The Apology tyrannical is founded on the mistaken act of Governor Reeder, in authenticating the Usurping Legislature, by which it is asserted, that, whatever may have been the actual force or fraud in its election, the people of Kansas are effectually concluded, and the whole proceeding is placed under formal sanction of law. According to this assumption, complaint is now in vain, and it only remains that Congress should sit and hearken to it, without correcting the wrong, as the ancient tyrant listened and granted no redress to the human moans that issued from the heated brazen bull which subtile cruelty had devised. This I call the Apology of technicality inspired by tyranny.
The facts on this head are few and plain. Governor Reeder, after allowing only five days for objections to the returns,—a space of time unreasonably brief in that extensive Territory,—declared a majority of the members of the Council and of the House of Representatives “duly elected,” withheld certificates from certain others, because of satisfactory proof that they were not duly elected, and appointed a day for new elections to supply these vacancies. Afterwards, by formal message, he recognized the Legislature as a legal body, and when he vetoed their act of adjournment to the neighborhood of Missouri, he did it simply on the ground of illegality in such adjournment under the organic law. Now to every assumption founded on these facts there are two satisfactory replies: first, that no certificate of the Governor can do more than authenticate a subsisting legal act, without of itself infusing legality where the essence of legality is not already; and, secondly, that violence or fraud, wherever disclosed, vitiates completely every proceeding. In denying these principles, you place the certificate above the thing certified, and give a perpetual lease to violence and fraud, merely because at an ephemeral moment they are unquestioned. This will not do.
Sir, I am no apologist for Governor Reeder. There is sad reason to believe that he went to Kansas originally as tool of the President; but his simple nature, nurtured in the atmosphere of Pennsylvania, revolted at the service required, and he turned from his patron to duty. Grievously did he err in yielding to the Legislature any act of authentication; but in some measure he has answered for this error by determined effort since to expose the utter illegality of that body, which he now repudiates entirely. It was said of certain Roman Emperors, who did infinite mischief in their beginnings and infinite good towards their end, that they should never have been born or never died; and I would apply the same to the official life of this Kansas Governor. At all events, I dismiss the Apology founded on his acts, as the utterance of Tyranny by the voice of Law, transcending the declaration of the pedantic judge, in the British Parliament, on the eve of our Revolution, that our fathers, notwithstanding their complaints, were in reality represented in Parliament, inasmuch as their lands, under the original charters, were held “in common socage, as of the manor of East Greenwich in Kent,” which, being duly represented, carried with it all the Colonies.[79] Thus in another age has Tyranny assumed the voice of Law.
Next comes the Apology imbecile, which is founded on the alleged want of power in the President to arrest this Crime. It is openly asserted, that, under existing laws, the Chief Magistrate has no authority to interfere in Kansas for this purpose. Such is the broad statement, which, even if correct, furnishes no Apology for any proposed ratification of the Crime, but which is in reality untrue; and this I call the Apology of imbecility.
In other matters no such ostentatious imbecility appears. Only lately, a vessel of war in the Pacific has chastised the cannibals of the Feejee Islands for alleged outrage on American citizens. But no person of ordinary intelligence will pretend that American citizens in the Pacific have received wrongs from these cannibals comparable in atrocity to those suffered by American citizens in Kansas. Ah, Sir, the interests of Slavery are not touched by any chastisement of Feejees!
Constantly we are informed of efforts at New York, through the agency of the Government, and sometimes only on the breath of suspicion, to arrest vessels about to sail on foreign voyages in violation of our neutrality laws or treaty stipulations. Now no man familiar with the cases will presume to suggest that the urgency for these arrests is equal to the urgency for interposition against these successive invasions from Missouri. But the Slave Power is not disturbed by such arrests in New York.
At this moment the President exults in the vigilance with which he prevented the enlistment of a few soldiers, for transportation to Halifax, in breach of our territorial sovereignty, and England is bravely threatened, even to the extent of rupture of diplomatic relations, for her endeavor, though unsuccessful, and at once abandoned.[80] No man in his senses will urge that this act was anything but trivial by the side of the Crime against Kansas. But the Slave Power is not concerned in this controversy.
Thus, where the Slave Power is indifferent, the President will see that the laws are faithfully executed; but in other cases, where the interests of Slavery are at stake, he is controlled absolutely by this tyranny, ready at all times to do, or not to do, precisely as it dictates. Therefore it is that Kansas is left a prey to the Propagandists of Slavery, while the whole Treasury, the Army, and Navy of the United States are lavished to hunt a single slave through the streets of Boston. You have not forgotten the latter instance; but I choose to refresh it in your minds.
As long ago as 1851 the War Department and Navy Department concurred in placing the forces of the United States near Boston at the command of the Marshal, if needed for the enforcement of an Act of Congress which is without support in the public conscience, as I believe it without support in the Constitution; and thus these forces were degraded to the loathsome work of slave-hunters. More than three years afterwards an occasion arose for their intervention. A fugitive from Virginia, who for some days had trod the streets of Boston as a freeman, was seized as a slave. The whole community was aroused, while Bunker Hill and Faneuil Hall quaked with responsive indignation. Then, Sir, the President, anxious that no tittle of Slavery should suffer, was curiously eager in the enforcement of the statute. The despatches between him and his agents in Boston attest his zeal. Here are some of them.