mr. President, the
Senate has listened, these thronged seats and these crowded galleries
have listened, to the extraordinary speech of the honorable senator from
South Carolina, which has now run through two days. I must say, sir,
that I have listened to that speech with painful and sad emotions. A
senator of a sovereign State, more than twenty days ago, was stricken
senseless to the floor for words spoken in debate. For more than three
weeks he has been confined to his room upon a bed of weakness and of
pain. The moral sentiment of the country has been outraged, grossly
outraged, by this wanton assault, in the person of a senator, on the
freedom of debate. The intelligence of this transaction has flown over
the land, and is now flying abroad over the civilized world; and
where-ever Christianity has a foothold, or civilization a resting place,
that act will meet the stern condemnation of mankind.
"Intelligence comes to us, Mr. President,
that a civil war is raging beyond the Mississippi; intelligence also
comes to us, that, upon the shores of the Pacific, lynch law is again
organized; and the telegraph brings us news of assaults and murders
around the ballot-boxes of New Orleans, growing out of differences of
opinion and of interests. Can we be surprised, sir, that these scenes,
which are disgracing the character of our country and our age, are rife,
when a venerable senator - one of the oldest members of the Senate, and
chairman of its Judiciary Committee - occupies four hours of the
important time of the Senate in vindication of and apology for an
assault unparalleled in the history of the country? If lawless violence
here in this chamber, upon the person of a senator, can find
vindication, if this outrage upon the freedom of debate finds apology,
from a veteran senator, why may not violent counsels elsewhere go un.
rebuked?
"The senator from South Carolina, through
this debate, has taken occasion to apply to Mr. Sumner, to his speech,
to all that concerns him, all the epithets " -
Mr. BUTLER.-"I used criticism, but not
epithets."
Mr. WILSON. - "Well, sir, I accept the
senator's word, and I say 'criticism.' But, I say, in his criticism he
used every word that I can conceive a fertile imagination could invent,
or a malignant passion suggest. He has taken his full revenge here on
the floor of the Senate - here in debate - for the remarks made by my
colleague. I do not take any exception to this mode. This is the way in
which the speech of my colleague should have been met, - not by blows,
not by an assault.
"The senator tells us that this is not, in
his opinion, an assault upon the constitutional rights of a member of
the Senate. He tells us that a member cannot be permitted to print, and
send abroad over the world, with impunity, his opinions; but that he is
liable to have them questioned in a judicial tribunal. Well, sir, if
this be so, - he is a lawyer; I am not, - I accept his view; and I ask,
Why not have tested Mr. Sumner's speech in a judicial tribunal, and let
that tribunal have settled the question whether Mr. Sumner uttered a
libel or not? Why was it necessary, why did the 'chivalry' of South
Carolina require, that for words uttered on this floor, under the solemn
guaranties of constitutional law, a senator should be met here by
violence? Why appeal from the floor of the Senate, from a judicial
tribunal, to the bludgeon? I put the question to the senator, to the
'chivalry' of South Carolina, ay, to 'the gallant set,' to use the
senator's own words, of 'Ninety-six,' why was it necessary to substitute
the bludgeon for the judicial tribunal?
"The senator complained of Mr. Sumner for
quoting the Constitution of South Carolina; and he asserted over and
over again, and he winds up his speech by the declaration, that the
quotation made is not in the Constitution. After making that
declaration, he read the Constitution, and read the identical quotation.
Mr. Sumner asserted what is in the Constitution; but there is an
addition to it which he did not quote. The senator might have complained
because he did not quote it; but the portion not quoted carries out only
the letter and the spirit of the portion quoted. To be a member of the
House of Representatives of South Carolina, it is necessary to own a
certain number of acres of land and ten slaves, or seven hundred and
fifty dollars of real estate free of debt. The senator declared with
great emphasis - and I saw nods, Democratic nods, all around the Senate
- that 'a man who was not worth that amount of money was not fit to be a
representative.' That may be good Democratic doctrine,—it comes from a
Democratic senator of the Democratic State of South Carolina, and
received Democratic nods and Democratic smiles, - but it is not in
harmony with the democratic ideas of the American people.
