the happiness and value of light to all people and all colors everywhere.

"The assertion that all men are created equal was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be, as, thank God! it is proving itself, a stumbling-block to all those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant, when such would reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation, they should find left for them one hard nut to crack."

E

CHAPTER XXXII.

ARLY in the year 1857, Robert J. Walker, of Mississippi,

was appointed governor of Kansas, with the hope that

the slave party would have full opportunity to take their system into the Territory. Walker, the fourth in line of Democratic governors, was from a slave State, though born and educated in Pennsylvania, where he had something of an acquaintance with President Buchanan. Walker was an able, learned, fair-minded man, who had been prominent in public life for several years prior to this. Under equal conditions, he would have favored the pro-slavery people of the South. He had lived in the Southern States a number of years, and whether originally a slave advocate, he had identified himself with the section, and was what they believed him to be when appointed, a zealous supporter of the slave system. Nevertheless he was an honest man. He grew to his position with the knowledge and capacity for public business, and though a pro-slavery man, something like General P. F. Smith, he was there honestly to enforce the law.

If slavery was to be taken into the Territory with his consent, it would not be by three or four thousand invading Missourians voting for and sustaining it. Out of some ten to twelve thousand legally-qualified voters of the Territory, there were seventy-six hundred free State against thirty-seven hundred pro-slavery. Walker did not believe that with more than two to one, for a free State, the pro-slavery voters could adopt slavery, and fasten it on the Territory at a fair election. This was precisely what Buchanan's pro-slavery Administration desired and expected Walker to do. When they learned

that they had appointed a fourth governor for Kansas, whose integrity disappointed and surprised them, they set about means for his embarrassment or overthrow.

Atchison had failed ignominiously, and his man Woodson, secretary of the Territory, the supple pro-slavery "acting governor" in so many notorious ways, in the absence of the rapidly-moving governors, was so universally bad by repute, that Buchanan's Administration, puerile or bad, or both, could carry the load of their iniquity no longer. Pennsylvania exhibited almost certain signs of party revolt; and the poor old dupe of Jefferson Davis, his man Friday, Jere Black, saw almost certain evidences that if they saved Kansas to Davis for his slave propaganda, they were without a show of honesty in doing it, and sure to lose Pennsylvania. So, whether willing or not-for Pennsylvania's vote was a vital as well as a critical quantity-Atchison, Woodson, Stringfellow, and the disappearing, lesser Calhoun and their ilk, ruffians, rascals, invaders, and all, to the last awkward recruit, had to be discarded and abandoned, not because of principle or change of heart, but because of Pennsylvania.

Frederick P. Stanton, a reputable man, who had been a member of Congress from Tennessee, was appointed secretary of the Territory, where he arrived in the early part of 1857 with General Walker. What was known as "the Bogus," or more definitely, the Missouri-elected Legislature, held a session at Lecompton in January, at which they passed an Act authorizing the formation of a State Constitution, and fixed the date for the election of delegates on June 15th to the Convention, which should frame and submit it to the people.

This invaders' Legislature was a hostile body to the actual settlers in every respect; but was so sustained in the camps and border settlements that the free State men would have had no chance for a fair election. The pro-slavery delegates would have been "counted in" as the members of the Legis

lature there; so the free State men wisely, to prevent a conflict, refrained from voting for delegates to the Constitutional Convention, as they had previously done in the election of the Legislature. Hence the election held on June 15th resulted in the unopposed return of the pro-slavery delegates. There were polled two thousand votes, about fourteen hundred of the voters being invading Missourians, when, as stated above, there were about twelve thousand legal voters in the Territory.

On the assurance of a fair election some weeks later, the free State voters elected Marcus J. Parrott delegate to Congress by 7,600, against 3,700, votes, nine out of seventeen of their council, and twenty-seven of their thirty-nine representatives, giving the free State people thirty-six members of the two Houses of their Legislature, against twenty pro-slavery members. In this election the qualified legal voters of both parties generally voted.

There was an attempt to change the result by some of the expiring border gangs. Oxford, a small place with a few houses, reported as ten or a dozen small cabins, with not over twenty-five inhabitants, reported that 1,624 qualified voters had eight representatives and three members of the council, which, if admitted, would have made the Legislature proslavery. This attempt proved Governor Walker's courage and integrity. He investigated the election at once, honestly, and with the purpose of ascertaining the truth. The names of about 1,600 of the voters were copied without a break from a Cincinnati Directory. He found it as stated, and repudiated the whole of it. This lost him friends among the pro-slavery leaders and in the Administration; but he had the satisfaction of an honest duty well done.

This prevented another desperate struggle in Kansas, and held it free from slavery, notwithstanding that under the Dred Scott decision slaves in any number could have been taken and held under protection of the law. Singular as it

may seem, regardless of the alarm in the free States and the excited determination of the South to extend slavery under it, of the few slaves held in the Territory along the Missouri border many of them were taken back into Missouri and the other slave States, and the remainder were watched more closely than ever and kept within a few minutes walk of the slave State of Missouri, so that under its unresisted supremacy slavery was not only not extended, but diminished and restricted, at the culminating point where the obstinate contest between slavery and freedom was in progress.

This developed the caution and sense of slaveholders in general, as against the pro-slavery leaders. The decision gave them no confidence; it rather created distrust. If there had been general confidence, they could have made Kansas a slave State by taking their slaves there in great numbers under the protection of the court and Buchanan's Administration. But judged by the best test of confidence and sincerity, they dreaded the encounter of a fair settlement. It had been made free territory, and notwithstanding all that had been achieved in support of slavery as claimed, the watchful owners of the human chattels had more respect for the dissenting opinions of Curtis and McLean, than for the lawestablishing edict of the court.

Another feature of the slavery agitation seldom mentioned was, that slaves declined in value in proportion to the organized strength of parties opposed to it. `In 1849 to 1852, after the discovery of gold in such abundance, a healthy strong man or woman sold in St. Louis at from $800 to $1,600. In 1853-54, when Congress took it up as the leading topic of discussion, their values constantly declined until in 1858 they became almost unsalable. Thus slavery was perishing in the denunciation of it as an evil, when one man on God's side was putting "a thousand to flight." The slaveholders realized this shrinkage, and in some instances destruction of values, far more than their opponents; but instead of inclining