I call your attention to another of these enactments:

"If any person shall entice, decoy, or carry away out of this territory, any slave belonging to another, with intent to deprive the owner thereof of the services of such slaves, or with intent to effect or procure the freedom of such slave, he shall be adjudged guilty of grand larceny, and, on conviction thereof, shall suffer DEATH or be imprisoned at hard labor for not less than ten years.”

There is no larceny of property of any kind which, in my judgment, demands punishment by death. Certainly, I shall not agree to a law which shall inflict that extreme punishment for constructive larceny, in a case where it is at least a disputed point in ethics, whether the offense is malum in se.

Here is another chapter:

"If any slave shall commit petit larceny, or shall steal any neat cattle, sheep or hog, or be guilty of any misdemeanor, or other offense punishable under the provisions of this act only by fine or imprisonment in a county jail, or by both such fine and imprisonment, he shall, instead of such punishment, be punished, if a male, by stripes on his bare back not exceeding thirty-nine; or, if a female, by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding twenty-one days, or by stripes not exceeding twenty-one, at the discretion of the justice."

With repentance and atonement I may hope to be forgiven for inflicting blows upon the person of a fellow man, equal in strength and vigor to myself. I should have no hope to be forgiven, much less to retain my own self-respect, if, on any occasion, under any circumstances, or upon any pretext, I should ever consent to apply, or authorize another to apply, a lash to the naked back of a weak, defenseless, helpless woman.

Call these provisions which I have recited by what name you will -edicts, ordinances, or statutes-they are the laws which the house of representatives says shall not be enforced in Kansas by the army of the United States. I give my thanks to the house of representatives, sincere and hearty thanks. I salute the house of representatives with the homage of my profound respect. It has vindicated the constitution of my country; it has vindicated the cause of freedom; it has vindicated the cause of humanity. Even though it shall tamely rescind this vindication to-morrow, when it shall come into conflict with the senate of the United States, yet I shall nevertheless regard this proviso, standing in that case only for a single day, as an omen of more earnest and firm legislation in that great forum.

When, hereafter, one shall be looking through the pages of statute laws, affecting the African race, for a period of more than a quarter of a century, he will regard this ephemeral recognition of the equality of men with the affection and hope which the traveler feels when approaching a green spot in the deserts of Arabia. It must be other senators, not I, who shall consent to blast this oasis, and disappoint all the hopes that already are bursting the bud upon it.

Although the fact is clear that the pretended laws in Kansas can only be executed by armed force, and therefore are obnoxious to a presumption that they are founded in injustice; and although those laws, upon searching examination, are found to be subversive of the constitution, and in conflict with all the sentiments of humanity, the whole case of the house of representatives has nevertheless not yet been stated. The proceedings which have hitherto taken place in executing those laws have been unconstitutional in their character, and attended with grinding oppression and cruel severity. The senator from Virginia has asked me whether such laws do not exist in Missouri.

I suppose such laws exist in that state, and in other states. I have this to say for those states, and for the United States, that a federal standing army has never been employed in executing such laws in those states. And how have these atrocious laws been executed in Kansas? The marshal of the territory, an officer dependent on the president of the United States, has enrolled as a volunteer militia, at the expense of the federal treasury, an armed band of professed propagandists of slavery from other states; and this so-called militia, but really unconstitutional regular force, has been converted into a posse comitatus to execute these atrocious statutes by intimidation, or by force, as the nature of the resistance encountered seemed to require. This has been the form of executive action. What has been the conduct of the judicial department? Courts of the United States have permitted grand juries to find, and have maintained, indictments unknown to the laws of the United States, to the common law, and to the laws of all civilized countries-an indictment of a tavern as a nuisance, because the political opinions of its lodgers were obnoxious; an indictment of a bridge over a river for a nuisance, because those who passed over it were of opinion that the establishment of slavery in the territory was injurious to its pros perity; indictments even of printing presses as nuisances, because

the political opinions which they promulgated were favorable to the establishment of a free state government. Either with a warrant from the courts, or without a warrant, but with their connivance, bands of soldiers, with arms belonging to the United States, and enrolled under its flag, and directed by its marshal, combining with other bands of armed invaders from without the territory, and without even the pretense of a trial, much less of a judgment, have abated the alleged nuisance of a tavern by leveling it to the ground, and the pretended nuisances of the free presses by casting type, and presses, and compositors' desks, into the Kansas river.

