y rightful mode if there
be such: Slavery must be kept out of Kansas! [Applause.] The test--the
pinch--is right there. If we lose Kansas to freedom, an example will be
set which will prove fatal to freedom in the end. We, therefore, in
the language of the Bible, must "lay the axe to the root of the tree."
Temporizing will not do longer; now is the time for decision--for firm,
persistent, resolute action. [Applause.]

The Nebraska Bill, or rather Nebraska law, is not one of wholesome
legislation, but was and is an act of legislative usurpation, whose
result, if not indeed intention, is to make slavery national; and unless
headed off in some effective way, we are in a fair way to see this land
of boasted freedom converted into a land of slavery in fact. [Sensation.]
Just open your two eyes, and see if this be not so. 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. Sec. 13. No person who is conscientiously opposed
to holding slaves, or who does not admit the right to hold slaves in this
Territory, shall sit as a juror on the trial of any prosecution for any
violation o