Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/369

Rh the exercise of free speech; the display of pistols, bludgeons, and plantation manners in the Congress of the nation; the demand shamelessly made by our government upon England for the return of slaves who had won their liberty by their valor on the high seas; the bill for the recapture of runaway slaves; the annexation of Texas for the avowed purpose of increasing the number of slave States, and thus increasing the power of slavery in the Union; the war with Mexico; the filibustering expeditions against Cuba and Central America; the cold-blooded decision of Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case, wherein he states, as it were, a historical fact that "negroes are deemed to have no rights which white men are bound to respect"; the perfidious repeal of the Missouri compromise when all its advantages to the South had been gained and appropriated, and when nothing had been gained by the North; the armed and bloody attempt to force slavery upon the virgin soil of Kansas; the efforts of both of the great political parties to drive from place and power every man suspected of ideas and principles hostile to slavery; the rude attacks made upon Giddings, Hale, Chase, Wilson, Wm. H. Seward, and Charles Sumner; the effort to degrade these brave men and to drive them from positions of prominence; the summary manner in which Virginia hanged John Brown; in a word, whatever was done or attempted with a view to the support and security of slavery, only served as fuel to the fire, and heated the furnace of agitation to a higher degree than any before attained. This was true up to the moment when the nation found it necessary to gird on the sword for the salvation of the country and the destruction of slavery.

At no time during all the ten years preceding the war was the public mind at rest. Mr. Clay's compromise measures in 1850, whereby all the troubles of the country