606,) repeats this gross violation of the national Constitution, as follows:
"No person who is conscientiously opposed to holding slaves, or who does not admit the right to hold slaves in this Territory, shall sit as a juror on the trial of any prosecution for any violation of any of the sections of this act."
Here, sir, in these instances which I have quoted, stand the Constitution of the United States on the one side, and the Kansas code on the other, in direct and open conflict—the one declaring that the freedom of speech shall not be abridged, that the freedom of the press shall be protected, that juries, above all things else, shall be entirely impartial; the other trampling all these safeguards under foot. And because a majority of the settlers there, driven from the polls by armed mobs, legislated over by a mob in whose election they had no agency, choose to stand by and maintain their rights under the Constitution, you have seen how anarchy and violence, how outrage and persecution have been running riot in that Territory; far exceeding in their tyranny and oppression the wrongs for which our revolutionary forefathers rose against the masters who oppressed them and yet, though the protection they have had from the General Government has been only the same kind of protection which the wolf gives to the lamb, they have, while repudiating the territorial sheriffs, bowed in submission to writs in the hands of the United States marshal, or when the soldiers of the United States, yielding to orders which they do not deem it dishonorable for them to despise, assist in their execution. Such forbearance—such manifestations of their allegiance to the national authority—become the more wonderful when it is apparent as the noonday sun that every attempt has been made to harass them into resistance to the authority of the United States, so as to furnish a pretext, doubtless, for their indiscriminate imprisonment, expulsion, or massacre.
Fourth. The Constitution also prohibits cruel and unusual punishments. I shall show, before I close, that this so-called Kansas Legislature has prescribed most cruel and unusual punishments, unwarranted by the character of the offenses punished, and totally disproportioned to their criminality.
Fifth. The Constitution declares (article 1, section 9) that "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it." But the Kansas code, in its chapter of habeas corpus (article 3, section 8, page 345,) enacts as follows:
"No negro or mulatto, held as a slave within this Territory, or lawfully arrested as a fugitive from service from another State or Territory, shall be discharged, nor shall his right of freedom be had under the provisions of this act."
This provision, suspending the writ of habeas corpus in the above cases is not only a violation of the Constitution, but also of organic law; for that provided, in section 28, for appeals to the Supreme Court of the United States on writs of habeas corpus in cases involving the right of freedom, the issuing of which this territorial law expressly prohibits. The language of the Nebraska-Kansas act is as follows:
"Except also that a writ of error or appeal shall also be allowed to the Supreme Court of the United States, from the decision of the said supreme court created by this act, or of any judge thereof, or of the district courts created by this act, or of any judge thereof, upon any writ of habeas corpus, involving the question of personal freedom."
But the Kansas Legislature coolly set aside the law of the United States, by which alone their territorial organization was brought into existence, and effectually prohibited any appeal to the Supreme Court "upon any writ of habeas corpus, involving the question of personal freedom," by declaring that the writ shall not be used in the Territory for any such purpose!
Having now referred to a few of the many acts embraced in this code, which conflict with the Constitution or the organic law, I proceed to the examination of other provisions, some of which stamp it as a code of barbarity, as well as of tyranny—of inhumanity as well as of oppression. And first to "the imprisonment at hard labor," which is made the punishment for "offenses against the slave property," in the sections which I have already quoted. The general understanding of the people at large has been that, as there was no State prison yet erected in Kansas, this imprisonment would be in some Missouri prisons near the frontier. But, sir, such is not the case. The authors of these disgraceful and outrageous enactments, with a refinement of cruelty, provided that the "hard labor" should be in another way and that way will be found in chapter 22, entitled "an act providing a system of confinement and hard labor," section 2 of which (page 147) reads as follows:
"Every person who may be sentenced by any court of competent jurisdiction, under any law in force within this Territory, to punishment by confinement and hard labor, shall be deemed a convict, and shall immediately, under the charge of the keeper of such jail or public prison, or under the charge of such person as the keeper of such jail or public prison may select, be put to hard labor, as in the first section of this act specified, [to wit, "on the streets, roads, public buildings, or other public works of the Territory"—Sec. 7. page 146:] and such keeper or other person having charge of such convict, shall cause such convict, while engaged at such labor, to be securely confined by a chain six feet in length, of not less than four-sixteenths nor more than three-eighths of an inch links, with a round ball of iron, of not less than four nor more than six inches in diameter, attached, which chain shall be securely fastened to the ankle of such convict with a strong lock and key; and such keeper or other person having charge of such convict may, if necessary, confine such convict while so engaged at hard labor, by other chains, or other means, in his discretion, so as to keep such convict secure and prevent his escape; and when there shall be two of
