Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/292

280 contains as much land as all the thirteen States that fought the Revolution, and more than 121,000 square miles besides. Draw a line from Trieste to Amsterdam,—Nebraska is larger than the part of Western Europe thus cut off. It contains more than all the fourteen Free States east of the Mississippi,—Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin—and 83,393 square miles over and above. It reaches from the western boundary of Missouri to the Rocky Mountains. It extends from 37° north latitude to 49°—twelve degrees of latitude; and from 94° longitude to 114°—twenty degrees of longitude. Its waters run to the Gulf of Mexico, to the Pacific Ocean, and to Hudson's Bay. The blood of the slave will reach "Greenland's icy mountains," and stain the waters at the mouth of Baffin's Bay; the Saskatchawan, its great northern river, will drain the slave soil into Lake Winnepeg, and the keel of Captain Kane's ship, returning from his adventurous quest in the Arctic sea, will pass through waters that are darkened by the last great crime of America!

The slave power has long been seeking to extend its jurisdiction. It has eminently succeeded. It fills all the chief offices of the nation; the presidents are slave presidents; the supreme court is of slave judges, every one; the district judges,—you all know Judge Sprague, Judge Grier, Judge Kane. In all that depends on the political action of America, the slave power carries the day. In what depends on industry, population, education, it is the North. The slave power seeks to extend its institutions at the expense of humanity. The North works with it. In this century, the South has been^foiled in only two efforts,—to extend slavery to California and Oregon: nine times it has succeeded. Now see why the South wishes to establish slavery in Nebraska.

1. She wishes to gain a direct power in Congress. So she wants new slave States, that she may have new slave Senators to give her the uttermost power in the Senate of the United States.

2. Next, she wishes indirectly to gain power by directly checking the rapid growth of the free States of the North.