Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/325

Rh Indians of these white settlers, who had been moving into the territory for several years. After the Settlement of 1850 it was considered that the prohibition line of 36° 30’ was no longer operative, and consequently men from Missouri and Kentucky, owners of slaves, or favoring the institution of slavery, entered the southern part of the fertile territory. This Southern movement to share the lands of Kansas was met promptly and energetically by a well organized counter movement to secure a majority of anti-slavery territorial voters. It was fair rivalry at first, notwithstanding the advantages which the Northern section had on account of its superiority in emigrative population, and it might have been reasonably conjectured that if the question had been left to the simple operations of the Settlement of 1850, the non-slave-holding interest would have secured a blood less victory. The opportunity was, however, seen by the politician as well as by the enthusiast, to make the local contest a national issue over remote and obscure Kansas, distant though it was from the East and the South.

Early in 1854 emigrant aid societies were chartered in several Northern States, whose agents actively canvassed their section, and producing great feeling, raised large sums of money for use in paying the expenses of the anti-slavery emigrant. Their agitation was met by resolute action in Missouri, and the Kansas war began.

These troubles being often referred to as the stimulating cause of disunion, it is pertinent to ask whether those Southern States, which subsequently created the Confederate States, initiated the unhappy conditions in Kansas? The answer from all records appears that not one of these States embroiled itself in the Kansas war. Few, indeed, of their people either went to Kansas or desired to go. The Kansas war was almost wholly a conflict between the people of the Northern States, and a part of the people of the border slave-holding States. The Southern Atlantic States looked directly westward