430 The struggle in Kansas. [i 854-6 place to action. Kansas became the theatre of a perilous appeal to fact, which turned out to be an appeal to force. A Slave State lay neighbour to it on the east, and slave-owners were the first to pour across its borders and occupy it against the day of final settlement ; but, though the men out of the Free States came later, they came in hosts and companies when they did come ; they had behind them the organised assistance of societies and large funds subscribed in the Free States of the North and East ; and they came bringing arms as well as tools. The country almost held its breath as it waited to hear what news should come out of Kansas ; and it had not to wait long before it knew. Within two years the demoralising game for power there had been played and lost and won won by the settlers out of the Free States ; but not before blood had been shed and Federal troops sent in to prevent anarchy. The Missouri settlers, being first on the ground, had very promptly acted upon their initial advantage ; had organised a territorial government; and had enacted stringent penal laws against whosoever should in any way interfere with the introduction or perpetuation of slavery. But the Free-State settlers, pouring in from the North, ignored what the Missouri men had done and attempted to set up a government of their own. When they found that course forbidden by the federal authorities, they took the other, of sending majorities to the polls where a new territorial legislature was to be chosen. Partisans on both sides went armed ; there were fatal riots at the voting places ; blood was shed deliberately and by plot as well as in the heat of sudden brawls ; fearful days of embittered passion in the distracted Territory made men every- where presently talk of " bleeding Kansas " ; but out of the fire came a definite enough settlement at last. A Free-State majority established "squatter sovereignty" very effectually; and by midsummer of 1856 the House of Representatives had passed a bill, which the Senate rejected, for the admission of Kansas into the Union under a constitution which forbade slavery. Here was evidence plain enough for any man to read of the beneficent operation of Douglas' pretty theory of popular right in the organisa- tion of Territories and the formation of States. The country saw with sad forebodings what it meant; partisanship everywhere was inflamed and put in a mind to go any lengths of violence; individual passion broke through all restraints; and prudent men were sore put to it to keep their comrades in affairs to the sober ways of moderation and law. It was in May, 1856, that Preston Brooks, a young Carolinian member of the House of Representatives, strode into the Senate and assaulted Sumner where he sat, for words of personal bitterness uttered in debate, striking him to the floor insensible; and it was one of the unhappiest signs of the times that such an act of blind anger and passionate folly was condoned and even applauded, not condemned, by the constituents of the man who had done it. No wonder excitement
