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constituents, addressed to the people of the United States this memorable injunction: "Let it never be forgotten, that the cause of the United States has always been the cause of human nature." Let us recall that precious monition; let us examine the ways which we have pursued hitherto, under the light thrown upon them by that instruction. We shall find, in doing so, that we have forgotten moral right in the pursuit of material greatness, and we shall cease henceforth from practising upon ourselves the miserable delusion that we can safely extend empire, when we shall have become reckless of the obligations of eternal justice, and faithless to the interests of universal freedom.

KANSAS-USURPATIONS. '

I SHALL, with the greatest pleasure in the world, vote for this amendment (Mr. WILSON'S, to abrogate the spurious laws of Kansas). I agree with the honorable mover of it, that the present bill has no other tendency, and can have no other effect, than to crown with success the object of the law of 1854, which abrogated the prohibition of slavery contained in the Missouri compromise act, and thus to form a slave state out of Kansas. Against that I was com mitted then; I commit myself now; I stand committed forever. I admit that the bill, as it would stand after the adoption of the amendment, would not leave in the territory of Kansas a code of municipal laws. But, in that shape, this bill, if passed, would be only a congressional declaration of what I hold to be a solemn political fact, already established and known, namely: that there is no law, there are no laws, there is no code, there is no legal society in Kansas, otherwise organized or governed, than by the organic act passed by congress in the year 1854.

I hold now, as I have already shown to the senate and to the country on a former occasion, that what is called the legislature of Kansas is a usurpation, and that the code which it has established is

1 Speech in the Senate of the United States, July 2, 1856, against Mr. Douglas' second Enabling Bill, and in favor of the immediate admission of Kansas into the Union.

a tyranny. Lapse of time during our long debate has not changed their character. I hold that there is no legal obligation, as there is no moral obligation, upon any man, whether he is a citizen of that territory or otherwise, to treat that legislature or that code with the least respect. If the legislature be a usurpation, all men must admit this consequence to be just. When we had this subject in debate at an earlier stage of the session, with only confused and informal evidence before us, it was denied that the legislature of the territory is a usurpation. That fact is completely established now by the report of a committee appointed by the house of representatives, to investigate all the circumstances of the case, and they show beyond all manner of doubt, that no sooner had congress authorized the inhabitants of the territory of Kansas to constitute for themselves a civil government, in a prescribed form, than an armed body of invaders from the state of Missouri, and from other states and territories, took possession of the polls, drove away the voters, and holding the territory in fact under martial law, waged by seditious men, created and constituted this legislature of Kansas.

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From this most unwarrantable proceeding has followed the imbroglio in which the county finds itself involved. The president, holding that he had no power to correct the evil—that he had no right to pronounce at all on this fact thus questioned-assumed that it was his duty to execute the laws of that legislature, while he very properly addressed himself to congress on the subject. Congress was appealed to; has had the subject under discussion three months and the house of representatives, more wise, more just, more true to freedom, than the senate has been to the cause of civil government and civil and religious liberty, sent a commission to Kansas to ascertain the truth of the case involved. Their report has been made to the house of representatives; and it establishes, beyond denial, and even beyond all question, that there has been no legitimate election, no constitutional election, no legal election in the territory, and that there is, of course, no legislature, and there are no laws there.

It strikes me that, after being at sea for the last three months, this proposition of the honorable senator from Massachusetts is the very first one which seems to give us a hope of finding any land. It shows us a safe port. The proposition distinctly is to abrogate the pretended laws of that usurping and tyrannical legislature.

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I do not say that simply this measure will give peace to Kansas; I do not say that nothing more will be necessary to give peace and rescue liberty in Kansas; but I do say that, so far as it goes, it would be an advance-the first one that would have been made towards either of those important objects during the last three months. I am prepared at once to give my support to it. When we shall have abolished that tyranny and its laws, we shall then be in a condition to see whether there is not something more which can be done. Talk about that being a legislature and a government which can exact obedience from the people of Kansas! It has not the strength in itself to stand a day, nor an hour. It is upheld by the bayonets of the army of the United States. Talk about these being laws obligatory on the citizens of Kansas, when they were made by inva ders from the state of Missouri! Talk about these pretended enactments as being laws which ought to be respected and obeyedlaws which disfranchise the legal profession, the first element of constitutional liberty in every government of the Saxon or AngloSaxon race! Talk about laws to be upheld which deprive persons accused of crime of trial by a fair and impartial jury, and which establish a test of opinion as qualifications not only for the exercise of the ballot, but also for the jury-box! Talk about these being laws which are obligatory, and are to be maintained for a day or even for an hour-enactments which deprive men of the liberty of speech! Talk about those being laws which are entitled to obedience anywhere under the constitution of the United States-laws under which the press, the palladium of civil and religious liberty, is indicted, tried, convicted, and suppressed as a nuisance. I beg honorable gentlemen to consider well the pass to which they have brought things in this country. They have brought the country to the verge of civil war. They propose now a compromise. The day for compromises is ended.

