united with his fellow adventurers in a meeting or meetings intended to establish a sort of Missouri pre-emption upon all this region. Among the resolves passed at one of these meetings were the following:

"That we will afford protection to no Abolitionist as a settler of this

Territory.'

"That we recognize the institution of slavery as already existing in this Territory, and advise slave-holders to introduce their property as early as possible.'"

Immediately after the Territory had been formed, therefore, began in earnest the great conflict as to whether Kansas should or should not become a Free State upon its organization and admission into the Union. Slavery, in fact, although clearly prohibited by law, had already been established in the Territory, in a small way at least, for on the 14th of May, 1854, Richard Mendenhall wrote from the Friends' Shawnee Mission that "there is in this Territory an extensive missionary establishment, under the direction and control of the Methodist Church South, at which slaves have long been kept.. Thomas Johnson,* the Superintend

*Thomas Johnson established the first mission school among the Shawnee Indians in 1829, in the present town of Shawnee, Johnson County, Kan. The school was under the direction of the Missouri Methodist Conference. In 1839 the school was moved to a location about five miles southwest of Westport, Mo., and within two or three miles of the Missouri State Line, where a grant of

ent of this slave-holding mission, by adroit management, was elected last fall a delegate to Congress from this Territory, or rather, was sent to Washington to attend to matters pertaining to the various tribes of Indians here, preparatory to settling their lands and organizing a Territorial Government. He has been at Washington during the present session of Congress, where he has been using all his influence to secure the passage of Douglas' Nebraska bill.

And he would plant slavery here; yes, has introduced it here, in violation of the laws of the land."

Although President Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska bill on the 30th of May, no Territorial appointments, looking to the inauguration of a local government under the provisions of the organic law, were made until a month later, when on the 29th of June Andrew H. Reeder, of Easton, Pa., was appointed Governor of Kansas Territory by the President. This appointment was confirmed by the United States Senate on the following day, and Mr. Reeder qualified by taking the oath of office before Peter V. Daniel, one of the Justices of the Supreme Court, at Washington,

2,240 acres of land was secured. Large and commodious buildings of brick were erected at this point, and a manual labor school opened, which continued in operation until 1862. It was here that the first Territorial Legislature met, after leaving Pawnee. Mr. Johnson was an ardent pro-slavery man, and was president of the first Territorial Council, as will appear further on.

on the 7th of July. He was a warm friend of the Pierce Administration, and an enthusiastic disciple of "popular sovereignty." While in Washington, before starting to the Territory, he expressed himself to a Southern gentleman as having no more scruples about buying a slave than about buying a horse, and regretted that he was not able, financially, to buy a number of slaves to take with him to Kansas. The Washington Union lost no time. in quoting this conversation, in order that there might be no uneasiness on the part of the pro-slaveryites concern ing the course Mr. Reeder would probably pursue upon reaching his post of duty. And his appointment, therefore, was satisfactory in an eminent degree to this class of settlers then fast flocking into the Territory.

Other Territorial appointments were made by the President, and confirmed by the Senate, as follows: Daniel Woodson, of Lynchburg, Va., Secretary; Andrew Jackson Isaacs, of Louisiana, United States Attorney for the District of Kansas; Madison Brown,* of Maryland, Chief Justice; Sanders W. Johnson, of Ohio, and Rush Elmore, of Alabama, Associate Justices; John Calhoun, of Illinois, Surveyor-General ; Thomas J. B. Cramer, Treasurer; and Israel B. Donalson, of Illinois, United States Marshal.

*Mr. Brown did not accept the appointment, and, on the 3d of October following the President appointed Samuel D. Lecompte, of Maryland.

All of these gentlemen were regarded as being strictly "S. G. Q.," i.e.-" Sound on the Goose Question," a favorite expression used by the proslaveryites to indicate the friendliness of any one to their cause.

Governor Reeder did not arrive in Kansas until the 7th of October. He was an entire stranger, in a strange land, among a strange people, knowing but little of the soil, climate, or the settlers, his personal acquaintance with the latter embracing probably not more than a score. The other officers followed at intervals extending nearly to the close of the year.

Arriving at Leavenworth on the 7th of October, Governor Reeder was met by officers of the fort and citizens, and given a hearty welcome, a military salute from the cannon at the fort announcing his arrival. Having been entertained for several days at this point, and becoming somewhat acquainted with the people gathered here, he set to work to inaugurate his He was government. not long in learning that it was the evident intention of the Missourians and their allies to establish the institution of slavery in the Territory at all hazards, and that they regarded him as their tool, subject to their wishes. But being an honest and conscientious gentleman, although strictly in favor of slavery, he insisted upon disregarding the importunities of the pro-slavery people to call an election at once for members of the Territorial Legislature, maintaining that there was no immediate necessity for this, and be

was as to the functions and powers of that agent-not as to the nature of the temple in which they should preserve their liberties.

"That temple is the State Government. Beneath that we sit down as under our own vine and fig tree, secure in our power to maintain our rights. But the Senator asked, how is it that, whilst we are professing this general fraternity and adherence to the Union we still assert that if one of his party is elected President we are ready to dissolve the Union?

