AN APPEAL TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. 
347 
The White House rose between him and the suffering dwellers in 
Kansas. He had been struck with official blindness, and saw not 
how, when he had been their willing agent, their pliant tool the 
southern party would cast him off as a worthless thing. He had 
gone too low; he had crouched too humbly; he could not be 
trusted. So they gave him a complimentary vote when he came 
before that Cincinnati Convention, in the words of a Massachusetts 
senator, “with the lurid light of the sacked and burning dwellings 
of Kansas flashing on his brazen brow, and with the blood of the 
people of Kansas dripping from his hands.” When our people 
attempted to right their wrongs by assembling to memorialize 
Congress, an armed body of United States troops rushed in upon 
them, and commanded their dispersion. This act, on the Fourth 
of July, 1856, makes the third act of this kind chronicled in 
history. While such things are being sanctioned in Kansas, the 
Missouri river is infested by pirates, and closed to peaceable citi¬ 
zens. The President still looks on unmoved, and permits outrages 
which long ago would have been made the pretext for a bloody 
war, had one tenth part of the wrongs been committed by a 
foreign power. 
We have fallen upon the evil times, in our country’s history, 
when it is treason to think, to speak a word against the evil of 
slavery, or in favor of free labor. In Kansas, prisons or instant 
death by barbarians are the reward ; and in the Senate, wielders 
of bludgeons are honored by the state which has sent ruffians to 
desolate Kansas. But in this reign of misrule the President and 
his advisers have failed to note the true effect of such oppression. 
The fires of liberty have been rekindled in the hearts of our 
people, and' burn in yet brighter flame under midnight skies 
illumined by their own burning dwellings. The sight of lawless, 
ruthless invaders, acting under the United States government, 
has filled them with that “ deep, dark, sullen, teeth-clenched 
silence, bespeaking their hatred of tyranny, which armed a Wil¬ 
liam Tell and Charlotte Corday.” The best, the boldest utterance 
of man’s spirit for freedom will not be withheld. The adminis¬ 
tration, with the most insane malignity, has prepared the way for 
a ~ vil w r ar, and the extermination of freemen in Kansas. With 
