De Alexander

For twelve years the party had been divided and weakened, until, at last, it had neither presidential candidate to offer nor cabinet position to expect.

To complete the list of crimes against free speech and freedom, the commander of a force of United States troops dispersed the Topeka Legislature at the point of the bayonet.

In public meetings, the people condemned it as a violation of the freedom of speech and a blow at the personal safety of public men having the courage to express their convictions.

The North received this outrage with horror as the work of the slave power.

He sketched the history of the Kansas territory; reviewed the sacrifices of its people; analysed and refuted each argument in support of the President's policy; and defended the settlers in maintaining their struggle for freedom.

But the speech of Seward, who took the floor on the 9th of April in favour of the immediate admission of Kansas as a State, seems to have impressed the country as far the ablest.

One young lady of South Carolina set the example of selling her jewelry to equip men with rifles.

Things could not long remain in this unhappy condition, and when, at last, a free-state man was killed it amounted to a declaration of hostilities.

The heart of the country is fixed on higher and nobler things.

Its principles are equal and exact justice; its speech open, decided, and frank.

The Republican organisation has laid a new, sound, and liberal platform.

It committed a grievous fault, and grievously hath it answered it.

It was moved by panics and fears to emulate the Democratic party in its practised subserviency; and it yielded in spite of your remonstrances, and of mine, and now there is neither Whig party nor Whig south of the Potomac.

What is it but the same party which has led in the commission of all those aggressions, and claims exclusively the political benefits?

In the slave-holding States it justifies all wrongs committed against you.

It stifles its voice, and suppresses your own free speech, lest it may be overheard beyond the Potomac.

The variety of his intellectual sympathies, controlled by the constancy of a high moral impulse, wholly exempted him from the rashness of a conceited zealot; and, though often brilliant and at times rhetorical, his style was quiet and…

He had wit and humour, and spoke with the refinement of a cultivated scholar.

In this action the anti-slavery members of other Northern States, led with great ability and courage by Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, refused to acquiesce, preferring to abandon the Order rather than sacrifice their principles.

You will go in by two doors, but you will all come out through one." Then everything went by acclamation.

The great coalition which was to stand so strong and to work such wonders during the next half-century doubtless had a period of feebleness in the first months of its existence; but never in its history has it had stronger or more…

This meant an opportunity for the formal union of all anti-slavery voters.

The Kansas disclosures had the effect of drawing into closer communion the various shades of anti-slavery opinion in New York.

They would disapprove prohibition, commend Marcy's admirable foreign policy, and praise the President's management of the exchequer; but they would not countenance border ruffianism, encourage slavery propagandists in Kansas, or submit to…

The territorial legislature, elected by admitted and wholesale fraud, unseated all free-state members whose election was contested, and proceeded to pass laws upholding and fortifying slavery.