"The charge made by Mr. Sumner was, that
South Carolina was nominally republican, but in reality had aristocratic
features in her constitution. Well, sir, is not this charge true? To be
a member of the House of Representatives of South Carolina, the
candidate must own ten men, - yes, sir, ten men, - five hundred acres of
land, or have seven hundred and fifty dollars of real estate free of
debt; and, to be a member of the Senate, double I required. This
legislature, having these personal qualifications, placing them in the
rank of a privileged few, is elected upon a representative basis as
unequal as the rotten borough system of England in its most rotten days.
That is not all. This legislature elects the governor of South Carolina
and the presidential electors. The people have the privilege of voting
for men with these qualifications upon this basis; and they select their
governor for them, and choose the presidential electors for them. The
privileged few govern: the many have the privilege of being governed by
them.
"Sir, I have no disposition to assail South
Carolina. God knows that I would peril my life in defence of any State
of this Union if assailed by a foreign foe. I have voted, and I will
continue to vote while I have a seat on this floor, as cheerfully for
appropriations, or for any thing that can benefit South Carolina or any
other State of this Union, as for my own Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
South Carolina is a part of my country. Slaveholders are not the tenth
part of her population: there is somebody else there besides
slaveholders. I am opposed to its system of slavery, to its aristocratic
inequalities, and I shall continue to be opposed to them; but it is a
sovereign State of this Union, - a part of my country, - and I have no
disposition to do injustice to it.
"Sir, the senator from South Carolina has
undertaken to assure the Senate and the country to-day that: he is not
the aggressor. I tell him that Mr. Sumner was not the aggressor; that
the senator from South Carolina was the aggressor. I will prove this
declaration to be true beyond all question. Mr. Sumner is not a man who
desires to be aggressive towards any one. He came into the Senate 'a
representative man.' His opinions were known to the country. He came
here knowing that there were but few in this body who could sympathize
with him. He was reserved and cautious. For eight months here he made no
speeches upon any question that could excite the animadversion even of
the sensitive senator from South Carolina. He made a brief speech in
favor of the system of granting lands for constructing railways in the
new States, which the people of those States justly applauded; and I
will undertake to say that he stated the whole question briefly, fully,
and powerfully. He also made a brief speech welcoming Kossuth to the
United States. But, beyond the presentation of a petition, he took no
steps to press his earnest convictions upon the Senate; nor did he say
any thing which could by possibility disturb the most excitable senator.
On the twenty-eighth day of July, 1852,
after being in this body eight months, Mr. Sumner introduced a
proposition to repeal the Fugitive-slave Act. Mr. Sumner and his
constituents believed that act to be not only a violation of the
Constitution of the United States and a violation of all the safeguards
of the common law which have been garnered up for centuries to protect
the rights of the people, but at war with Christianity, humanity, and
human nature, — an enactment that is bringing upon this republic the
indignant scorn of the Christian and civilized world. With these
convictions he proposed to repeal that act, as he had a right to
propose. He had made no speech. He rose and asked the Senate to give him
the privilege of making a speech. 'Strike, but hear', said he, using a
quotation. I do not know that he gave the authority for it. Perhaps the
senator from South Carolina will criticise it as a plagiarism, as he has
criticised another application of a classical passage. Mr. Sumner asked
the privilege of addressing the Senate. The senator from South Carolina,
who now tells us that he had been his friend, an old and veteran senator
here, instead of feeling that Mr. Sumner was a member standing almost
alone, with only the senator from New York (Mr. Seward), the senator
from New Hampshire (Mr. Hale), and Gov. Chase of Ohio, in sympathy with
him, objected to his being heard. He asked Mr. Sumner tauntingly if he
wished to make an 'oratorical display,' and talked about 'playing the
orator' and 'the part of a parliamentary rhetorician.' These words, in
their scope and in their character, were calculated to wound the
sensibilities of a new member, and perhaps bring upon him what is often
brought on a member who maintains here the great doctrines of Liberty
and Christianity, - the sneer and the laugh under which men sometimes
shrink.
