And all this was perpetrated under pretences of popular rights. Freedom was betrayed by a kiss. In defiance of uninterrupted prescription down to our day, early sustained at the South as well as the North, leaning at once on Jefferson and Washington, sanctioned by all the authoritative names of our history, and beginning with the great Ordinance by which Slavery was prohibited in the Northwest,—it was pretended that the people of the United States, who are the proprietors of the national domain, and who, according to the Constitution, may “make all needful rules and regulations” for its government, nevertheless were not its sovereigns, that they had no power to interdict Slavery there, but that this eminent dominion resided in the few settlers, called squatters, whom chance or a desire to better their fortunes first hurried into these places. To this precarious handful, sprinkled over immense spaces, it was left, without any constraint from Congress, to decide whether into these vast unsettled lands, as into the veins of an infant, should be poured the festering poison of Slavery, destined, as time advances, to show itself in cancers and leprous disease, or whether they should be filled with all the glowing life of Freedom. And this great power, transferred from Congress to these few settlers, was hailed by the new-fangled name of Squatter Sovereignty.
It was fit that the original outrage perpetrated under such pretences should be followed by other outrages perpetrated in defiance of these pretences. In the race of emigration the Freedom-loving citizens of the North promised to obtain the ascendency, and, in the exercise of the conceded sovereignty of the settlers, to prohibit Slavery. The Slave Oligarchy was aroused to other efforts. Of course it stuck at nothing. On the day of election, when this vaunted popular sovereignty was first invoked, hirelings from Missouri, having no home in the Territory, entered it in bands of fifties and hundreds, and, assuming an electoral franchise to which they had no claim, trampled under foot the Constitution and laws. Violently, ruthlessly, the polls were possessed by these invaders. The same Northern President, who did not shrink from unblushing complicity in the original outrage, now assumed another complicity. Though prompt to lavish the Treasury, the Army, and the Navy of the Republic in hunting a single slave through the streets of Boston, he could see the Constitution and laws which he was sworn to protect, and those popular rights which he had affected to promote, all struck down in Kansas,—and then give new scope to these invaders by the removal of the faithful Governor, who had become obnoxious to the Slave Oligarchy because he would not become its tool, and the substitution of another, who vindicated the dishonest choice by making haste, on his first arrival there, to embrace the partisans of Slavery. The Legislature, which was constituted by the overthrow of the electoral franchise, proceeded to overthrow every safeguard of Freedom. At one swoop it adopted all the legislation of Missouri, including its Slave Code; by another act it imposed unprecedented conditions upon the exercise of the electoral franchise; and by still another act it denounced the punishment of death no less than five times against as many different forms of interference with the alleged property in human flesh, while all who but write or speak against Slavery are adjudged to be felons. Yes, fellow-citizens, should any person there presume to print or circulate the speech in which I now express my abhorrence of Slavery, and deny its constitutional existence anywhere within the national jurisdiction, he would become liable under this act as a felon. And this overthrow of all popular rights is done in the name of Popular Sovereignty. Surely its authors follow well the example of the earliest Squatter Sovereign,—none other than Satan,—who, stealing into Eden, was there discovered by the celestial messengers just beginning his work: as Milton tells us,—
“Him there they found
Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve.”
Would you know the secret of this unprecedented endeavor, beginning with the repeal of the Prohibition of Slavery, down to the latest atrocity? The answer is at hand. It is not merely to provide new markets for slaves, or even to guard Slavery in Missouri, but to build another Slave State, and thus, by the presence of two additional Slaveholding Senators, to give increased preponderance to the Slave Oligarchy in the National Government. As men are murdered for the sake of their money, so is this Territory blasted in peace and prosperity in order to wrest its political influence to the side of Slavery.
But a single usurpation is not enough to employ the rapacious energies of our Oligarchy. At this moment, while the country is pained by the heartless conspiracy against Freedom in Kansas, we are startled by another effort, which contemplates not merely the political subjugation of the National Government, but the actual introduction of Slavery into the Free States. The vaunt is made that slaves will yet be counted in the shadow of the monument on Bunker Hill, and more than one step has been taken towards this effrontery. A person of Virginia has asserted his right to hold slaves in New York on the way to Texas; and this claim is still pending before the highest judicial tribunal of the land. A similar claim has been asserted in Pennsylvania, and thus far been sustained by the court. A blameless citizen, who, in obedience to generous impulses, and in harmony with received law, merely gave notice to a person held as a slave in a Free State that she was in reality free, has been thrust into jail, and now, after the lapse of months, still languishes there, the victim of this pretension; while—that no excess might be wanting in the madness of this tyranny—the great writ of Habeas Corpus, proudly known as the writ of deliverance, has been made the instrument of his imprisonment.[26] Outrage treads upon outrage, and great rights pass away to perish. Alas! the needful tool for such work is too easily found in places low and high,—in the lanes and cellars of Boston, on the bench of the judge, in the chair of the President. But it is the power behind which I impeach. The Slave Oligarchy does it; the Slave Oligarchy does it all.
To the prostration of this Oligarchy we are bound by a threefold cord of duty: first, as we would secure Freedom for ourselves; secondly, as we would uphold Freedom in distant Kansas; and, thirdly, as we would preserve the Union in its early strength and integrity. The people of Kansas are, many of them, from Massachusetts,—bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh; but as fellow-citizens under the Constitution they are bound to us by ties which we cannot disown; nay, more,—by the subtile cord which connects this embryo settlement with the Republic, they are made part of us. The outrage which touches them touches us. What galls them galls us. The fetter which binds the slave in Kansas binds every citizen in Massachusetts. Thus are we prompted to their rescue, not only to save them, but also to save ourselves. The tyranny which now treads them down has already trampled on us, and only awaits an opportunity to do it again. In its complete overthrow is the only way of safety. Indeed, this must be done before anything else can be done.
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