Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/143

Rh clearly saw the real crux of the conflict, most definitely knew his own convictions and was readiest at the crisis for decisive action, was a man whose leadership lay not in his office, wealth or influence, but in the white flame of his utter devotion to an ideal.

To comprehend this, one must pick from the confused tangle of Kansas territorial history the main thread of its unraveling and then show how Brown's life twined with it. And this is no easy task. Some time before or after 1850 Southern leaders had tacitly fixed the westward extension of the Compromise line of 1820 at the northern line of Missouri. When, then, the bill for organizing this western territory appeared innocently in Congress, it was hustled back to committee, and appeared finally as the celebrated Kansas-Nebraska Bill which formed two territories, Kansas and Nebraska. It was the secret understanding of the promoters of the bill that Kansas would become slave territory and Nebraska free, and this tacit compact was expressed in the formula that the people of each territory should have the right "to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." But the game was so easy, and the price so cheap that the Southern leaders and their office-hunting Northern tools were not satisfied, even with the gain of territory, and so juggled the bill as virtually to leave all territory open to slavery even against the will of its people, while eventually they fortified their daring by a Supreme Court decision.