"Thus was Mr. Summer, before he had ever
'uttered' a word on the subject of slavery here, arraigned by the
senator from South Carolina, not for what he ever had said, but for what
he intended to say; and the senator. announced that he must oppose his
speaking, because he would attack South Carolina. Mr. Sumner quietly
said that he had no such purpose; but the senator did not wish to allow
him to 'make the Senate the vehicle of communication for his speech
throughout the United States to wash deeper and deeper the channel
through which flow time angry waters of agitation.'
"Now, I charge here on the floor of the
Senate, and before the country, that the senator from South Carolina was
the aggressor; that he arraigned, in language which no man can defend,
my colleague before he ever uttered a word on this subject on the floor
of the Senate, and in the face of his express disclaimer that he had no
purpose of alluding to South Carolina. This was the beginning."
After citing other instances of personal
insult and abuse with which Mr. Butler sought to blacken Mr. Sumner, Mr.
Wilson says, -
"He again talks about 'sickly
sentimentality;' and he charges that this 'sickly sentimentality now
governs the councils of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.' Yes, sir,
the senator from South Carolina makes five distinct assaults upon
Massachusetts. Massachusetts councils governed by sickly sentimentality!
Sir, Massachusetts stands to-day where she stood when the little squad
assembled on the 19th of April, 1775, to fire the first gun of the
Revolution. The sentiments that brought those humble men to the little
green at Lexington, and to the bridge at Concord; which carried them up
the slope of Bunker Hill; and which drove forth the British troops from
Boston, never again to press the soil of Massachusetts, - that sentiment
still governs the councils of Massachusetts, and rules in the hearts of
her people. The feeling which governed the men of that glorious epoch of
our history is the feeling of the men of Massachusetts of to-day.
"Those sentiments of liberty and patriotism
have penetrated the hearts of the whole population of that Commonwealth.
Sir, in that State, every man, no matter what blood runs in his veins,
or what may be the color of his skin, stands up before the law the peer
of the proudest that treads her soil. This is the sentiment of the
people of Massachusetts. In equality before the law they find their
strength. They know this to be right if Christianity is true, and they
will maintain it in the suture as they have in the past; and the
civilized world, the coming generations, those who are hereafter to give
law to the universe, will pronounce that in this contest Massachusetts
is right, inflexibly right, and South Carolina and the senator from
South Carolina wrong. The latter are maintaining the odious relics of a
barbarous age and civilization,—not the civilization of the New
Testament, not the civilization that is now blessing and adorning the
best portions of the world.
'We cannot be hurt by attempted
assassination!' exclaims the senator from South Carolina.
"Attempted assassination?
"It ill becomes the senator from South
Carolina to use these words in connection with Massachusetts or the
North. The arms of Massachusetts are Freedom, Justice, Truth. Strong in
these, she is not driven to the necessity of resorting to 'attempted
assassination ' either in or out of the Senate.
"But the whole story is not yet told. I wish
to refer to another assault made by the senator, which I witnessed
myself a few days after I took a seat in this body. On the 23d of
February, 1855, on of the last days of the last session, to the bill
introduced by the senator from Connecticut (Mr. Toucey) Mr. Summer moved
an amendment providing for the repeal of the Fugitive-slave Act. He made
some remarks in support of that proposition. The senator from South
Carolina rose and interrupted him, saying, 'I would ask him one
question, which he perhaps will not answer honestly.' Mr. Sumner said,
'I will answer any question.' The senator went on to ask questions, and
received his answers; and then he said, speaking of Mr. Sumner, 'I know
he is not a tactician, and I shall not take advantage of the infirmity
of a man who does not know half his time exactly what he is about.' This
is indeed extraordinary language for the senator from South Carolina to
apply to the senator from. Massachusetts. I witnessed that scene. I then
deemed the language insulting, the manner was more so. I hold in my
hands the remarks of 'The Luuisyule Journal,' a Southern press, upon
this scene. I shall not read it into to the Senate; for I do not wish to
present any timing which the senator may ever deem offensive. I will
say, however, that his language and his deportment to my colleague oil
occasion were aggressive and overbearing in the extreme. And this is the
senator who never makes assaults! But, not content with assaulting Mr.
