Whatever the consequences, therefore, the cowardly action of Congress was the original cause. But what were the consequences? First, a protracted anarchy and civil war among the several classes of emigrants;—second, a murderous invasion of the Territory by the borderers of a neighboring State, for the purpose of carrying the elections against the bonâ-fide settlers;—third, the establishment of a system of terrorism, in which outrages having scarcely a parallel on this continent were committed, with a view to suppress all protest against the illegality of those elections, and to drive out settlers of a particular class;—fourth, the commission of a spurious legislative assembly, in the enforced absence of protests against the illegal returns of votes;—fifth, the enactment of a series of laws for the government of the Territory, the most tyrannical and bloody ever devised for freemen,—laws which aimed a fatal blow at the four corner-stones of a free commonwealth,—freedom of speech, of the press, of the jury, and of suffrage;—sixth, the recognition of Slavery as an existing fact, and the denunciation of penalties, as for felony, against every attempt to question it in word or deed;—and, finally, the dismissal of the Territorial Governor, (Reeder,) who had exhibited some signs of self-respect and conscience in resisting these wicked schemes, and who was compelled to fly the Territory in disguise, under a double menace of public prosecution and private assassination.
These were the scenes of the first act, in a drama then commenced; and those of the next were not unlike. A second Governor (Shannon) having been procured,—a Governor chosen with a double fitness to the use,—on the ground of his sympathy with whatever was vulgar in border-ruffian habits and with whatever was obsequious in Presidential policy,—the deliberate game of forcing the settlers to submit to the infamous usurpation of the Missourians was opened. But, thank Heaven! those brave and hardy pioneers would not submit! There was enough of the blood of the Puritans and of the Revolutionary Sires coursing in their veins, to make them feel that submission, under such circumstances, would have been a base betrayal of liberty, a surrender of honor, and a sacrifice of every honest sentiment of justice and self-respect. "Come," they said to the marauders,—"come, hack this flesh from our limbs, and scatter these bones to bleach with those of so many of our friends and brothers, already strewn upon the unshorn and desolate fields,—but do not ask us to submit to wrongs so daring or to frauds so foul!" The marauders took them at their word, and hewed and hacked them with shameless cruelty; yet, with a singular forbearance, the friends of freedom did not hastily resent the outrages with which they had been visited. They loved freedom, but they loved law too; and they proceeded in a legal and peaceful spirit to procure the redress of their grievances,—in the first place by an appeal to Congress, and in the second, by the organization of a State government of their own. Both of these methods they had an indisputable right to adopt; for the first is guarantied to every citizen, even the meanest,—and the second, though informal, was not illegal, and had, time and again, been sanctioned by the highest political tribunals of the land.
Congress had dismissed the subject of Territorial Government; and here it was again, in a more troublesome guise than it had ever before assumed. The ghost of the murdered Banquo would not down at its bidding. Nearly the entire session of 1856 was consumed in heated and virulent debates on Kansas. The House, fresh from the affections of the people, was disposed to do justice to the sufferers; it confirmed, by the investigations of its committees, the verity of every complaint, and it was not willing to allow a trivial technicality to stand in the way of the great cause of truth and right. But the Senate was dogmatic and hard,—full of whims, and scruples, and hair-splitting difficulties,—ever straining at gnats and swallowing camels; of the few there inclined to bear a manly part, one was overpowered by the club of a bully, and the others by the despotism of numbers and of party drill. As for the Executive, it was bound hand and foot to the Slave Power, and had no option but to let loose its minions, its judges, its sheriffs, its vagabonds, and its dragoons upon the poor Free-State men, whose only crime was a refusal to submit to the most outrageous abuses. Their towns were burned, their presses destroyed, their assemblies dispersed, and their wives and children brutally insulted. The debauched and imbecile Governor, who represented the Federal Power, hounded on the miscreants of the border to the work of destruction, so long as he was able; but he happily became in the end too weak even for this perfunctory labor; and he gradually sank into deliquium, till his final withdrawal into the obscurities whence he had emerged gave a momentary peace to the distracted and baffled settlers.
