Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/288

Rh themselves into companies, and in military order, with pistols and bowie-knives, and in one instance with cannon, went over the border into Kansas to determine the elections by excluding the legal voters, and themselves casting the ballot. In ten months, they made four general invasions of Kansas, if I am rightly informed; namely, (1.) On the 29th of July, 1854; (2.) 29th of November, 1854; (3.) 30th March, 1855, and (4.) 22nd May, 1855. The third was the great invasion, made to elect the legislators who were to enact the territorial laws. It appears that four thousand men marched bodily from Missouri to Kansas, some of them penetrating two himdred miles into the interior, and delivered their votes, electing men who would put Slavery into the land. The fourth was a smaUer and local invasion, to fill vacancies in the legislature.

I cannot dwell on these things, nor stop to speak of the violence and murder repeatedly committed by these border ruffians, under the eyes, and with the consent, and by the encouragement, of the American Executive. You can read those .things in the newspapers, at least in the New York Tribune and Evening Post. But, suffice it to say, the Legislature thus chosen was wholly illegal. If Jersey City were to order a municipal election, and New York were to go there, and choose aldermen and common councilmen, and the new officers were to act in that capacity, we should have a parallel of what took place in Kansas.

Thus the slave power which controls the Federal Government secured the first requisite,—a Slave Legislature. 2. They must next proceed to make the appropriate laws. The Legislature came together on the 2nd July, 1855, at the place legally fixed by Governor Reeder: they passed an illegal Act, fixing the seat of Government at Shawneetown, on the borders of Missouri, and adjourned thither. The Governor vetoed the Act, and repudiated the Legislature, illegally chosen at first, illegally acting afterwards. But they continued in session there from July 15th to August 31st, and made a huge statute-book of more than a thousand great pages. It contains substantially the laws of Missouri; but, in some instances, they were made worse. Take this, for example:—

No person who shall have been convicted of any violation of any of the provisions of an Act of Congress" (the Fugitive Slave Bills of 1798