CHAPTER XXIY. 
AN APPEAL TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 
Two years have passed since the territory of Kansas was thrown 
open to settlement. Under the Squatter Sovereignty bill, expect¬ 
ing to be protected, settlers came from the far East and North, as 
well as from the more Southern and Western States. They had a 
right to look for such protection to the President of these United 
States in the very provisions of that bill. Plow have they been 
protected ? Let his infamous appointees in the territory — the 
vile tools of tyranny — answer to an enlightened public sentiment. 
Let freemen, imprisoned for months on the prairie, under the burn¬ 
ing sun, and amid drenching rains, for no crime but the innate 
love of freedom, tell the tale. Let the booming cannon battering 
down hotels, and printing-presses thrown into the Kansas river, 
tell afar the bloody despotism that rules our land. Let the bris¬ 
tling bayonets of the United States army tell how the free settlers 
have been outraged and plundered, while ruffian bands have been 
protected by it, under Gov. Shannon’s orders. Let the loud moan 
of lone men, murdered by these hordes of the administration, and 
the bitter WTtil of desolate homes, borne on every gale, tell to the 
world the blackness of the demon Slavery, and the unmitigated 
villany of those who have aided, abetted, and connived at all 
these atrocities — those who have brought disgrace upon our coun¬ 
try’s name, and clothed their own in darkness so dense, that no 
after acts of a lifetime can erase the stains of blood and guilt. 
While the ghost-like forms of their murdered victims hit around 
their nightly pillows, and the cry, “ 0, God ! I am murdered * ” 
comes to them on every morning breeze, and the low plaint of the 
insane widow, as she starts and listens at every footstep, saying, 
