Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/377

Rh the Territories of the United States, and having left the whole question of the legislation or prohibition of slavery to be decided by the people of a Territory, the next thing in order was to fill up the Territory of Kansas—the one likely to be first organized—with a people friendly to slavery, and to keep out all such as were opposed to making that Territory a free State. Here was an open invitation to a fierce and bitter strife; and the history of the times shows how promptly that invitation was accepted by both classes to which it was given, and shows also the scenes of lawless violence and blood that followed.

All advantages were at first on the side of those who were for making Kansas a slave State. The moral force of the repeal of the Missouri compromise was with them; the strength of the triumphant Democratic party was with them; the power and patronage of the federal government was with them; the various governors, sent out under the Territorial government, were with them; and, above all, the proximity of the Territory to the slave State of Missouri favored them and all their designs. Those who opposed the making Kansas a slave State, for the most part were far away from the battle-ground, residing chiefly in New England, more than a thousand miles from the eastern border of the Territory, and their direct way of entering it was through a country violently hostile to them. With such odds against them, and only an idea—though a grand one—to support them, it will ever be a wonder that they succeeded in making Kansas a free State. It is not my purpose to write particularly of this or of any other phase of the conflict with slavery, but simply to indicate the nature of the struggle, and the successive steps leading to the final result. The important point to me, as one desiring to see the slave power crippled, slavery limited and abolished, was the effect of this Kansas battle upon the moral sentiment of the