tution, as designed to "fix upon them an institution revolting to a large majority of the bona fide citizens of the Territory," the same body, in another paper, presented and gave the history of the Topeka constitution. The people of the Territory, it averred, did proceed" to call a convention to frame a constitution; the delegates thereto were regularly and fairly elected, and, on the twenty-third day of October, 1855, did assemble in convention at Topeka." It therefore declared that said constitution "embodies the wishes of the people of this Territory upon the subject of a State government, and ought to be received by the Congress of the United States as the constitution of the State of Kansas."

Stripped, then, of all side issues, the precise and pregnant question was: "Shall Congress impose upon the people of Kansas a constitution really the work of a foreign body, in which they had no voice, and to which they were inflexibly opposed?" Such a proposition to a people making any pretensions to a free form of government was, in the highest degree, impertinent and insulting; and yet this was the precise issue which then absorbed the attention of the American Congress and people. The debate took a wide range, and brought into review the general subjects of slavery and freedom, their antagonisms, and their relations to society and the state. The President and his supporters vindicated the proposed policy; Mr. Douglas, those he represented and led, and the Republicans, opposed it. It was indeed marvellous that men of intelligence and candor could so stultify themselves as to defend, in the name of Democratic institutions, a policy so essentially and offensively despotic. Slavery has left on record, damaging and damning as that record is, no blacker page than that which describes its ruffianly and ruthless policy toward Kansas. And yet to this policy the administration was fully and fiercely committed, and to its execution its power and patronage were given in no stinted measure.

CHAPTER XLI.

THE LECOMPTON STRUGGLE.

General argument in favor of the Lecompton policy. - Defence of slavery. Speech of Mr. Hammond. "Cotton is king."- Arraignment of Northern society. Replies. - Speeches of Hamlin, Broderick, and Wilson. - Defences of the North and its institutions. - Full discussion welcomed. Speeches in the House. Extreme opinions of Miles and Keitt. - Able defences of freedom and free institutions. Lovejoy, Giddings, Bliss. — Ignominious attitude of the administration and the Democratic party.

THE supporters of the Lecompton policy dwelt much upon the necessity of concession and compromise; upon the encroaching North and long-enduring South; State rights; and the maintenance of an equilibrium of the opposing sections. Not all, however, pursued that specious and subtle course. Some, believing in the philosophy as well as the practice of slavery, defending it on principle as well as from policy, not as an evil but a good, stepped forth the champions of the system they cherished as well as of the section they represented. Prominent among these was James H. Hammond of South Carolina. Avowing his purpose to consider slavery" as a practical thing, as a thing that is and is to be, and to discuss its effect upon our political institutions, and ascertain how long these institutions will hold together with slavery ineradicable," he proposed "to bring the North and South face to face, and see what resources each might have in the contingency of separate organizations." If the South never acquired another foot of territory, he said, she had eight hundred and fifty thousand square miles, was as large as Great Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Spain. "Is not that territory enough," he asked, “to make an empire that shall rule the world?" "It can send," he asserted, " a larger army than any power on earth can send against her, of men brought up on horseback, with guns in

their hands." Entering into the statistics of Southern production and export, he said the South would need no army or navy, but, removing all commercial restrictions, the whole world would go to it to trade, "to bring and carry for us." Asserting that the South would find strength and protection in its cotton, he said: "You dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares make war on it. Cotton is king." Expressing the belief that it would be well for the South not to plant any cotton for three years, he inquired, with amusing pretension: "What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? I will not stop to depict what every one can imagine, but this is certain: England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her, save the South." Asserting the superiority of slaveholding society over that of the free States, he said: "The greatest strength of the South arises from the harmony of her political and social institutions. This harmony gives her a frame of society the best in the world, and an extent of political freedom, combined with entire security, such as no other people ever enjoyed upon the face of the earth. This bold vaunt he proceeded to define as well as to defend. In his explanatory definition, he referred to the fact that, in all social systems, there must be menials to perform the "drudgery of life," and that such a class is necessary to the existence of "that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement." "This," he said, "constitutes the very mudsill of society and of political government, and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air as to build either the one or the other, except on this mudsill." Saying that their slaves were their "mudsills," he contended that “the manual laborers and operatives" of the North sustained the same relation to Northern society, and were "essentially slaves," the difference between them being "our slaves are hired for life and are well compensated, - yours are hired by the day and not cared for."

