, when the two Territories would become States, they
would be slave States, and then there would be more slave States than
free States in the Union. So they held meetings, made speeches, and
passed resolutions, denouncing this sort of immigration as wrong and
wicked. Then immigrants from Iowa, Illinois, and other Northern
States, even as far off as Massachusetts, sold their homes and
household goods and started for the Promised Land, as many of them
thought it to be. For the men in Kansas who were opposed to slavery
wrote and sent far and wide papers and pamphlets, setting forth in
glowing colors the advantages of the new and beautiful country beyond
the Missouri River, open to the industry and enterprise of everybody.
Soon the roads and highways of Iowa were dotted with white-topped
wagons of immigrants journeying to Kansas, and long lines of
caravans, with families and with small knots of men, stretched their
way across the country nearest to the Territory.

Some of these passed through Dixon, and the boys gazed with wonder at
the queer inscriptions that were painted on the canvas covers of the
wagons; they longed to go with the immigrants, and taste the sweets of
a land which was represented to be full of wild flowers, game in great
abundance, and fine streams, and well-wooded hills not far away from
the water. They had heard their elders talk of the beauties of Kansas,
and of the great outrage that was to be committed on that fair land by
carrying slavery into it; and although they did not know much about
the politics of the case, they had a vague notion that they would like
to have a hand in the exciting business that was going on in Kansas.

Both parties to this contest thought they were right. Men who had been
brought up in the slave States believed that slavery was a good
thing--good for the country, good for the slave-owner, and even good
for the slave. They could not understand how anybody should think
differently from them. But, on the other hand, those who had never
owned slaves, and who had been born and brought up in the free States,
could not be brought to look upon slavery as anything but a very
wicked thing. For their part, they were willing (at least, some of
them were) to fight rather than consent that the right of one man to
own another man should be recognized in the Territories of Kansas and
Nebraska. Some of these started at once for the debatable land; others
helped their neighbors to go, and ma