The honorable senator is glad of it, and so am I. We shall henceforth take our stand in all these questions upon the constitution of the United States, and those of us who get our feet truly on it will stand firm. Those who happen not to get that safe footing will find they may have a slippery and unsubstantial foothold.

The question, the honorable senator says, which is proposed by his bill, offers no compromise. I beg to correct the honorable gentleThe original proposition was, that congress should be left

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under the territorial government established by the Missouri legislature, that it should be left subject to all the statutes of that legislature, and that it should not be admitted in the Union until it should be able to number ninety-three thousand seven hundred people.

(Mr. BROWN-Ninety-three thousand four hundred and twenty.) I stand corrected, and the correction reminds me of the careful accuracy of my honorable and excellent friend-now dead-[Mr. GIDEON LEE], who was a member of the house of representatives from the city of New York at the time the great fire occurred there. When an application was made for the remission of duties on account of the fire, an honorable member, in speaking in support of the application, said that yesterday morning the sun rose upon a city that was crowded and compact with the dwellings and warehouses of a great commercial city, and the sun of the same day set upon a city of which fifty acres were in ashes; my honorable friend [Mr. LEE] corrected the honorable member by saying fifty-two acres and a half.

But, whether it was ninety-three thousand four hundred and twenty, or ninety-three thousand seven hundred, the practical question was the same. It was the amount necessary in one of the states to entitle a district to a representative in congress. What have we to-day, sir? The proposition of the committee now is, that the Missouri legislature shall remain in force-so far the same; but that all laws passed by the legislature subversive of the freedom of speech-all laws subversive of a trial by jury-all laws subversive of citizenship, shall be abrogated; and finally that, without waiting for the ninety-three thousand, and that odd fraction, whatever it may be, that state shall be admitted now into the Union immediately upon the election of a convention, and the organization of a state constitution.

I beg my honorable friend from Georgia to consider whether this not a compromise. I certainly understand that it is offered as such, and that it has been accepted as such, not by that portion of the senate among whom I belong, but by others who could not be prevailed upon to vote for the bill in the shape in which it was originally proposed.

I do not know that it is in my power to state a proposition which would commend itself in my judgment more thoroughly to the purpose of settling the whole of this difficulty than the proposition of

the honorable senator from Massachusetts to abrogate the laws. I would have preferred that his amendment had gone further, and declared the territorial legislature itself to be illegal, and therefore abrogated it. When you shall have once done that, you will then have removed all of the existing grounds of contention. You will have then discharged all these prosecutions for constructive treason under which men, who have assembled according to the constitution, and according to the settled precedents and customs of the country to petition congress for redress, have been indicted and are held in close confinement to be tried for treason. You will then have abolished all those criminal proceedings in which editors, who have maintained the cause of justice and civil liberty in that territory, have been indicted, and are held in duress to be subjected to punishment in the penitentiary for maintaining (what is true, in my judgment) that slavery is not, and cannot go, into the territory of Kansas by virtue of the constitution or any existing law of the United States. Then you will have at last restored the people to the possession of their liberties, and it will then be time enough to see what we shall do to give them a well-digested system of civil government and municipal laws.

[Mr. Wilson's amendment having failed, Mr. Seward then addressed the senate on the bill enabling the people of Kansas to form a constitution, and apply for admission into the Union.]

The daily sessions of the senate usually last three or four hours. The present one has already reached its fourteenth hour. If I do not hasten the gleams of the morning sun will pale the lights of the chandelier before I shall have closed my speech.

The honorable and distinguished senator from Kentucky [Mr. CRITTENDEN] has appealed eloquently and earnestly to my love of peace, and to my devotion to the Union. Certainly, every consideration weighs upon me as strongly as upon any other American senator or citizen to make me desire that peace and harmony may prevail throughout this broad land; that my own country, worthier of my love than any other country under the sun, may be united now, henceforth and forever; and that it may, by means of such har mony and union, continually rise in prosperity, greatness and glory.

The honorable senator has based on that appeal a remonstrance against my remark, that "the time for compromises has passed." The honorable senator from Georgia [Mr. TоOMBS], to whom this bill

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