James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown

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[75]

Chapter 1: the Lord's first call.

The 25th day of May, 1854, was a day of great sorrow, and of the wildest exultation at Washington. An infamous statute had been still more infamously repealed. Thirty-four years before this the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act,--the representatives of the nation, in Congress assembled, for the first time in our history, and in defiance of the moral sentiment of Christendom, as well as in opposition to the noblest instincts of human nature, and, resting on them, the spirit of the Federal Constitution, solemnly — as they phrased it — and forever prohibited the existence of slavery “in all that territory which lies north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes;” but, by the same law, as a “compromise” with the South, established and legalized her organized and distinguishing crime in that. portion of the Union now known as Missouri. Triumphant crime is never satisfied with temporary advantages. Missouri now secured, the South coveted Kansas, the most fertile portion of the remaining territory. By the pliancy of Northern politicians, the compromise was repealed, and