258 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



contained false aspersions upon the great majority of 

 the actual inhabitants of Kansas, whom it stigma 

 tized as lawless and seditious people. It also con 

 tained a fling at the Hartford Convention, although 

 some of the signers of the memorial were old enough 

 to remember that in the days of the Hartford Con 

 vention, Mr. Buchanan was himself a federalist. 

 How the right of the South to carry slavery into the 

 territories could ever have been doubted, the letter 

 declared " a mystery " ! Both the acts of this mag 

 istrate in respect to Kansas, and the manner in which 

 he defended them, moved the indignation of Pro 

 fessor Silliman. And who, at this distance of time 

 can read the history of the efforts made to force slav 

 ery upon an unwilling people, without mingled in 

 dignation and shame, that such a chapter shoulc 

 deface our national annals ? 



The annexed extracts are from the Diary. 



Buchanan. In July, a brief but pointed and respectfu 

 remonstrance was signed by forty-three gentlemen of New 

 Haven, and a few from other parts of Connecticut, anc 

 forwarded to President Buchanan, the object being to pro 

 test against the employment of troops of the United States 

 in order to enforce against the people of Kansas, the crue 

 and wicked code of laws inflicted upon them by an inva 

 sion from Missouri, creating a false and unauthorized legis 

 lature. After some weeks the President replied in a smooth 

 plausible letter, written as a text for his party, and as an 

 offering for the South ; but he entirely evaded the point at 

 issue, and at the same time avowed the most ultra pro-slav 

 ery doctrines. Several weeks more elapsed ; meetings were 

 held by many of the signers, and several replies to the Pres 

 ident were written, one by Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon, an 

 other by Alex. C. Twining, Esq., (the author of the protest,] 



