They repealed the Missouri Compromise, which had hitherto stood like
the Chinese wall, between our Northwestern Territories and the
irruptions of slaveholding barbarians.
Then came the struggle between freedom and slavery in the new
territory; the battle for Kansas and Nebraska, fought with fire and
sword and blood, where a race of men, of whom John Brown was the
immortal type, acted over again the courage, the perseverance, and the
military-religious ardor of the old Covenanters of Scotland, and like
them redeemed the ark of Liberty at the price of their own blood, and
blood dearer than their own.
The time of the Presidential canvass which elected Mr. Lincoln was the
crisis of this great battle. The conflict had become narrowed down to
the one point of the extension of slave territory. If the slaveholders
could get States enough, they could control and rule; if they were
outnumbered by free States, their institutions, by the very law of
their nature, would die of suffocation. Therefore Fugitive Slave Law,
District of Columbia, Inter-State Slave-trade, and what not, were all
thrown out of sight for a grand rally on this vital point. A President
was elected pledged to opposition to this one thing alone,--a man
known to be in favor of the Fugitive Slave Law and other so-called
compromises of the Constitution, but honest and faithful in his
determination on this one subject.
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