Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/824

794 authority, it is most wise that they should be included in our ordinance, and take effect by compact when the state is admitted into the Union. If my will could have prevailed as regards the public lands, as indicated in my public career, and especially in the bill presented by me, as chairman of the committee on public lands, to the senate of the United States, which passed that body, but failed in the house, I would authorize no sales of these lands except for settlement and cultivation, reserving not merely a preemption, but a homestead of a quarter-section of land in favor of every actual settler, whether coming from other states or emigrating from Europe. Great and populous states would thus rapidly be added to the confederacy, until we should soon have one unbroken line of states from the Atlantic to the Pacific, giving immense additional power and security to the Union, and facilitating intercourse between all its parts. This would be alike beneficial to the old and to the new states. To the working-men of the old states, as well as of the new, it would be of incalculable advantage, not merely by affording them a home in the west, but by maintaining the wages of labor, by enabling the working classes to emigrate and become cultivators of the soil, when the rewards of daily toil should sink below a fair remuneration. Every new state, besides, adds to the customers of the old states, consuming their manufactures, employing their merchants, giving business to their vessels and canals, their railroads and cities, and a powerful impulse to their industry and prosperity. Indeed, it is the growth of the mighty west which has added, more than all other causes combined, to the power and prosperity of the whole country, whilst at the same time, through the channels of business and commerce, it has been building up immense cities in the eastern, Atlantic, and middle states, and replenishing the federal treasury with large payments from the settlers upon the public lands, rendered of real value only by their labor; and thus, from increased exports, bringing back augmented imports, and soon largely increasing the revenue of the government from that source also.

Without asking anything new from congress, if Kansas can receive, on coming into the Union, all the usual grants, and use them judiciously, she can not only speedily cover herself with a network of railroads, but, by devoting all the rest to purposes of education, she would soon have a complete system of common schools, with normal schools, free academies, and a great university, in all of which tuition should be free to all our people. In that university the mechanic arts, with model workshops, and all the sciences should be taught, and especially agriculture in connection with a model farm.

Although you ask nothing more in your ordinance than has already been granted to the other new states, yet in view of the sacrifice of life and property incurred by the people of Kansas, in establishing here the great principles of state and popular sovereignty, and thus perpetuating the Union, congress, doubtless, will regard with indulgent favor the new state of Kansas, and will welcome her into the Union with joyful congratulations and a most liberal policy as to the public domain.

The full benefit of that great measure, the graduation and reduction of the