ppiest moment of
my life! I determined to make the fanatics bow before me in the dust
and kiss the Territorial laws, and I have done it! The writs have been
executed. Boys, you are dismissed." It will be doing Senator David R.
Atchison, Ex-Vice-President of the United States, a kindness to
conclude simply that he was drunk, otherwise he displayed utter
savagery and barbarism. He inculcated gallantry to ladies, but said:
"If you find any woman with arms in her hands, tread her under foot as
you would a snake." The Caucassian white woman of Lawrence had no more
rights of self-protection than the slaves of a South Carolina rice
plantation--they were wholly and absolutely at the mercy of their
masters!

We have no comments to make on the work of this drunken rabble; but
there is one man that must be held to a terrible responsibility before
the judgment-seat of posterity. Gov. Wilson Shannon was not drunk: and
it is to be presumed he had read that Constitution of the United
States which he had so often sworn to support. He knew, therefore,
that this document stipulates:

1. "That the right of the people to _keep_ and bear arms shall not be
infringed;" yet he showed a fixed purpose to deprive the Lawrence
people of their arms.

2. The Governor knew that the Constitution guarantees "freedom of
speech and of the press" to the American people; yet the burning of
these printing presses was an attack on the freedom of the press.

3. The Constitution guarantees that "in all criminal prosecutions the
accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial." Property
of large value was destroyed because its owners were charged with high
crimes and misdemeanors; yet the owners of this property had never
been given a trial.

4. Gov. Shannon alleged that it was treasonable for the people of
Kansas Territory to frame a State Constitution without an enabling act
from Congress; yet California had done this very thing, and under that
Constitution had been admitted as a State.

5. He treated the Free State men as traitors, because they would not
admit the legality of the Lecompton Territorial Legislature. But the
majority of the Investigating Committee held the same view with the
Lawrence people, and Congress affirmed the same judgment in
permanently unseating Mr. Whitfield as Territorial delegate to
Congress.

Would that men could remember that there is a _hereafter_; that
_to-morrow_ forever sits in judgment on _to-day._ There