Are we not advised that the Senator and those with whom he co-operates are assailing our constitutional rights? How then can we sit quietly? If, instead of sitting here to admire the panel and the pilaster and the typical decoration of the ceiling, one, aware that the foundation was being undermined-should walk out of the chamber, would you arraign him for endeavoring to destroy the building, or would you level your charges against the sapper and miner who was at work on its foundations? That is the proposition. This is a clear and intelligent view of the Southern Senators generally (there were some exceptions) of the relations of the States

"So far as I know, the Republican party do hold that the negro and the white man, by the Declaration of Independence were secured in perfect equality. I can excuse him [Trumbull] for not understanding the creed of his party, for he has not been in it long enough to learn it, but if he will refer to the leaders he will find out that I stated it correctly." The latter replied: "My colleague will perhaps find that he is about as poor an exponent of Democracy as I am. I think he is rather unsound upon that side of the chamber, and has found himself so in the country, and if I have departed from the Democracy of former times, he seems to be following very closely after me." These sallies caused much amusement in the Senate and the galleries. The debate in the Senate for the most part was carried on in perfect order and decorum, each side asserting its convictions without being personally offensive. It was a contest between able and cultured intellects, free from

offensive bravado, with perhaps one exception. Senator Iverson in his efforts to satisfy the Senators from the free states of the utter folly of preventing the secession of the Slave States, if it should be attempted, on the 9th day of January, in the early part of the discussion said: "Now, sir, when the Southern States shall in the exercise of their sovereign will and power determine to dissolve this Union-separate from the North-and form a government for themselves, let these loud-mouthed,blood-and-thunder braggadocio Hotspurs assemble their abolition army and come down through Virginia and the Carolinas to Georgia [Iverson lived there] to force us back into the Union if they dare. They threaten us who may secede with the halter and the gallows. Sir, we would not dignify them, such as would be so fortunate as to reach us, with such a decent exit from the world. We should not show them even the respect extended to their faithful friend and ally, John Brown, but by the Eternal, we would hang them like dogs to the trees of our forests, growing ready to our hands. Sir, in such a cause and in such a war the South would plant her feet upon the firm basis of her rights and her honor, and in the language of the ancient knight, exclaim:

'Come one, come all, this rock shall fly From its firm bases as soon as I !'"

There was a similar utterance in the House, January 10th, by Mr. Hindman, from Arkansas, in language a little more choice but equally plain.

This was in reply to Mr. Hickman, who had stated that the North, with its eighteen millions of men would be able to cope with the South in case of an armed collision between the two sections. "The country will hold them (the Republicans) to it, and will gibbet them for it as effectually as if the hemp that strangled John Brown and his confederates had also strangled those his instigators. From Seward, the author of the infamous. irrepressible conflict doctrine, down. to his last made convert and disciple, the member from Pennsylvania. When that invasion is made the price of hemp will go up, for our whole crop will be needed to hang the abolition soldiery [laughter from the Democrats and the galleries], but the price of arms will go down, for we will take from our invaders arms enough to equip our whole population. [Applause from Democratic benches and the galleries.] The history of that invasion will be like that of the old Assyrian raid unto Judea; the fate of its forces will be the same as that of the hosts of Sennacherib.

'Like the leaves of the forest, when the summer is green

That host with their banners at sunset were seen;

Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,

That host on the morrow lay withered and strewn.'

"That, sir, will be the fate of the invaders of Southern soil. In the language of a prominent Republican member of this house, We will wel

come them with bloody hands to hospitable graves.'

It is due to Mr. Hindman to state that he recited the poetry quoted with dramatic effect.

Soon after the House was organized the Speaker announced the standing committees, which gave general satisfaction, and the first session of the thirty-sixth Congress entered upon the ordinary business of legislation. There was nothing in the laws passed or in the acts done that had special reference to the slavery question. Speeches were made defending the attitude of the North and the South on the slavery issues then most prominent, showing no back-down on either side. They were preliminary skirmishes to the Presidential election in 1860, as the sessions of Congress just before a Presidential election generally are.

The first session of the thirty-sixth Congress developed the irrepressible conflict between the system of free and slave labor, but did not make it. It inhered in the nature of the two systems in respect to the bearings of each on the progress and civilization of the country, under a republican form of government. The difficulty heretofore, including the framing of the Constitution of the United States had been bridged over by compromises, but it had now reached a stage beyond the power of emollient remedies to cure it. A large majority of the slave-holding States insisted firmly as a sena qua non of their remaining in the Union, subject to the

government under the Constitution, that slavery should be protected in the Territories the same as in the States, and that the Federal Government had no more right to prohibit it there than in the States, and that to be deprived of that right by the Federal Government released them from all constitutional obligations to remain in the Union. A majority of the free States asserted as firmly that it was the right and duty of the Government to prohibit slavery in the Territories, but conceded it had no power to interfere with it in the States; but that the States where it existed would in time see that it was an evil -that "righteousness exalted a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people," and would therefore provide. themselves for its general abolition; that this was the sentiment of the fathers, hence they were careful to omit in the draft of the Constitution the words slave or slavery. The antiLecompton Democrats, following the lead of Senator Douglas, occupied. middle grounds, that the Government had no right to interfere with slavery. in the Territories, but that the people thereof had the right to prohibit or sanction it there.

This "squatter sovereignty" was well defined by Mr. Lincoln in a speech at Springfield, Ill.: "That if any one man chooses to enslave another no third man shall be allowed to object." This was the old effort to compromise to reconcile irrepressible forces, and it failed, for the disease had reached that crisis that required