Kansas

Kansas.

The Leavenworth Herald, of the 15th inst., narrates a scene of mob violence perpetuated on one of the settlers on Kansas river, by a band of Eastern emigrants, of the anti-slavery importation. The details are hardly worth reciting. In substance, a Mr. Osborne, who, although born in the North, does not [illegible] the furious abolition zeal of the crowds who have been sent out from the East, rather than abolition combatants than pioneers of bona fide settlement, was beset upon his claim upon the Kansas river, and by rude threats of violence from an armed mob, consisting of a company of abolitionists from Cincinnati, was driven off his property under circumstances of gross outrage. The account is earnestly vouched for as true in all its parts. It may be so, and if so, it is a gross offence which there ought to be laws and executive force to punish severely. We may say of it, at least, that it is as well authenticated, and quite as probable as most of the stories of pro-slavery outrage which the Eastern papers have been filled with, and have used for [illegible] a sectional animosity towards the whole South, the fruits of which we see in the discords which convulse the whole land, and threaten so many dangers to the peace and continuance of the Union.

Still we cannot persuade ourselves that there is not grave exaggeration on both sides. There is a pro-slavery and an anti-slavery party in Kansas, and unhappily they represent opinions actually within the Territory less than they do interests and passions without. The colonization of a [illegible] new country has evidently been undertaken in a temper of controversy between interests elsewhere, and not with a bona fide view to the settlement of the soil and the building up of a new commonwealth with a natural and enforced growth. New England Abolitionists make Kansas a field for a crusade against Southern institutions, and choose to open here a campaign against the constitutional rights and domestic peace of the South. The attempt is resisted by counter [illegible], such as are near at hand, and most available for resistance to the advancing enemy. In such a conflict the South had the prodigious advantage of being near to the scene. Missouri, excited by warfare against her own social institutions brought to her very borders, could gather defenders at the beat of a drum, while her assailants are brought from a distance of hundreds of miles. It is no wonder then that the Eastern settlers were outnumbered by those from Missouri, and not surprising in the state of exasperated feeling which this sort of conflict provoked, that Missourians should have outvoted their opponents and that some of the scenes enacted should have been of a character to be deprecated, violent, intolerant and denunciatory. What is more to our present purpose is, that there scenes are doubtless highly colored in the reporting. It is difficult to discriminate facts from the excited narratives of the actors in these altercations and encounters, since the passions which have been lashed into fury find their chief indulgence on each side in denouncing the motives and conduct of adversaries. The Territory we apprehend is not quite given up to the total lawlessness which might be inferred from the description on each side of the [illegible] of its opponents. Indeed, we are induced to believe that there is a large of mass quiet citizens who are not heard on the tumults which have drawn so much of public attention, but who will have control of the permanent government of the country.

However tainted the first elections may have been by illegal violence—and there was infinitely less than has been pretended—the result of the second elections, for the filling of vacancies, show a public sentiment, not subject to the influences of the first, and that, has been found to be decidedly on the Southern side. There is no pretense of extra-territorial interferences by border or other ruffians; the bona fide residents settled the questions, and by that action went far to disprove the allegations of violence and invasion, by which the former were carried. At least, they show that extraordinary measures were not needed to accomplish the object of defeating abolitionism, and demonstrates that that point is secured, at least for the present, in the establishment of a fair territorial opinion, and the choice of a territorial legislature clearly adverse to the abolition parties of the north and East.