I need do no more
than state, to command universal approval, that almost the entire North,
as well as a large following in the border States, is radically opposed
to the planting of slavery in free territory. Probably in a popular vote
throughout the nation nine tenths of the voters in the free States, and
at least one-half in the border States, if they could express their
sentiments freely, would vote NO on such an issue; and it is safe to say
that two thirds of the votes of the entire nation would be opposed to it.
And yet, in spite of this overbalancing of sentiment in this free
country, we are in a fair way to see Kansas present itself for admission
as a slave State. Indeed, it is a felony, by the local law of Kansas, to
deny that slavery exists there even now. By every principle of law, a
negro in Kansas is free; yet the bogus Legislature makes it an infamous
crime to tell him that he is free!
Statutes of Kansas, 1555, chapter 151, Sec. 12: If any free person, by
speaking or by writing, assert or maintain that persons have not the
right to hold slaves in this Territory, or shall introduce into this
Territory, print, publish, write, circulate . . . any book, paper,
magazine, pamphlet, or circular containing any denial of the right of
persons to hold slaves in this Territory such person shall be deemed
guilty of felony, and punished by imprisonment at hard labor for a term
of not less than two years.
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