of one of the fairest of our Western domains.  Congress violated the will and confidence of its constituents in voting for the bill; and while public sentiment, as shown by the elections of 1854, demanded the restoration of this compromise, Congress violated its trust by refusing simply because it had the force of numbers to hold on to it.  And murderous violence is being used now, in order to force slavery on to Kansas; for it cannot be done in any other way. [Sensation.]

The necessary result was to establish the rule of violence—­force, instead of the rule of law and reason; to perpetuate and spread slavery, and in time to make it general.  We see it at both ends of the line.  In Washington, on the very spot where the outrage was started, the fearless Sumner is beaten to insensibility, and is now slowly dying; while senators who claim to be gentlemen and Christians stood by, countenancing the act, and even applauding it afterward in their places in the Senate.  Even Douglas, our man, saw it all and was within helping distance, yet let the murderous blows fall unopposed.  Then, at the other end of the line, at the very time Sumner was being murdered, Lawrence was being destroyed for the crime of freedom.  It was the most prominent stronghold of liberty in Kansas, and must give way to the all-dominating power of slavery.  Only two days ago, Judge Trumbull found it necessary to propose a bill in the Senate to prevent a general civil war and to restore peace in Kansas.

We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.  Are we in a healthful political state?  Are not the tendencies plain?  Do not the signs of the times point plainly the way in which we are going? [Sensation.]

In the early days of the Constitution slavery was recognized, by South and North alike, as an evil, and the division of sentiment about it was not controlled by geographical lines or considerations of climate, but by moral and philanthropic views.  Petitions for the abolition of slavery were presented to the very first Congress by Virginia and Massachusetts alike.  To show the harmony which prevailed, I will state that a fugitive slave law was passed in 1793, with no dissenting voice in the Senate, and but seven dissenting votes in the House.  It was, however, a wise law, moderate, and, under the Constitution, a just one.  Twenty-five years later, a more stringent law was proposed and defeated; and thirty-five years after that, the present law, drafted by Mason of Virginia, was passed by Northern votes.  I am not, just now, complaining of this law, but I am trying to show how the current sets; for the proposed law of 1817 was far less offensive than the present one.  In 1774 the Continental Congress pledged itself, without a dissenting vote, to wholly discontinue the slave trade, and to neither purchase nor import any slave; and less than three months before the passage of the Declaration of Independence, the same Congress which adopted that declaration unanimously resolved “that no slave be imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies.” [Great applause.]