to my powers.

But there are other things, not belong ing to the argument, which still press for utterance. Sir, the people of Kansas, bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh, with the education of freemen and the rights of American citizens, now stand at your door. Will you send them away, or bid them enter? Will you push them back to renew their struggles with a deadly foe, or will you preserve them in security and peace? Will you cast them again into the den of Tyranny, or will you help their despairing efforts to escape? These questions I put with no common solici tude; for I feel that on their just determination depend all the most precious interests of the Republic; and I perceive too clearly the prejudices in the way, and the accumulating bitterness against this distant people, now claiming their simple birthright, while I am bowed with mortification, as I recognize the President of the United States, who should have been a staff to the weak and a shield to the innocent, at the head of this strange oppression.

At every stage, the similitude between the wrongs of Kansas, and those other wrongs against which our fathers rose, becomes more apparent. Read the Declaration of Independence, and there is hardly an accusation which is there directed against the British Monarch, which may not now be directed with increased force against the American President. The parallel has a fearful particularity. Our fathers complained that the King had "sent hither swarms of officers, to harass our people, and eat out their substance; that he "had combined, with others, to subject us to a juris diction foreign to our Constitution, giving his assent

to their acts of pretended legislation;" that "he had abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us;" that "he had excited domestic insurrection among us, and endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontier the merciless savages;" that "our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury." And this arraignment was aptly followed by the damning words, that "a Prince whose character is thus marked by every ac which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." And surely a President who has done all these things cannot be less unfit than a Prince. At every stage the responsibility is brought directly to him. His offence has been both of commission and omission. He has done that which he ought not to have done, and he has left undone that which he ought to have done. By his activity the Prohibition of Slavery was overturned. By his failure to act, the honest emigrants in Kansas have been left a prey to wrong of all kinds. Nullum flagitium extitit, nisi per te; nullum flagitium sine te. And now he stands forth the most conspicuous enemy of that unhappy Territory.

As the tyranny of the British King is all renewed in the President, so on this floor have the old indignities been renewed, which imbittered and fomented the troubles of our Fathers. The early petition of the American Congress to Parliament, long before any suggestion of Independence, was opposed-like the petitions of Kansas because that body

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was assem

bled without any requisition on the part of the SuAnother petition from New York,

preme Power."

presented by Edmund Burke, was flatly rejected, as

claiming rights derogatory to Parliament. And still another petition from Massachusetts Bay was dismissed as “vexatious and scandalous," while the patriotic philosopher who bore it was exposed to peculiar contumely. Throughout the debates our Fathers were made the butt of sorry jests and supercilious assumptions. And now these scenes, with these precise objections, have been renewed in the American Senate.

with

With regret I come again upon the Senator from South Carolina, [Mr. Butler,] who, omnipresent in this debate, overflowed with rage at the simple suggestion that Kansas had applied for admission as a State; and, with incoherent phrases, discharged the loose expectoration of his speech, now upon her representative, and then upon her people. There was no extravagance of the ancient Parliamentary debate which he did not repeat; nor was there any possible deviation from truth which he did not make, with so much of passion, I am glad to add, as to save him from the suspicion of intentional aberration. But the Senator touches nothing which he does not disfigure error, sometimes of principle, sometimes of fact. shows an incapacity of accuracy, whether in stating the Constitution or in stating the law, whether in the details of statistics or the diversions of scholarship. cannot ope his mouth, but out there flies a blunder. Surely he ought to be familiar with the life of Frank. lin; and yet he referred to this household character, while acting as agent of our Fathers in England, as above suspicion; and this was done that he might give point to a false contrast with the agent of Kansas — not knowing that, however they may differ in genius and fame, in this experience they are alike: that Franklin,

He

He

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when intrusted with the petition of Massachusetts Bay, was assaulted by a foul-mouthed speaker, where he could not be heard in defence, and denounced as a thief," even as the agent of Kansas has been assaulted on this floor, and denounced as a forger." And let not the vanity of the Senator be inspired by the parallel with the British statesmen of that day; for it is only in hostility to Freedom that any parallel can be recognized. But it is against the people of Kansas that the sensibilities of the Senator are particularly aroused. Coming, as he announces, "from a State" - ay, sir, from South Carolina - he turns with lordly disgust from this newly-formed community, which he will not recognize even as "a body politic." Pray, sir, by what title does he indulge in this egotism? Has he read the history of "the State" which he represents? He cannot surely have forgotten its shameful imbecility from Slavery, confessed throughout the Revolution, followed by its more shameful assumptions for Slavery since. He cannot have forgotten its wretched persistence in the slave trade as the very apple of its eye, and the condition of its participation in the Union. He cannot have forgotten its Constitution, which is republican only in name, confirming power in the hands of the few, and founding the qualifications of its legislators on settled freehold estate or ten negroes." And yet the Senator to whom that "State" has in part committed the guardianship of its good name, instead of moving, with backward-treading steps, to cover its nakedness, rushes forward, in the very ecstasy of madness, to expose it, by provoking a comparison with Kansas. South Carolina is old; Kansas is young. South Carolina counts by centuries, where Kansas

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a

counts by years. But a beneficent example may be born in a day; and I venture to say, that against the two centuries of the older "State," may be already set the two years of trial, evolving corresponding virtue, in the younger community. In the one is the long wail of Slavery; in the other, the hymns of Freedom. And if we glance at special achievements, it will be difficult to find any thing in the history of South Carolina which presents so much of heroic spirit in an heroic cause as appears in that repulse of the Missouri invaders by the beleaguered town of Lawrence, where even the women gave their effective efforts to Freedom. The matrons of Rome who poured their jewels into the treasury for the public defence; the wives of Prussia, who, with delicate fingers, clothed their defenders against French invasion; the mothers of our own Revolution, who sent forth their sons, covered over with prayers and blessings, to combat for Human Rights, did nothing of self-sacrifice truer than did these women on this occasion. Were the whole history of South Carolina blotted out of existence, from its very beginning down to the day of the last election of the Senator to his present seat on this floor, civilization might lose I do not say how little; but surely less than it has already gained by the example of Kansas, in its valiant struggle against oppression, and in the development of a new science of emigration. Already in Lawrence alone there are newspapers and schools, including a High School, and throughout this infant Territory there is more of mature scholarship, in proportion to its inhabitants, than in all South Carolina. Ah, sir, I tell the Senator that Kansas, welcomed as a Free State, will be a "ministering angel

to the Re