C. Edwards Lester, Life and public services of Charles Sumner: Born Jan. 6, 1811. Died March 11, 1874.

[212] there is no vileness of dishonesty, no denial of human rights, that is not plainly involved in the support of an enormity which begins by changing man, created in the image of God, into a chattel, and sweeps little children away to the auction-block. A power which Heaven never gave, can be maintained only by means which Heaven can never sanction. And this conclusion of reason is confirmed by late experience; and here I approach the special question under which the country now shakes from side to side. The protracted struggle of 1820, known as the Missouri Question, ended with the admission of Missouri as a slaveholding State, and the prohibition of Slavery in all the remaining territory West of the Mississippi and North of 36° 30′. Here was a solemn act of legislation, called at the time a compromise, a covenant, a compact, first brought forward by the Slave Oligarchy—vindicated by it in debate—finally sanctioned by its votes, also upheld at the time by a slave-holding President, James Monroe, and his cabinet—of whom a majority were slaveholders, including Mr. Calhoun himself—and made the condition of the admission of Missouri—without which that State could not have been received into the Union. Suddenly, during the last year—without any notice in the public press or the prayer of a single petition—after an acquiescence of thirty-three years, and the irreclaimable possession by the Slave Oligarchy of its special share in the provisions of this Compromise—in violation of every obligation of honor, compact and good neighborhood—and in contemptuous disregard of the out-gushing sentiments of an aroused North, this timehonored Prohibition, in itself a Landmark of Freedom, was overturned, and the vast region, now known as Kansas and Nebraska, was opened to Slavery; and this was done under the disgraceful lead of Northern politicians, and with the undisguised complicity of a Northern President, forgetful of Freedom, forgetful also of his reiterated pledges, that during his administration the repose of the country should receive no shock. And all this was perpetrated under pretences of popular rights. Freedom was betrayed by a kiss. In defiance of an uninterrupted prescription down to our day—early sustained at the South as well as the North—leaning at once on Jefferson and Washington—sanctioned by all the authoritative names of our history, and beginning with the great Ordinance by which Slavery was prohibited in the North-West— it was pretended that the people of the United States, who are the proprietors of the national domain, and who, according to the Constitution, may ‘make all needful rules and regulations’ for its government,