The reader has doubtless already noted in his mind
the curious historical coincidence which so soon followed
the foregoing speculative affirmation. On the
day before Lincoln’s first inauguration as President
of the United States, the “Autocrat of all the
Russias,” Alexander II., by imperial decree emancipated
his serfs; while six weeks after the inauguration,
the “American masters,” headed by Jefferson
Davis, began the greatest war of modern times, to
perpetuate and spread the institution of slavery.
[Relocated Footnote (1): Their resolutions were
radical for that day, but not so extreme as was generally
feared. On the slavery question they declared
their purpose:
To restore Kansas and Nebraska to the position of
free territories; that as the Constitution of the
United States vests in the States and not in Congress
the power to legislate for the rendition of fugitives
from labor, to repeal and entirely abrogate the fugitive
slave law; to restrict slavery to those States in
which it exists; to prohibit the admission of any
more slave States; to abolish slavery in the District
of Columbia; to exclude slavery from all territories
over which the general Government has exclusive jurisdiction,
and finally to resist the acquirement of any more
territories unless slavery shall have been therein
forever prohibited.]
[Relocated Footnote (2): “In the meantime
our friends, with a view of detaining our expected
bolters, had been turning from me to Trumbull till
he had risen to 35 and I had been reduced to 15.
These would never desert me except by my direction;
but I became satisfied that if we could prevent Matteson’s
election one or two ballots more, we could not possibly
do so a single ballot after my friends should begin
to return to me from Trumbull. So I determined
to strike at once; and accordingly advised my remaining
friends to go for him, which they did, and elected
him on that, the tenth ballot. Such is the way
the thing was done. I think you would have done
the same under the circumstances, though Judge Davis,
who came down this morning, declares he never would
have consented to the 47 [opposition] men being controlled
by the five. I regret my defeat moderately, but
am not nervous about it.”—Lincoln
to Washburne, February 9, 1855. MS.]
THE BORDER RUFFIANS
[Sidenote: May 30, 1854.]
The passage of the Nebraska bill and the hurried extinction
of the Indian title opened nearly fifteen million
acres of public lands to settlement and purchase.
The whole of this vast area was yet practically tenantless.
In all of Kansas there were only three military posts,
eight or ten missions or schools attached to Indian
reservations, and some scores of roving hunters and
traders or squatters in the vicinity of a few well-known
camping stations on the two principal emigrant and
trading routes, one leading southward to New Mexico,
the other northward towards Oregon. But such had
been the interest created by the political excitement,
and so favorable were the newspaper reports of the
location, soil, and climate of the new country, that
a few months sufficed to change Kansas from a closed
and prohibited Indian reserve to the emigrant’s
land of promise.