Leaving the social for the political aspect of the question, he compared the Southern slaves-"happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations," without votes or political

power with Northern manual laborers, brothers of our blood, equals in natural endowments, "galled by their degradation," "with the right of voting," and the real "depositories of all your political power." With arrogant menace, he warned the North of "the tremendous secret" that the ballot-box is "stronger than an army with banners."

Such, substantially, were the bold and defiant defence and arraignment, by the outspoken and truculent South-Carolinian, of slavery and freedom, the South and the North thus brought "face to face." This open avowal of sentiments, purposes, and expectations, which many of his section really entertained, but which they did not deem it politic to express, his impudent pretensions, his unfounded claims, and his clear falsification of local and historic facts, excited surprise and provoked responses. His characterization of Northern manual laborers as "hireling," as essentially slaves, the "mudsills" of society, like the dicta of the Supreme Court, that black men had no rights that white men were bound to respect, became the ringing watchwords of those replies and of subsequent conflicts at the North. They fixed attention, too, and opened the eyes of men to the spirit, aims, and purposes of the Slave Power as perhaps no previous demonstration had been able to effect.

The gauntlet being thus defiantly thrown down, there were not wanting the friends of freedom and of free institutions to take it up. Hannibal Hamlin replied. With patient research and careful collation of facts he demonstrated the fallacies of Mr. Hammond's argument, for the greater alleged prosperity of the Slave States, from the relative amounts of Southern and Northern exports, by showing, from facts and figures, that, in all the elements of substantial prosperity, the free States were far in advance of the slave States, and that that advance was becoming greater and more apparent every year. Referring to the charge that the "manual hireling laborers" of the North were "essentially slaves," the "mudsills" of society, he took issue, denying the allegation, and affirming that they were rather the constituent elements of society. "They do our legislation at home," he said; "they support the State; they are the State." "Sir," he added, "I

can tell that Senator that they are not the "mudsills of our community. They are the men who clear away our forests. They are the men who make the green hillside blossom. They are the men who build our ships and who navigate them. They are the men who build our towns and who inhabit them. They are the men who constitute the great mass of our community. Sir, they are not only pillars which support our government, but they are the capitals that adorn the very pillars."

David C. Broderick made a brief and vigorous speech, in which he reminded the South of its mistake in repealing the Missouri compromise. "In the passage of the Nebraska-Kansas bill," he affirmed, "the rampart that protected slavery in the Southern Territories was broken down." Northern opinions, Northern ideas, and Northern institutions being invited to contest their possession, "how foolish," he said, "for the South to hope to contend for success in such an encounter! Slavery is old, decrepit, and consumptive; freedom is young and vigorous."

The sneer at the Northern "hireling manual laborers " he rather welcomed, "because," he said, "it may have the effect of arousing in the workingmen that spirit which has been lying dormant for centuries." Alluding to the fact that he was "the son of an artisan and had been a mechanic," and also, regretfully, to the fact that there was too little ambition among laboring men, he said: "I left the scenes of my youth and manhood for the scenes of the far West, because I was tired of the struggles and jealousies of men of my own class, who could not understand why one of their fellows should seek to elevate his condition above the common level."

Mr. Wilson also made an elaborate reply to the same speech. Accepting the challenge to array the opposing systems and sections"face to face," he, by a somewhat full examination of the census-tables, the admissions of Southern men in their speeches and writings, and other sources of information, deduced the lessons which the survey, comparison, and their contrasts taught. He showed that "in accumulated capital, in commerce, in manufactures, in the mechanic arts, in educa