Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/834

 elections, meet us in social intercourse, and intermarry freely with the whites. This doctrine of the perfect equality of the white with the black, in all respects whatsoever, social and political, clearly follows from the position that Africans are citizens of the United States. Nor is the supreme court of the Union less clearly vindicated by the position now assumed here by the published creed of this party, that the people of Kansas, in forming their state constitution, (and not congress,) must decide this question of slavery for themselves. Having thus sustained the court on both the controverted points decided by that tribunal, it is hoped they will not approve the anarchical and revolutionary proceedings in other states, expunging the supreme court from our system by depriving it of the great power for which it was created, of expounding the constitution. If that be done, we can have in fact no unity of government or fundamental law, but just as many ever-varying constitutions as passion, prejudice, and local interests may from time to time prescribe in the thirty-one states of the Union.

I have endeavored heretofore faintly to foreshadow the wonderful prosperity which would follow at once in Kansas the peaceful and final settlement of this question. But, if it should be in the power of agitators to prevent such a result, nothing but ruin will pervade our territory. Confidence will expire and law and order will be subverted. Anarchy and civil war will be reïnaugurated among us. All property will greatly depreciate in value. Even the best farms will become almost worthless. Our towns and cities will sink into decay. Emigration to our territory will cease. A mournful train of returning settlers, with ruined hopes and blasted fortunes, will leave our borders. All who have purchased property at present prices will be sacrificed, and Kansas will be marked by universal ruin and desolation.

Nor will the mischief be arrested here. It will extend into every other state. Despots will exult over the failure here of the great principles of self-government, and the approaching downfall of our confederacy. The pillars of the union will rock upon their base, and we may close the next presidential conflict amid the scattered fragments of the constitution of our once happy and united people. The banner of the stars and stripes, the emblem of our country's glory, will be rent by contending factions. We shall no longer have a country. The friends of human liberty in other realms will shrink despairing from the conflict. Despotic power will resume its sway throughout the world, and man will have tried in vain the last experiment of self-government. The architects of our country's ruin, the assassins of her peace and prosperity, will share the same common ruin of all our race. They will meet, whilst living, the bitter curses of a ruined people, whilst history will record as their only epitaph: These were the destroyers of the American Union, of the liberties of their country and the world.

But I do not despair of the republic. My hope is in the patriotism and intelligence of the people; in their love of country, of liberty, and of the Union. Especially is my confidence unbounded in the hardy pioneers and settlers of the west It was such settlers of a new state devoted to the