Record Data
D.C., 15 October 1857, p. 166.
Transcription
The following text is presented here in complete form, as true to the original written document as possible. Spelling and other typographical errors have been preserved as in the original.
A CLUE TO THE “DEMOCRATIC” TRIUMPH IN KANSAS.
We extract the subjoined paragraphs from the Herald of Freedom, published at Lawrence, Kansas, dated September 26. The Herald has so far supported Governor Walker in the Territory that it has rendered itself obnoxious to a class of Free State men in Kansas, and it may be considered safe authority upon the subject it writes on. It says:
“We learn that small parties are coming into the Territory on all the public highways from Missouri, and are passing to the western part of Kansas. On Thursday last, some gentlemen came down from Tecumseh. They report meeting some ten covered wagons on the route, all filled with men, and all going west, and none of them loaded with other than bottles of bad whiskey, a small quantity of provisions, and camp fixtures.
“Parties were coming for a week or ten days before the election on the 30th of March, 1855, and their appearance at this time again looks ominous. If they have come here to interfere in our franchises, come from where they may, we sincerely hope they will never be allowed to return to their homes alive. They deserve death as much as would a wolf, who should intrude upon a poultry yard in the night, and steal away the fowls. There is no crime so base, and none which deserves such severe penalties, as robbing a people of the right of self-government.”
Here is a clue to the Pro-Slavery triumph in the late election in Kansas, heralded in all the Administration journals. It is, we admit, not needed, to account for the result. If not a single “illegal” vote was cast in Kansas last Monday week, still the dishonest and oppressive restrictions upon even the six months’ residents were such, and the apportionment of the Territory so grossly unfair, that it was impossible for the will of the majority of the citizens to be heard.
P.S.–The later dispatches from Kansas are more favorable than the first received.