We pass over the administration of Geary, the third of the Kansas Governors,—a period in which the ravages of the marauders were continued, but under meliorated circumstances. The great uprising of the Northern masses, in the Presidential election, had impressed upon the most desperate of the Pro-Slavery faction the necessity of a restrained and moderated zeal. Geary went to the Territory with some desire to deal justly with all parties. He fancied, from the promises made to him, that he would be sustained in this honorable course by the President. It was no part of his conception of his task, that he should be called upon to screen assassins, to justify perjury. But he had reckoned without knowledge of what he had undertaken. He was soon involved with the self-styled judiciary of Kansas, whose especial favorites were the promoters of outrage; his correspondence was intercepted, his plans thwarted, his motives aspersed, his life menaced; and he resigned his thankless charge, in a feeling of profound contempt and bitter disappointment,—of contempt for the restless knot of villains who circumvented all conciliatory action, and of disappointment towards superiors at Washington who betrayed their promises of countenance and support.
With the advent of Mr. Buchanan to the Presidency a new era was expected, because a new era had been plainly prescribed by the entire course and spirit of the Presidential campaign. All through that heated and violent contest, it was loudly promised on one side, as it was loudly demanded on the other, that the affairs of Kansas should be honestly and equitably administered. As the time had then come, in the progress of population, when the Territory might be considered competent to determine its political institutions,—the period of its immaturity and pupilage being past,—the election turned upon the single issue of Justice to Kansas. Mr. Buchanan and his party,—their conventions, their orators, and their newspapers,—in order to quell the storm of indignation swelling the Northern heart, were voluble in their pledges of a fair field for a fair settlement of all its difficulties. In the name of Popular Sovereignty,—or of the indisputable right of every people, that is a people, to determine its political constitution for itself,—they achieved a hard-won success. On no other ground could they have met the gallant charge of their opponents, and on no other ground did they retain their hold of the popular support. In his inaugural address, Mr. Buchanan foreshadowed a complete and final adjustment of every element of discord. He selected, for the accomplishment of his policy, a statesman of national reputation, experienced in politics, skilful in administration, and of well-known principles and proclivities in the practical affairs of government. Mr. Walker accepted the place of Territorial Governor, under the most urgent entreaties, and on repeated and distinct pledges on the part of the President that the organization of Kansas as a State should be unfettered and free. His personal sympathies were strongly on the side of the party which had so long ruled with truculent hand in the affairs of the Territory; but he was none the less resolved that the fairly ascertained majority should have its way.
Under assurances to that effect, the Free-State men, for the first time since the great original fraud which had disfranchised them, consented to enter into an electoral contest with their foes and oppressors. The result was the return of a Free-State delegate to Congress, and a Free-State legislature, by a majority which, after the rejection of a series of patent and wretched frauds, was more than ten to one; and yet the desperate game of conquest and usurpation was not closed. For, in the mean time, a convention of delegates to frame a State Constitution had been summoned to assemble at Lecompton. It was called by the old spurious legislature, which represented Missouri, and not Kansas; it was called by a legislature, which, even if not spurious, had no authority for making such a call; it was called under provisions for a census and registry of voters which in more than half the Territory were not complied with; and it was elected by a small proportion of a small minority, the Free-State men and others refusing to enter into a contest under proceedings unauthorized at best, and as they believed illegal. Let it be added, also, that a large number of its members were pledged to submit the result of their doings to a vote of the people,—according to what Mr. Buchanan, in his instructions to Governor Walker, and Governor Walker himself, on the strength of those instructions, had proclaimed as the policy of "the party."
