8 
KANSAS. 
was touched; all the deep sympathies of her nature were stirred; 
and, while hourly she prayed that no new field of suffering and 
woe should he opened for her down-trodden and oppressed sister, 
she acted too, and, through the melting snows of early spring, 
each woman in many towns was called upon for her signature, by 
one of her own sex. Could she see this great country — only a 
little less in extent than Italy, France, and Spain, together — 
thrown open to the foul inroads of slavery, so that no woman with 
black blood in her veins could be a welcome inmate of her father’s 
house, feel safe in the protection of a husband’s love, or, in caress¬ 
ing the children God gave her, call them her own, and make no 
effort in their behalf ? No. It was not thus, thank God! Men 
felt, and women felt. Notwithstanding all that was done, and all 
that was felt, the bill, odious in the sight of God and hateful to 
man, was passed. Mr. Sumner made his final protest, for himself 
and the New England clergy, against slavery in Kansas and 
Nebraska, upon the night of the final passage of the Nebraska 
and Kansas Bill, May 25, 1854. After a most stormy and con¬ 
tentious debate, on Sunday morning the bill was passed. The 
slave power was again triumphant. A consolidated despotism 
was striving to crush out every aspiration for truth, for goodness, 
for freedom, from every free-born soul. Southern men argued 
that by this new compromise the agitation in our country would 
cease, and peace be restored. How has it been ? Civil feud, 
strife, and continual agitation, have been the result in all commu¬ 
nities. The “ crime against Kansas ” consummated in Congress, 
the infraction of solemn obligations, has been acted over in frauds 
upon the ballot-box in Kansas, and has been the occasion of rob¬ 
beries, murders, civil war, in her fair borders. 
When, at that dark midnight hour, the bill was passed, the 
final blow was struck, seemingly the knell for the burial of Lib¬ 
erty was sounded. But there was light also in the hour, in the 
deed. There could no more be sown in common ground the seeds 
of harmony and good-will. The hosts of freedom must marshal 
their forces, and draw their lines against the lines of slavery, 
and each man fight courageously on the accepted issue. It was 
the death of all compromises too. 
