conscience, and the religion of all who were concerned in the
controversy. Had either side been insincere there would have been
voluntary yielding or enforced adjustment. But each felt itself
to be altogether in the right and its opponent altogether in the
wrong. Thus they stood confronting each other at the close of the
year 1854.

It was soon perceived by all, as the sagacious had seen from the
first, that the Missouri Compromise had not been repealed merely
to exhibit unity in the scope of the United-States statutes respecting
slavery in the Territories. This was the euphuistic plea of those
Northern senators and representatives who had given dire offense
to their constituents by voting for it. It was the clever artifice
of Douglas which suggested that construction. It was a deception,
and it was contradicted and exposed by the logic of argument in
the North and by the logic of action in the South. No double-
dealing was attempted by the Southern men. They understood the
question perfectly and left the apologies and explanations to
Northern men, who were hard pressed by anti-slavery constituents.
Southern men knew that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise gave
them a privilege which they had not before enjoyed,--the privilege
of settling with their slaves on the rich plains and in the fertile
valleys that stretched westward from the Missouri River. In
maintaining this privilege, they felt sure of aid from the Executive
of the United States, and they had the fullest confidence that in
any legal controversy the Federal judiciary would be on their side.

THE SOUTHERN STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS.

Thus panoplied they made a desperate contest for the possession of
Kansas. They had found that all the crops grown in Missouri by
slave labor could be as profitably cultivated in Kansas. Securing
Kansas, they would gain more than the mere material advantage of
an enlarged field for slave labor. New Mexico at that time included
all of Arizona; Utah included all of Nevada; Kansas, as organized,
absorbed a large part of what is now Colorado, stretched along the
eastern and northern boundary of New Mexico, and, crossing the
Rocky Mountains, reached the confines of Utah. If Kansas could be
made a slave State it would control New Mexico and Utah, and the
South could again be placed in a position of political equality if
not of command. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise had shown