Sumner, he winds up his speech by a taunt at 'Boston philanthropy.'
Surely no person ever scattered assault more freely.
"Thus has Mr. Sumner been, by the senator
from South Carolina, systematically assailed in this body from the 28th
of July, 1852, up to the present time, - a period of nearly four years.
He has applied to my colleague every expression calculated to wound the
sensibilities of all man, and to draw down upon him sneer's, obloquy,
and hatred, in and out of the Senate. In my place here, I now pronounce
these continued assaults upon my colleague unparalleled in the history
of the Senate.
"I come now to speak for one moment of the
late speech of my colleague, which is the alleged cause of the recent
assault upon him, and which the senator from South Carolina has
condemned so abundantly. That speech, - a thorough and fearless
exposition of what Mr. Sumner entitled the 'Crime against Kansas,' -
from beginning to end, is marked by entire plainness. Things are called
by their right names. The usurpation in Kansas is exposed, and also the
apologies for it, successively. No words were spared which seemed
necessary to the exhibition. In arraigning the crime, it was natural to
speak of those who sustained it. Accordingly, the administration is
constantly held up to condemnation. Various senators who have vindicated
this crime are at once answered and condemned. Among these are the
senator from South Carolina, the senator from Illinois (Mr. Douglas),
the senator from Virginia (Mr. Mason), and the senator from Missouri
(Mr. Geyer). The senator from South Carolina now complains of Mr.
Sumner's speech. Surely it is difficult to see on what ground that
senator can make any such complaint. The speech was indeed severe, -
severe as truth, - but in all respects parliamentary. It is true that it
handles the senator from South Carolina freely; but that senator had
spoken repeatedly in the course of the Kansas debate, once at length and
elaborately, and at other times more briefly, foisting himself into the
speeches of other senators, and identifying himself completely with the
crime which my colleague felt it his duty to arraign. It was natural,
therefore, that his course in the debate, and his position, should be
particularly considered. And in this work Mr. Sumner had no reason to
hold back, when he thought of the constant and systematic and ruthless
attacks, which, utterly without cause, he had received from that
senator. The only objection which the senator from South Carolina can
reasonably make to Mr. Sumner is that he struck a strong blow.
"The senator complains that the speech was
printed before it was delivered. Here, again, is his accustomed
inaccuracy. It is true that it was in the printers' hands, and was
mainly in type; but it received additions and revisions after its
delivery, and was not put to press till then. Away with this petty
objection! The senator says that twenty thousand copies have gone to
England. Here, again, is his accustomed inaccuracy. If they have gone,
it is without Mr. Sumner's agency. But the senator foresees the truth.
Sir, that speech will go to England; it will go to the continent of
Europe; it has gone over the country, and has been read by the American
people as no speech ever delivered in this body was read before. That
speech will go down to coming ages. Whatever men may say of its
sentiments, - and coining ages will indorse them,—it will be placed
among the ablest parliamentary efforts of our own age, or of any age.
"The senator from South Carolina tells us
that the speech is to be condemned; and he quotes the venerable and
distinguished senator from Michigan (Mr. Cass). I do not know what Mr.
Sumner could stand. The senator says he could not stand the censure of
the senator from Michigan. I could; and I believe there are a great many
in this country whose powers of endurance are as great as my own. I have
great respect for that venerable senator; but the opinions of no senator
here are potential in the country. This is a Senate of equals. The
judgment of the country is to be made up on the records formed here. The
opinions of the senator from Michigan, and of other senators here, are
to go into the record, and will receive the verdict of the people. By
that I am willing to stand.
"The senator from South Carolina tells us
that the speech is to be condemned. It has gone out to the country. It
has been printed by the million. It has been scattered broadcast amongst
seventeen millions of Northern freemen who can read and write. The
senator condemns it; South Carolina condemns it. But South Carolina is
only a part of this Confederacy, and but a part of the Christian and
civilized world. South Carolina makes rice and cotton; but South
Carolina contributes little to make up the judgment of the Christian and
civilized world. I value her rice and cotton more than I do her opinions
on questions of scholarship and eloquence, of patriotism or of liberty.
