Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/293

280 tian." Such a "change of heart" has not been heard of since the conversion of St. Ananias and Sapphirs. I have no fondness for fighting ; not the average "instinct of destruction," I should suffer a great while before I struck a blow. But there are times when I would take down the dreadful weapon of war: this is one of them for the men in Kansas.

It is not easy for the border ruffians alone to put down Kansas; not possible for them to break up the popular organization, destroy the new Constitution, and hang the officers. Will the President send the United States soldiers to do this? No doubt his heart is good enough for that work. We remember what he did with United States soldiers at Boston, in 1854: the only service they ever rendered in that town for more than forty years was to kidnap Anthony Burns. But the President falters: there is a North; all last winter there was a North, — Northern ice in the Mississippi ; Banks, of the North, at Washington, in the speaker's chair. Kansas and Nebraska are "the Children in the Wood." They had a fair inheritance; but the parents, dying, left them to a guardian uncle,—the President. I heard the Northern mother say to him,—

It is still the old story: the Executive uncle promises well enough: yet—

[That is, Straightwhig and Democrat,]