The Territory was overrun with desperadoes; ruffians from adjoining States usurped the rights of actual settlers, stuffed ballot-boxes with illegal votes, and elected members of their own lawless bands to the Legislature, to enact laws by which every friend of freedom might be driven from the country.
Tompkins describes the violent actions taken against settlers in the contested territories.
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Punish the thousands of others who have committed acts of violence against free-State men, and are yet unwhipped of justice.
Men who commit acts declared by the whole civilized world to be piracy, you permit to escape, while you say you will hang the man who circulates Helper's book.
I have also endeavored to show what are the aims and objects of the Republican party; and if they cannot be tolerated--if such principles cannot be sustained by the people of any section of this country--it is the misfortune of that people.
Before you complain of the free States, arrest and punish the scoundrels who so cruelly treated the Irishman at Columbia, South Carolina, for no offence but saying that slavery was detrimental to free labor.
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