"Mr. President I have no desire to assail
the senator from South Carolina, or any other senator in this body; but
I wish to say now, that we have had quite enough of this asserted
superiority, social and political. We were told some time ago by the
senator from Alabama (Mr. Clay), that those of us who entertained
certain sentiments fawned upon him and other Southern men if they
permitted us to associate with them. This is strange language to be used
in this body. I never fawned upon that senator. I never sought his
acquaintance; and I do not know that I should feel myself honored if I
had it. I treat him as an equal here; I wish always to treat him
respectfully: but, when he tells me or my friends that we fawn upon him
or his associates, I say to him that I have never sought, and never
shall seek, any other acquaintance than what official intercourse
requires with a man who declared on the floor of the Senate that he
would do what Henry Clay once said 'no gentleman would do,'- hunt a
fugitive slave.
"The senator from Virginia, not now in his
seat (Mr. Mason), when Mr. Sumner closed his speech, saw fit to tell the
Senate that his hands would be soiled by contact with ours. The senator
is not here: I wish he were. I have simply to say that I know nothing in
that senator, moral, intellectual, or physical, which entitles him to
use such language towards members of the Senate, or any portion of God's
creation. I know nothing in the State from which he comes, rich as it is
in the history of the past, that entitles him to speak in such a manner.
I am not here to assail Virginia: God knows I have not a feeling in my
heart against her or against her public men. But I do say, it is time
that these arrogant assumptions ceased here. This is no place for
assumed social superiority, as though certain senators held the keys of
cultivated and refined society. Sir, they do not hold the keys, and they
shall not hold over me the plantation whip.
"I wish always to speak kindly towards every
man in this body. Since I came here, I have never asked an introduction
to a Southern member of the Senate; not because I have any feelings
against them (for God knows I have not); but I knew that they believed I
held opinions hostile to their interests, and I supposed they would not
desire my society. I have never wished to obtrude myself on their
society, so that certain senators could do with me as they have boasted
they did with others, - refuse to receive their advances, or refuse to
recognize them on the floor of the Senate. Sir, there is not a cooly in
the guano islands of Peru who does not think the Celestial Empire the
whole universe. There are a great many men, who have swung the whip over
the plantation, who think they not only rule the plantation, but make up
the judgment of the world, and hold the keys not only to political
power, as they have done in this country, but to social life.
"The senator from South Carolina assails the
resolutions of my State with his accustomed looseness, as springing from
ignorance, passion, prejudice, excitement. Sir, the testimony before the
House committee sustains all that is contained in those resolutions. I
know Massachusetts; and I can tell him, that, of the twelve hundred
thousand people of Massachusetts, you cannot find in the State one
thousand, administration office-holders included, who do not look with
loathing and execration upon the outrage on the person of their senator
and the honor of their State. The sentiment of Massachusetts, of New
England, of the North, approaches unanimity. Massachusetts has spoken
her opinions. The senator is welcome to assail them, if he chooses; but
they are on the record. They are made up by the verdict of her people;
and they understand the question; and from their verdict there is no
appeal."
After this speech of Mr. Wilson, Mr. Butler
indulged in some discursive remarks, and ended by saying, -
'As I suppose the senator (Mr. Wilson) is to be considered, in some
sense, the historian of his State, I desire to ask him how many battles
were fought in Massachusetts during the Revolutionary war."
Mr. WILSON. -"I will answer the senator. The
battles fought in Massachusetts during the Revolution were few, because
they were not necessary. Our Massachusetts men met the enemy at
Lexington, at Concord Bridge, at Bunker Hill, and on the heights of
Dorchester. They would have met them on every spot in Massachusetts; but
the enemy took good care right early to get and keep out of that State.
"The senator said yesterday, as I understood
him, that South Carolina had shed hogsheads of blood where Massachusetts
had shed gallons' during the Revolution."
Mr. BUTLER. -"On the battle-fields of the
two States."
