Sir, all this was done in the name of Popular Sovereignty. And this is the close of the tragedy. Popular Sovereignty, which, when truly understood, is a fountain of just power, has ended in Popular Slavery,--not in the subjection of the unhappy African race merely, but of this proud Caucasian blood which you boast. The profession with which you began, of _All by the People_, is lost in the wretched reality of _Nothing for the People_. Popular Sovereignty, in whose deceitful name plighted faith was broken and an ancient Landmark of Freedom overturned, now lifts itself before us like Sin in the terrible picture of Milton, which
“seemed woman to the waist, and fair, But ended foul in many a scaly fold Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed With mortal sting: about her middle round A cry of hell-hounds never ceasing barked With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep, If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb, And kennel there, yet there still barked and howled Within, unseen.”
The image is complete at all points; and with this exposure I take my leave of the Crime against Kansas.
Emerging from all the blackness of this Crime, where we seem to have been lost, as in a savage wood, and turning our backs upon it, as upon desolation and death, from which, while others have suffered, we have escaped, I come now to THE APOLOGIES which the Crime has found. Sir, well may you start at the suggestion, that such a series of wrongs, so clearly proved by various testimony, so openly confessed by the wrong-doers, and so widely recognized throughout the country, should find apologists. But partisan spirit, now, as in other days, hesitates at nothing. Great crimes of history have never been without apologies. The massacre of St. Bartholomew, which you now instinctively condemn, was at the time applauded in high quarters, and even commemorated by a Papal medal, which may still be procured at Rome,--as the Crime against Kansas, which is hardly less conspicuous in dreadful eminence, has been shielded on this floor by extenuating words, and even by a Presidential message, which, like the Papal medal, can never be forgotten in considering the perversity of men.