Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/832

 violence, and injustice will reign supreme throughout our borders, and we will have achieved the undying infamy of having destroyed the liberty of our country and of the world. We will become a byword of reproach and obloquy; and all history will record the fact that Kansas was the grave of the American Union. Never was so momentous a question submitted to the decision of any people; and we cannot avoid the alternative now placed before us of glory or of shame.

May that overruling Providence who brought our forefathers in safety to [J]amestown and Plymouth—who watched over our colonial pupilage—who convened our ancestors in harmonious councils on the birthday of American independence—who gave us Washington, and carried us successfully through the struggles and perils of the revolution—who assembled, in IT 87, that noble band of patriots and statesmen from north and south who framed the federal constitution—who has augmented our numbers from three millions to thirty millions, has carried us from the eastern slope of the Alleghanies through the great valleys of the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri, and now salutes our standard on the shores of the Pacific—rouse in our hearts a love of the whole Union, and a patriotic devotion to the whole country. May it extinguish or control all sectional passions and prejudice, and enable us to conduct to a successful conclusion the great experiment of self-government now being made within your boundaries.

Is it not infinitely better that slavery should be abolished or established in Kansas, rather than that we should become slaves and not permitted to govern ourselves? Is the absence or existence of slavery in Kansas paramount to the great questions of state sovereignty, of self-government, and of the Union? Is the sable African alone entitled to your sympathy and consideration, even if he were happier as a freeman than as a slave, either here or in St. Domingo, or the British West Indies or Spanish America, where the emancipated slave has receded to barbarism, and approaches the lowest point in the descending scale of moral, physical, and intellectual degradation? Have our white brethren of the great American and European race no claims upon our attention? Have they no rights or interests entitled to regard and protection? Shall the destiny of the African in Kansas exclude all considerations connected with our own happiness and prosperity? And is it for the handful of that race now in Kansas, or that may be hereafter introduced, that we should subvert the Union and the great principles of self-government and state sovereignty, and imbrue our hands in the blood of our countrymen! Important as this African question may be in Kansas, and which it is your solemn right to determine, it sinks into insignificance compared with the perpetuity of the Union and the final successful establishment of the principles of state sovereignty and free government. If patriotism, if devotion to the constitution and love of the Union, should not induce the minority to yield to the majority on this question, let them reflect that in no event can the minority successfully determine this question permanently, and that in no contingency will congress admit Kansas as a slave or free state unless a majority of the people of