Mr. WILSON. —"I heard no such limitation. I
understood the senator to mean that South Carolina had contributed
hogsheads of the blood of her sons, where Massachusetts had only
contributed gallons, to the Revolution. Sir, South Carolina furnished
five thousand five hundred soldiers; Massachusetts, sixty-nine thousand;
and they drove the enemy, and followed the enemy, and met the enemy on
the battle-fields of the Revolution, from the northern to the southern
boundaries of the republic, from the St. Lawrence to the St. Mary's.
There were but few battles fought on the soil of Massachusetts, for the
reason that the enemy thought it was safer to leave Massachusetts, and
go to South Carolina. The British army thought it was not safe to be
very near the battle-fields of Concord, of Lexington, and of Bunker
Hill; and it left Massachusetts, and took good care to keep out of a
Commonwealth where friends always find a welcome, and foes are apt to
find a grave.
"During the Revolution, a portion of the
people of South Carolina—the Gadstens, the Rutledges, the Laurenses, the
Sumters, the Marions— made as great sacrifices for the cause of
independence as any patriots in any portion of the land; but the fact
cannot be denied, - and all these patriots, including even Marion,
convict South Carolina of the fact, - that she had a large lot of
Tories. There was a civil war in that State; and, more than that,
thousands and tens of thousands of her sons sought protection under the
British flag. When the army of Greene was starving, the British army in
Charleston was receiving all that the fertile valleys of South Carolina
could produce, carry into Charleston, and exchange for British gold.
When Greene and his patriot army wanted oxen and horses to carry
supplies, they were hustled off into the forest by people who had, to
quote the words of Gen. Greene to Gen. Barnwell, 'far greater attachment
to their interests than zeal for the service of their country.'
Mr. BUTLER. - "Let me ask the gentleman who
fed Greene's army at that time."
Mr. WILSON. -"'Who fed Greene's army? That
army was hardly fed at all: at any rate, it was but poorly fed, and
scantily clothed. I apprehend, sir, that Greene's army—like the
schoolboy's whistle, that whistled itself— fed itself.
"I have no disposition to assail the
senator's State. I should blush if I could say aught against the
patriots of South Carolina, or even cease to feel gratitude for their
efforts, their prompt response to the patriots of my own State, in the
early days of the Revolution. But, sir, Gadsden, Burke, Marion, Ramsay,
Barnwell, and the patriots of that period, have borne this evidence,
—.that South Carolina was weakened in that contest by the existence of
slavery. That was what Mr. Sumner charged, and, on a former occasion,
demonstrated; and that, I take it, no man here or elsewhere can deny.
"The senator tells us that he has
complimented the battle-fields of Massachusetts, - the fields of
Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. That senator, and the constituents
of that senator, can stand upon those sacred spots, and breathe
something of the spirit of liberty that makes them immortal; he can
utter his sentiments, - sentiments so little in harmony with the gallant
dead that sleep beneath those hallowed sods, or the living who now guard
them under the protection of law and a pub- lie sentiment nurtured and
sustained by free speech. I should be proud to tread the battle-fields
of South Carolina, hallowed by patriot blood. Yes, sir, it would afford
me intense gratification to stand upon those stricken fields, so dear to
every true American heart; but I do not know that I could do so without
suppressing those cherished sentiments of liberty, for the vindication
of which patriot blood was poured out at Camden, Guilford, Eutaw, and
Hobkirk Hill.
"But all these allusions and reflections
upon the history of the past afford me no gratification. I say to the
senator from South Carolina, that he and I and all of us had far better
turn from the past, cease to reflect upon the services of our States in
the Revolutionary era, and deal with the living questions which we must
meet in this age, - questions that have great issues, involving the
interests of our common country and the rights of human nature. He and I
and all .of us here ought to strive to settle these great issues for the
good of our common country, and the whole people of the country, bond
and free."
Many letters of congratulation were received
after the delivery of this speech, and among them one from the patriotic
poet J. G. Whittier, in which he says:-
"Thy reply to Butler after the outrage upon
our noble friend Sumner was eminently 'the right word in the right
place.'
The departure of Mr. Sumner from the Senate
(from which he was absent several years) left a heavier burden upon Mr.