This Convention, in the prosecution of its gratuitous task, devised the scheme of a Constitution wholly in the interest of its members and of the meagre minority they represented,—and so objectionable in many respects, that not one in twenty of the voters of the Territory, as Governor Walker informed the writer of this, could or would approve it. Recognizing Slavery as an existing fact, and perpetuating it in every event, it yet purported to submit the question of Slavery to a determining vote of the people. This was, however, a mere pretence; for the method proposed for getting at the sense of the people was nothing but a pitiful juggle, according to which no one could vote on the Slavery question who did not at the same time vote for the Constitution. No alternative or discretion was allowed to the citizens whose Constitution it purported to be; if they voted at all on the vast variety of subjects usually embraced in an organic law, they must vote in favor of the measures concocted by the Convention. The entire conduct of the election and the final adjudication of the returns, moreover, were taken out of the hands of the officers, and from under the operation of the laws, already established by the Territorial authorities, to be vested exclusively in one of the Convention's own creatures,—a reckless and unprincipled politician, whose whole previous career had been an offence and a nuisance to the majority of the inhabitants. Had the Convention been legitimately called and legitimately chosen, this audacious abrogation of the Territorial laws and of the functions of the Territorial officers would in itself have been sufficient to vitiate its authority; but being neither legitimately called, nor legitimately chosen, and outraging the sentiments of nineteen twentieths of the community, the illegal election provided for can be regarded only as the crowning atrocity of the long series of atrocities to which Kansas has been subjected.
The most surprising thing, however, could anything surprise us in these Kansas proceedings, is, that the President, eating all his former promises, adopts the Lecompton Convention as a legitimate body, and commends its swindling mode of submission as a "fair" test of the popular will! Yet, it is sad to say, this is only following up the line of precedents established from the beginning. The plot against the freedom of Kansas was conceived in a Congressional breach of faith; it was inaugurated by invasion, bloodshed, and civil war; it was prosecuted for two years through a series of unexampled violences; and it would be strange, if it had not been consummated at Lecompton and Washington by a series of corresponding frauds. It seems to have been impossible to touch the business without perpetrating some iniquity, great or small; and Mr. Buchanan, cautious, circumspect, timorous, as he is, tumbles into the fatal circle headlong.
And how do we know all this? Upon what kind and degree of evidence do we rest these heavy accusations? Upon the hasty opinions of those who are unfriendly to the principles and purposes of the dominant party? Not at all; but upon the voluntary confessions of the distinguished and chosen agents of that party, these agents being themselves eyewitnesses of the facts to which they testify. For proof of the original invasion and usurpation, with all its frauds and outrages, we appeal to the testimony of Governor Reeder; for proof of the continued ravages and persistent malignity of the border ruffians, we appeal to the testimony of Governor Geary; and for proof of the illegal and swindling character of the late Constitutional movement, we appeal to Governor Walker;—all these witnesses being original friends of the Kansas-Nebraska bill and policy; all the original coadjutors of the Slave Power; all its carefully selected instruments; all strongly prejudiced at the outset against the cause and the men of the Free-State Party; and yet, each one of them, as soon as he has fairly entered the field of his operations, offering such loud rebuke of the plans and projects of his own party as to provoke his speedy removal!—no strength of party attachment, no pliability of conscience, no hope of future favor, no dread of instant punishment, being sufficient to prevent him from turning against his own masters and colleagues! Even the Senators of the party catch the spirit of revolt; and the very godfather of the Kansas scheme,—its most efficient advocate,—the leading and organizing mind of it,—has become the strongest opponent and bitterest denouncer of the policy which directs its execution.
In this view of the case, may we not ask whether this base and cruel attempt at subduing Kansas has not gone far enough? Have not the circumstances shown that it is as impracticable as it is base and cruel? Or are we to see the despotism of the New World as insanely obstinate as the despotisms of the Old? Is there no warning, no instruction, to be derived from the examples of those older nations? An eloquent historian has recently depicted for us, in scenes which the memory can never lose, the mad attempts of the House of Stuart to Romanize England, to the loss of the most magnificent dominion the world ever saw; and another historian, scarcely less eloquent, has drawn a series of fearfully interesting pictures of the stern efforts of the Spaniards to impose a detested State and a more detested Church upon the burghers of the Netherlands. The spirit of James II., and the spirit of Philip II., was the same spirit which is now striving to force Slavery and Slave Law upon Kansas; and though the field of battle is narrower, and the scene less conspicuous, the consequences of the struggle are hardly of less moment. Kansas is the future seat of empire; she will yet give tone and law to the entire West; and they who are fighting there, in behalf of humanity and justice, do not fight for themselves alone, but for a large posterity.