KANSAS REFUSED ADMISSION.

443

Franklin Pierce and the slave power of the country, represented by the Democratic party, are criminally responsible.

Whilst these violent proceedings for the conquest of Kansas were going on in the territory, the president and his cabinet at Washington were in familiar correspondence with General Atchinson, and assuring him and his associates that the power of the general government should be employed to enforce the laws of the bogus legislature. And as Governor Reeder was an obstacle in the way of the president's plans, he removed him and appointed Wilson Shannon, of Ohio, in his place. He then directed orders to be issued to the commandant of the United States troops in that vicinity, to aid this official in subduing the free state party. In obedience to those orders the military power of the nation has been employed from time to time against unoffending citizens of the territory, and ultimately to disperse their state legislature. Finding that even Wilson Shannon was not equal to the dire emergency, the president removed him, also, and commissioned one Colonel Geary to proceed to that bloody theater, and, if possible, complete the conquest.

Meanwhile, also, notwithstanding this dark and dreadful array of crimes against Kansas, the people of the territory, hopeful, nevertheless, of ultimate protection, and with a fortitude which has no parallel in history, have by their chosen senators and representatives, been steadily but in vain knocking at the door of the capital for admission into the Union. But they found the same slave power which murdered their neighbors, demolished their dwellings, and desolated their towns, on the floors of both houses of congress, also, and there, too, with bludgeons, and firelocks, and other implements of death. And with them it brutally assaulted editorial advocates

of freedom in the public streets, slew unoffending servants at the public hotels, and struck down upon the floor of the senate one of their most distinguished advocates—the Honorable Charles Sumner.

But we are obliged to suspend our narration of these alarming usurpations of the slave power, and its shocking paroxysms of fiendish rage-of its horrid crimes against freedom and humanity-to resume our history of the Republican party.

CHAPTER XIII.

RE-FORMATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY-THE RESULT OF A HIGH PUBLIC NECESSITY-THE PITTSBURGH NATIONAL CONVENTION-ITS DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES-ITS DEVOTION TO THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION-PERVERSION OF THE GOVERNMENT FROM ITS ORIGINAL PURPOSES-NECESSITY OF A RESTORATION-POWER AND DUTY OF CONGRESS RESPECTING THE TERRITORIES-FALLACY OF APPLYING THE DOCTRINE OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY TO TERRITORIES-SLAVERY NATIONALIZED AND FREEDOM SECTIONALIZED BY PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION CALHOUNISM IN ASCENDENCYDANGER IMMINENT-A NOMINATING CONVENTION CALLED-DELEGATES APPOINTED-NOMINATING CONVENTION ASSEMBLED-ITS PLATFORM-NOMINATION OF FREMONT AND DAYTON.

Ir was remarked at the commencement of this volume, that the Republican party in the United States originated in a high public necessity, which manifested itself during the administrations of Washington and the elder Adams; that it kept its organization, faith, and name until 1833, when it was dissolved; that after a lapse of twenty-three years it was re-formed again, for the same principal objects for the defense of freedom of the person, of speech, and of the press, and for resistance to usurpations resulting from the substitution, by the political party temporarily administering the government, of the Calhoun policy, so called, for that of the author of our Declaration of Independence, and for insisting upon a return to, and resumption of, the policy from which both the executive and legislative departments have unwisely departed. It has been the object of these chapters to demonstrate that the Calhoun policy was prompted by a local despotism, existing in the country inside the republic, as the embod

iment of the slave power, and to indicate when, where, and how that despotism arose, from time to time, and by consecutive steps, until it finally attained complete ascendency in the government. It will now be our more pleasing duty to chronicle a general uprising of the people of the non-slaveholding states on that account, and the reformation of the Republican party, for the purpose of unseating that power from its throne at Washington.

On the 22d of February, 1856, a large convention of delegates from all the non-slaveholding and some of the slaveholding states was held in the city of Pittsburgh, in the state of Pennsylvania, to consider, in view of the imminency of the public danger, what means should be adopted to restore the government to its true republican condition; and after mature deliberation, it issued the following address:*

TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES: Having met in convention at the city of Pittsburgh, in the state of Pennsylvania, this 22d day of February, 1856, as the representatives of the people in various sections of the Union, to consult upon the political evils by which the country is menaced, and the political action by which those evils may be averted, we address to you this declaration of our principles, and of the purposes which we seek to promote.

We declare, in the first place, our fixed and unalterable devotion to the constitution of the United States, to the ends for which it was established, and to the means which it provided for their attainment. We accept the solemn protestation of the people of the United States, that they ordained it "in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, pro

*This lucid document was written by Lieutenant Governor Ray. mond, of New York.

We iecare mr jum se v ner #

quirements of de sarma ni à al sex makitač in parstance thered Timenti pričami Servne de the wise and patrone nen by viem † vs humoå und a Svely sense of me bessings I has contred spor ace country, wi men manand trengteat the worid la every crisis of üffenity and of langer, we set mode its spirit, and pereinam the supremacy of its authority.

In the next place, we declare our ardent and waxð sken attachment to this Union of the American states, which the constitution created and has thus far preserved. Ho revere it as the purchase of the blood of our Rietather as the condition of our national renown, and as the apar dian and guarantee of that liberty which the cont was designed to secure. We will defond and protect it against all its enemies. We will recognise no geograph ical divisions, no local interests, no narrow of motional prejudices, in our endeavors to preserve the Union of these states against foreign aggression and domestic attils