Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/693



to the several territorial encampments as a perjurer before Heaven, and a traitor to my country, of passing through life, scorned and reviled by man, frowned on by devils, forsaken by angels, and abandoned by God."

Your committee have deemed it important to give the outline of the "constitution and ritual of the grand encampment and regiments of the Kansas legion," as constituting the secret organization, political and military, in obedience to which the public demonstrations lntve been made to subvert the authority of the territorial government established by congress, by setting up a state government, either with or without the assent of congress, as circumstances should determine. The indorsement of this military organization, and the recommendation by the Big Springs convention for "the procurement and preparation of arms," accompanied with the distinct declaration that "we will resist them [the laws enacted by the Kansas legislature] to a bloody issue, as soon as we ascertain that peaceable remedies shall fail, and forcible resistance shall furnish any reasonable prospect of success," would seem to admit of no other interpretation than that, in the event that the courts of justice shall sustain the validity of those laws, and congress shall refuse to admit Kansas as a state with the constitution to be formed at Topeka, they will set up an independent government in defiance of the federal authority.

The same purpose is clearly indicated by the other proceedings of this convention, in which it is declared that "we with scorn repudiate the election law, so called," and nominate governor Reeder for congress, to be voted for on a different day from that authorized by law, at an election to be held by judges and clerks not appointed in pursuance of any legal authority, and not to be sworn by any person authorized by law to administer oaths; and the returns to be made, and result proclaimed, and certificate granted, in a mode and by persons not permitted to perform these acts by any law, in or out of the territory.

In accepting the nomination, governor Reeder addressed the convention as follows; and, among other things, said:

"In giving him this nomination in this manner, they had strengthened his arms to do their work, and, in return, he would now pledge to them a steady, unflinching pertinacity of purpose, never-tiring industry, dogged perseverance, and, in all the abilities with which God has endowed him, to the righting of their wrongs, and the final triumph of their cause. He believed, from the circumstances which had for the last eight months surrounded him, and which had, at the same time, placed in his possession many facts, and bound him, heart and soul, to the oppressed voters of Kansas, that he could do much towards obtaining a redress of their grievances.

"He said that, day by day a crisis was coming upon us; that, in after times, this would be to posterity a turning-point, a marked period, as are to us the opening of the revolution, the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, and the era of the alien and sedition laws; that we should take each carefully, so that each be a step of progress, and so that no violence be done to the tie which binds the American people together. He alluded to the unprecedented