The ill-starred excitement over Kansas arose out of political circumstances, from which the Southern States, which subsequently seceded, were free. "The controversy in its early stages was pressed upon the South." Northern leaders, contending with each other, disturbed the Southern repose more than the "Old Guard" of sincere and impotent Abolitionists ; and the fighting factions springing out of the dismemberment of old parties brought on the bedlam in national policies from which the South was directed to see finally no escape, except by the way of a Southern Confederacy.
If the Kansas bill, including the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, was a fire-brand as alleged that brand was not cast by a Southern, but by a Northern statesman, and it is no compliment to Northern leaders to explain that they were subjects of magnetic Southern influence. If the attempts of Southern citizens in the border States to occupy land in a near territory and to cultivate it by uniting their own labor with that of their bondsmen was an injury to the Free State neighbor who had no negroes, it was just such an injury as could be peacefully removed by the majority vote when the territory became a State. These Southern settlers were not border ruffians and should not have been stigmatized as such. If the fugitive slave law was an outrage, the makers of the Constitution, Northern as well as Southern patriots of the Revolution, are responsible for creating the obligation of Congress to pass it, as well as the duty of the States not to nullify it. Admitting slavery was a sin, the South caught it by contagion, and reproaches came with evil grace from those who imported the virus that tainted the blood of a nation. In the very midst of this heated controversy the Dred Scott case was brought to final decision by the Supreme court of the United States, March 7, 1857, in which it was determined by the judiciary department of the government that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in any territory belonging