Wilson; yet with dauntless vigor he pressed on, meeting the Southern
members with a clear head and lion heart on the great questions then at
issue, and repelling by unanswerable arguments the assaults upon the
North.
He would not interfere with slavery in the
Southern States; but with invincible determination he stood opposed to
its extension over the Territories of the West, and to the doctrine of
the "squatter sovereignty" advanced by Mr. Douglas, and maintained by
the pro-slavery propagandists.
In a noble speech, July 9, on a report for
printing twenty thousand extra copies of the bill to enable Kansas to
form a constitution, he said, -
"Sir, for framing this constitution, this
free constitution, for organizing under it a State government, and
choosing senators to urge its adoption here, the people of Kansas have
been denounced as 'traitors' by the senator from Illinois and those who
follow his lead in and out of the Senate. This chamber has rung with
your words of rebuke, denunciation, and reproof of the people of Kansas,
whose only crime is devotion to freedom, resistance to the monstrous
tyranny of usurped power. I charge upon the administration the crime of
abandoning the people of Kansas to the merciless rule of their
conquerors. Ay, sir, I go farther, and I charge upon the administration
and upon its supporters here the crime of aiding and abetting their
conquerors in their unhallowed deeds.
"Mr. President, the administration and its
supporters— the senators from Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Georgia -
snatched Kansas from the exclusive possession of the free laboring-men
of the republic, North and South, and flung it open to the footprints of
the slave and his master. You deluded the people with the idea of
popular sovereignty: you have seen that sovereignty cloven down by
invading hordes of armed men; you. have seen the people robbed of their
rights, and oppressed; you have seen them struggle to recover their lost
rights; and in all their wrongs and struggles you have basely abandoned
them; ay, you have joined their oppressors, and aided them in the
enforcement of their usurped powers and unhallowed decrees. Sir, I hold
the administration, I hold the majority here, I hold the Democratic
party, up to the stern verdict of the civilized world for this
abandonment of the people of Kansas, this collusion with their
oppressors.
"The people of Kansas, Mr. President, have
not only been defrauded of their legal and political rights, oppressed
by laws imposed upon them by foreign force, and denied all redress, hut
they have been invaded, hunted down, by armed bands of thieving
marauders, their dwellings burned, their property stolen, and many of
their number treated with personal violence, and some of them brutally
murdered. Dwellings have been battered with cannon, houses have been
fired, presses destroyed, oxen, horses, and other property, stolen, and
men foully murdered; and time administration and its officials in the
Territory have no time to spare from the infamous work of subduing the
friends of free Kansas for the arrest and punishment of the men who have
illumined the midnight skies with the lurid light of sacked and burning
dwellings of the people, - men who have inaugurated the era of robbery,
violence, and murder."
In enumerating the outrages committed upon
the peaceable citizens of Kansas, he held up a musket-ball to the
Senate, and touchingly said, -
The ball I hold in my hand was shot through
a boy eighteen years old, the son of a widow. On his way home from
Westport, Mo., he was stopped by these gentry who keep guard over the
passes into the Territory, and required to give up what he had. He gave
up his arms. They then required him to give up his horse; but he told
them he would not do it. For that he was shot down; and this ball was
taken out of his lifeless body by a friend of mine."
In an effective speech in the Senate, Aug.
27, against sending military supplies to subjugate freemen in Kansas, he
said, -
"Let the army be disbanded forever rather
than enforce those infamous enactments or uphold the usurpation in
Kansas. Almost every township of the North has furnished actual settlers
to Kansas. Are senators on the other side infatuated enough to believe
that the people will sustain them in their career of madness in forcing
down the throats of their kindred and friends, with the sabre and
bayonet, these enactments? When the brutal boast of the British officer,
that he would cram the stamps down the throats of our fathers with the
hilt of his sword, is applauded by their descendants, then, and not till
then, will the people of the free States applaud your efforts to cram
these unchristian, inhuman, and fiendish laws down the throats of their
brethren in distant Kansas with the sabre of the dragoon, - enactments
which the senator from Delaware (Mr. Clayton) declares would send even
John C. Calhoun to the penitentiary." |
