Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/527



General Assembly was given to a discussion of the vital issues now engaging the serious consideration of the thoughtful people of the country. The aggressions of the Missouri “Border Ruffians,” who had deliberately invaded the Territory of Kansas, not for settlement as citizens, but as armed freebooters with the avowed purpose of forcing slavery upon bona fide settlers, against their earnest protest, aroused an intense feeling of indignation throughout the North. The promulgation of the doctrine lately enunciated by the United States Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott decision, that slavery was a national institution and, by virtue of the Constitution had a legal existence in the Territories of the Nation, was so abhorrent to the free people of the Union that public sentiment in the North and West was sending up solemn protests from every settlement in the free States. The “irrepressible conflict” between freedom and slavery foretold by that great statesman, William H. Seward, was now in active progress and people were arraying themselves on one side or the other. The administrations of Presidents Pierce and Buchanan had openly espoused the cause of slavery and now the highest court in the country had sustained the right of slavery to invade all of the free territory of the Nation.

Iowa, long under the control of the party which defended this institution, had at last revolted and retired that party from power. This vital issue was revolutionizing parties, dividing churches and even families; every neighborhood was aroused to earnest discussion of the absorbing topic. It was a war between free and slave labor and all thoughtful men saw clearly that it must be fought out, either in legislative halls or on the field of battle. Every man in public life had to declare his position, for the intense earnestness of the aroused American citizens would tolerate no neutrality; and the old Whig party which endeavored to evade the issue was swept from existence.