Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/286

Rh the slaveholding oligarchy which rules them. The Constitution itself guarantees "a republican form of government" to each State in the Union: no slave State has had it yet. Perhaps the North will one day respect the other half of "the Compromises of the constitution." Certainly there must be national unity of idea, either of Freedom or of Slavery, or else we separate before long.

This regressive force, which retards the progress and diminishes the welfare of the South, and yet controls the politics of America, is determined to conquer the progressive force, to put liberty down, to spread bondage over all the North, to organize it in all the wild land of the continent. The ablest champions of this iniquity are Northern men. The same North which bore Seward and Giddings, Sumner and Hale, not to mention others equally able, is mother also to Cushing and Douglas; and one of these would "crush out" all opposition to Slaveiy, all love of welfare and progress ; the other is reported to have said to the North, in the Senate, "We mean to subdue you." Mark the words—"We mean to subdue you!" That is the aim of the administration, to make progress, regress; welfare, illfare ; to make Democracy and Christianity, Despotism and anti-Christianity; that is the purpose of the oligarchy of slaveholders, to be executed with those triple Northern tools already named—base men, mean men, ignorant men.

The first great measure is to put Slavery into Kansas and Nebraska, into four hundred and fifty thousand six hundred and eighty miles of wild land.

To accomplish that, five steps were necessary. Here they are:—

I. The first was to pass a pro-Slavery Act to organize the Kansas and Nebraska territory. That accomplished two things:— 1. It repealed the Missouri Compromise, and laid the territory open to the slave-holder.

2. It established squatter sovereignty, and allowed the settlers to make laws for Slavery or Freedom, as they saw fit. The South intended that it should be a slave State.

You know how this first step was taken in 1854; what was done by Congress, by the President; you have not