Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/283

270 we might reclaim it by filibustering; and the American Government would not disturb, but help us.

Then, if a Northern man wishes to migrate, he has only the poorer land of Washington and Oregon before him, and is shut out from the most valuable territory of the United States.

If the city government of Boston were, next month, to establish a piggery on Boston Common, with fifty thousand swine, and set up an immense slaughter-house of the savagest and filthiest character in the Granary Burying-ground, on Copp's Hill, and in each of the public squares; were to give all vacant land to the gamblers, thieves, pimps, kidnappers, and murderers—they would not commit a worse injustice, and they would not do a greater proportional damage to the real estate, and more mischief to the health of the inhabitants of the city, than the American Government would do the working people of the South and North by creating this nuisance of Slavery on the free soil of Kansas. So much for the effect of this on the individual interests of the working people of America. I have only taken the lowest possible view of the subject.

See its effects on Americanpolitics—on the welfare and progress of the nation. If Kansas is made a slave State, we shall either keep united, or else dissolve the Union and separate.

1. Suppose we keep united: what follows? First, New Mexico will be a slave State, then Utah.

California is only half for freedom now, and will soon split into two; Lower California will be slave.

Then Texas will peel off into new States; Western Texas will soon be made a new slave State.

The Mesilla Valley, bigger than Virginia, will be a slave territory.

Then we shall dismember Mexico—make slave territory there.

We shall re-annex the Mosquito territory: the Government wants it, and lets all manner of filibusters go there now.

We shall seize Cuba, to make that soil red with the white man's blood, which is now black with African bondage.