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LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 235

than that under the administration of James Buchanan. One sowed, the other
reaped. One was the wind, the other was the whirlwind. Intoxicated by their
success in repealing the Missouri compromise — in divesting the native-born
colored man of American citizenship — in harnessing both the Whig and
Democratic parties to the car of slavery, and in holding continued possession
of the national government, the propagandists of slavery threw off all disguises,
abandoned all semblance of moderation, and very naturally and
inevitably proceeded under Mr. Buchanan, to avail themselves of all the
advantages of their victories. Having legislated out of existence the great
national wall, erected in the better days of the republic, against the spread of
slavery, and against the increase of its power — having blotted out all distinction,
as they thought, between freedom and slavery in the law, theretofore,
governing the Territories of the United States, and having left the whole
question of the legalization or prohibition of slavery to be decided by the
people of a Territory, the next thing in order was to fill up the Territory of
Kansas the one likely to be first organized — with a people friendly to slavery,
and to keep out all such as were opposed to making that Territory a slave
State. Here was an open imitation to a fierce and bitter strife; and the history
of the times shows how promptly that invitation was accepted by both
classes to which it was given, and the scenes of lawless violence and blood
that followed.

All advantages were at first on the side of those who were for making
Kansas a slave State. The moral force of the repeal of the Missouri compromise
was with them: the strength of the triumphant Democratic party was with
them; the power and patronage of the federal government were with them; the
various governors, sent out under the Territorial government, were with them;
and, above all, the proximity of the Territory to the slave State of Missouri
favored them and all their designs. Those who opposed making Kansas a slave
State, for the most part were far away from the battle-ground, residing chiefly
In New England, more than a thousand miles from the eastern border of the
Territory, and their direct way of entering it was through a country violently
hostile to them. With such odds against them, and only an idea — though a
grand one — to support them, it will ever be a wonder that they succeeded in
making Kansas a free State. It is not my purpose to write particularly of this
or of any other phase of the conflict with slavery, but simply to indicate the
nature of the struggle, and the successive steps, leading to the final result. The
important point to me, as one desiring to see the slave power crippled, slavery
limited and abolished, was the effect of this Kansas battle upon the moral
sentiment of the North: how it made abolitionists before they themselves