Record Data
Transcription
KANSAS GIVEN OVER BY THE SOUTH.
The South newspaper, one of the most ultra of Southern journals, concedes that Kansas is lost to Slavery. It remarks as follows:
“We have information which warrants the conclusion that Kansas will come into the Union as an Anti-Slavery State. We say an Anti-Slavery State, because we mean that it’s political status will not correspond with its geographical position, but will be as extreme in its antagonism to the institutions of the South, as if the Territory lay in the latitude of Maine or Massachusetts.
“Secretary Stanton’s speech, at which the Abolitionists affect such indignation, divulged the secret. The plan is to submit the Constitution, which will be framed by the June Convention, to all inhabitants of the Territory, and not exclusively to the people who are recognized as voters under the act of the Legislature.”
The Richmond Whig, commenting upon the article from which we extract the above paragraph says:
“We have invariably predicted that, through the management of the Democratic party, Kansans would be erected into a free State, and be forever lost to the South. In opposition to the opinion thus expressed by us, the Democratic journals of Virginia and the South have persistently and indignantly maintained that our views on the subject were purely the result of party passion and prejudice-of resolute and determined hostility to Democratic men and Democratic policy.* * * * “But what are the honest and confiding people of Virginia and the South, who were then inspired with such cheering hopes in regard to Kansas and the South, now told? Why, we are distinctly and frankly and coolly apprised that Squatter Sovereignty is to be the rule of action in the organization of the Government of Kansas. In other words, we are informed that ‘the plan’ of the Democratic Administration and its agents in Kansas is, to submit the Constitution which will be framed by the June Convention, TO ALL THE INHABITANTS OF THE TERRITORY. There is the ‘plan’ of Buchanan, his Cabinet, and the Democratic Party, North and South. ‘To all the inhabitants of the Territory!’”
Our readers will notice with what imperturbable coolness the South and the Whig admit, inferentially, that they are entirely opposed to allowing the people of Kansas to choose their own institutions and make their own laws. Kansas is lost, cries the South, because the inhabitants are to be allowed the privilege of voting! The Whig speaks after the same fashion. So long as the people of Kansas were prevented from voting, by fraud or violence, so long these journals were hopeful of success; but the instant there is an indication that the rule of justice may be established in the Territory, they lose their faith.
We need go no farther than this to understand the baneful effects of Slavery and Slavery advocacy upon the human intellect. Here we have two able and influential journals admitting, without the faintest blush of shame, that they would not allow the people of Kansas to make their own Constitutional Comment is unnecessary.
