Publications of the Kansas State Historical Society Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1886 Excerpt: ...he eats his bread. Every device has been resorted to. Sometimes a man escapes the penalty by withholding the earnings of his employes in whole, or in part; but a favorite method has to been to capture, steal, or purchase a man, and to compel him to do the sweating both for himself and his master. This practice had been handed down from generation to generation, till the date of the opening of Kansas to settlement, and it was proposed to introduce it on Kansas soil. Hence the conflict. Many people had come to look upon this business not only as avoiding the penalty for eating the prohibited fruit, but as a great wrong to such as were compelled to suffer the double infliction. Some thought it was the "sum of all villainies," and others "trembled when they remembered that God was just." Many years of agitation had preceded the settlement of Kansas, both among the people and in Congress. Various compromises and provisos had been agreed to, but all such were as ropes of sand before the demands of the slave power. One of these barriers to the extension of slavery went down in the enactment of the KansasNebraska bill. The opponents to the extension of slavery were beaten--hopelessly beaten--in Congress; the agitators of the North and East were powerless, and could anything be done to stay the progress of this institution? A writer in the Charleston (S. C.) Mercury states the case as follows: "First, by consent of parties the present contest in Kansas is made the turningpoint in the destinies of Slavery and Abolitionism. If the South triumphs, Abolitionism will be defeated and shorn of its power for all time. If she is defeated, Abolitionism will grow more insolent and aggressive, until the utter ruin of the South is consummated. Second, if...