their strength and their
weakness. To abandon the institution was to sacrifice four thousand
millions of property specially protected by law. It was for the
existing generation of the governing class in the South to vote
themselves into bankruptcy and penury. Far beyond this, it was in
their judgment to blight their land with ignorance and indolence,
to be followed by crime and anarchy. Their point of view was so
radically different from that held by a large number of Northern
people that it left no common ground for action,--scarcely, indeed,
an opportunity for reasoning together. In the South they saw and
felt their danger, and they determined at all hazards to defend
themselves against policies which involved the total destruction
of their social and industrial fabric. They were not mere malcontents.
They were not pretenders. They did not aim at small things. They
had ability and they had courage. They had determined upon mastery
within the Union, or a Continental Empire outside of it.

While the South had thus resolved to acquire control of the large
Territory of Kansas, the North had equally resolved to save it to
freedom. The strife that ensued upon the fertile plains beyond
the Missouri might almost be regarded as the opening battle of the
civil war. The proximity of a slave State gave to the South an
obvious advantage at the beginning of the contest. Many of the
Northern emigrants were from New England, and the distance they
were compelled to travel exceeded two thousand miles. There were
no railroads across Iowa, none across Missouri. But despite all
impediments and all discouragements, the free-State emigrants,
stimulated by anti-slavery societies organized for the purpose,
far outnumbered those from the slave States. Had the vexed question
in the Territory been left to actual settlers it would have been
at once decided adversely to slavery. But the neighboring inhabitants
of Missouri, as the first election approached, invaded the Territory
in large numbers, and, with boisterous disturbance and threats of
violence, seized the polls, fraudulently elected a pro-slavery
Legislature, and chose one of their leaders named Whitfield as
delegate to Congress. Over six thousand votes were polled, of
which some eight hundred only were cast by actual settlers. There
were about three thousand legal voters in the Territory. The total
population was somewhat in excess of eight thousand, and there were
b