CHARLES SUMNER,
OF MASSACHUSETTS.' (BORN 1811, DIED 1874.)
ON THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS;
SENATE, MAY 19-20, 1856.
MR. PRESIDENT:
You are now called to redress a great transgression. Seldom in the
history of nations has such a question been presented. Tariffs, Army
bills, Navy bills, Land bills, are important, and justly occupy your
care; but these all belong to the course of ordinary legislation. As
means and instruments only, they are necessarily subordinate to the
conservation of government itself. Grant them or deny them, in greater
or less degree, and you will inflict no shock. The machinery of
government will continue to move. The State will not cease to exist. Far
otherwise is it with the eminent question now before you, involving, as
it does, Liberty in a broad territory, and also involving the peace of
the whole country, with our good name in history forever more.
Take down your map, sir, and you will find that the Territory of Kansas,
more than any other region, occupies the middle spot of North America,
equally distant from the Atlantic on the east, and the Pacific on the
west; from the frozen waters of Hudson's Bay on the north, and the tepid
Gulf Stream on the south, constituting the precise territorial centre of
the whole vast continent.
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