Conflict Between Freedom and Slavery

Our country, at this juncture, was approaching that great crisis which appeared in the dreadful aspect of civil war--a tremendous conflict between Freedom and Slavery for supremacy in the republic. With the enactment and enforcement of the Fugitive-Slave Law and the virtual repeal of the Missouri Compromise Act, in the case of Kansas and Nebraska, the important question was forced upon the attention of the whole people of the land, "Shall the domain of our republic be the theatre of all free or all slave labor, with the corresponding civilization of each as a consequence?" The time had come when one or the other of these social systems must prevail in all parts of the land. Part free and part slave was a condition no longer to be tolerated, for it meant perpetual war. The supporters of the slave-system, encouraged by their recent triumphs, had full faith in their ability to win other and more decisive victories, and did not permit themselves to doubt their ultimate possession of the field, so they sounded the trumpet for their hosts to rally and prepare for the struggle. Kansas was the chosen field for the preliminary skirmishing. It lay nearest to the settled States; it was bordered on the east by a slave-labor State, and it was easy of access from the South. On the surface of society they saw only insignificant ripples of opposition. They began to colonize the Territory; and, flushed with what seemed to be well-assured success, they cast down the gauntlet of defiance at the feet of the friends of free-labor in the nation.

That gauntlet was quickly taken up by their opponents, and champions of freedom seemed to spring from the ground like the harvest from the seedsowing of dragons' teeth. Enterprising men and women swarmed out of New England to people the virgin soil of Kansas with the hardy children of toil. They were joined by those of other free-labor States in the North and West. The then dominant party in the Union were astonished at the sudden uprising, and clearly perceived that the opponents of slavery would speedily outvote its supporters. Combinations were formed under various names, such as "Blue Lodges," "Friends' Society," "Social Band," "Sons of the South," etc., to counteract the efforts of the "Emigrant Aid Society" of Massachusetts, to gain numerical supremacy in Kansas--a society which had been organized immediately after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. The supporters of slavery, conscious that their votes could not secure supremacy in Kansas, where the question of slavery or no slavery was to be decided at the ballot-box, organized physical force in Missouri to oppose this moral force. Associations were formed in Missouri, whose members were pledged to be ready, at all times, to assist, when called upon by the friends of slavery in Kansas, in removing from that Territory by force every person who should attempt to settle there "under the auspices of the Northern Emigrant Aid Society."

In the autumn of 1854, A. H. Reeder was sent to govern the Territory of Kansas. He immediately ordered an election of a Territorial legislature, and with that election the struggle for supremacy there was finally begun. Missourians went into Kansas to assist the supporters of slavery there in carrying the election. They went with tents, artillery and other weapons. There were then eight hundred and thirty-one legal voters in the Territory, but there were more than six thousand votes polled. The members of the Legislature were all supporters of slavery; and when they met at Shawnee, on the borders of Missouri, they proceeded to enact laws for upholding slavery in Kansas. These laws were regularly vetoed by Governor Reeder, who became so obnoxious that President Pierce was asked to recall him. The President did so, and sent Wilson Shannon of Ohio, who was an avowed supporter of slavery, to fill Reeder's place.

The actual settlers in Kansas, who were chiefly from the free-labor States, met in mass convention in September, 1855, and resolved not to recognize the laws passed by the illegally elected legislature, as binding upon them. They called a delegate convention to assemble at Topeka on the 19th of October, at which time and place the convention framed a State constitution which was approved by the legal voters of the Territory, and which contained an article making provision for constituting Kansas a free-labor State. Under this constitution they asked Congress to admit that Territory into the Union as a State. By this action the contest between Freedom and Slavery was transferred from Kansas to Washington, for awhile. The prospect of success for the opponents of slavery, in Kansas, was beginning to appear bright, when President Pierce gave the supporters of the institution much comfort by a message to Congress in January, 1856, in which he declared the action of the legal voters, in adopting a State constitution, to be open rebellion.