Moreover, when the citizens, whose obedience to these laws was demanded, sought relief in the only constitutional way which remained open to them, by establishing conditionally, and subject to the assent of congress, to be afterwards obtained, a state government, provisional executive officers, and a provisional legislature, indictments for constructive treason were found in the same courts, by packed grand juries, against these provisional executive officers, and a detachment of the army of the United States entered the legis lative halls, and expelled the representatives of the people from their seats. During the intense heat of this almost endless summer, a regiment of federal cavalry performs its evolutions in ranging over the prairies of Kansas, holding in its camp, as prisoners under martial law, without bail or mainprize, not less than ten citizens, thus indicted in those federal courts for the pretended crime of constructive treason. The penalty of treason, under the laws of the United States, is death. What chance for justice attends those citizens. I will show you. The judge who is to try them procured the indictments against them, by a charge to a packed grand jury, in these words:

"This territory was organized by an act of congress, and, so far, its authority is from the United States. It has a legislature, elected in pursuance of that organic act. This legislature, being an instrument of congress by which it governs the territory, has passed laws. These laws, therefore, are of United States authority and making; and all that resist these laws resist the power and authority of the United States, and are therefore guilty of high treason.

'Now, gentlemen, if you find that any persons have resisted these laws, then you must, under your oaths, find bills against such persons for high treason. If you find that no such resistance has been made, but that combinations have been formed for the purpose of resisting them, and individuals of influence and notoriety have been aiding and abetting in such combinations, then must you still find bills for constructive treason," &c.

What will it avail their defense, before such a court and such a judge, that the constitution of the United States declares, directly and explicitly, that treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort?

Thus you see, senators, that the executive authority, not content with simple oppression, has seized upon the judiciary, and corrupted and degraded it, for the purpose of executing those pretended and intolerable laws of Kansas. The judge who presides in the territo rial courts is a creature of the president of the United States, and holds his office by the tenure of executive pleasure. While the sword of executive power is converted in Kansas into an assassin's dagger, the ermine of justice is stained with the vilest of contaminations. What cause is there for surprise, then, in the administra tion of government in Kansas, under such laws, and in a manner so intolerable, that a civil war has been brought about by affidavits, an armed force has been employed in executing process for contempt, and an unauthorized and illegal detachment is enrolled in the service of the United States, and employed in abating domestic, social, and political institutions, under the name of nuisances? What wonder is it that a city has been besieged with fire and sword, because it was supposed to contain within its dwellings individuals who denied the legality and obligation of the pretended laws? What wonder that a state, a provisional state, erected in harmony with the constitution and with custom, and waiting our assent for admission into the Union, has been subverted by a mingled process of indictments and martial demonstrations against constructive treason? Who can fail to see through the cloud which executive usurpation and judicial misconstruction have raised, for the purpose of covering these transactions in Kansas, that it is devotion to freedom which alone constitutes any crime in that territory, in the view of its judges, its ministerial officers, and of the president of the United States? And that that crime, in whatever way it may be committed, in their judgment, constitutes treason? Who does not see that devotion to freedom, applauded in all the world besides, in Kansas is a crime to be expiated with death?

I have argued thus far, from the nature of the pretended laws of Kansas, and from the cruel and illegal severity with which they are executed. I shall draw my next argument from the want of consti

tutional authority on the part of the legislature which enacted these laws. The report of the Kansas investigating committee of the house of representatives, consisting of the evidence of witnesses, numbered by hundreds, and biased against the conclusion at which the house of representatives has arrived, has established the fact upon which I insisted in opening this debate, on the ninth of April last, that the legislature of Kansas was chosen, not by the people, but by an armed invasion from adjoining states, which seized the ballot boxes, usurped the elective franchise, and by fraud and force organized a government, thereby subverting the organic law, and the authority of the United States. At another time, and under different circumstances, a single invader, after the manner adopted by Colonel William Walker, in Nicaragua, might have entered the territory of Kansas with an armed force, and established a successful usurpation there. Let me suppose that he had done so, and had promulgated these identical statutes in the name of the territory of Kansas, would you hold, would the senate hold, would the president of the United States hold, that such a government, thus established, was a legal one, and that statutes thus ordained were valid and obligatory? That is the present case. It differs only in this: that in the case supposed, there is a single conqueror, only one local and reckless usurper; while in the case of Kansas, an associated band are the conquerors and usurpers.

The territorial legislature of Kansas stands on the foundations of fraud and force. It attempts to draw over itself the organic law enacted in 1854, but it is equally subversive of the liberties of the people of Kansas, and of that organic law, and of the authority. of the United States. The legislature and territorial government of Kansas stand on no better footing than a coup d'état, a revolution. When honorable senators from the other side of this chamber tell me that I am leading the people of Kansas into revolution, I fearlessly reply to them that they have stood idly by, and seen a revolution effected there. Doubtless they have acted with a sincerity of purpose and patriotism equal to my own. They see the facts and the tendency of events, in a light different from that in which these facts and transactions present themselves to me. They, therefore, insist upon maintaining that revolution, and giving it the sanction of congress, by authorizing the standing army of the United States to execute the laws which that revolution has promulgated. The