Letters of Lydia Maria Child, with a biographical introduction by John G. Whittier and an appendix by Wendell Phillips.

114 LETTERS.
tional means, they accomplished it by a most open
and palpable violation of the Constitution, and by
obtaining the votes of senators on false pretenses.1
Soon afterward a Southern slave administration
ceded to the powerful monarchy of Great Britain
several hundred thousands of square miles that must
have been made into free States, to which that same
admninistration had declared that the United States
had " an unquestionable right;" and tlhen they turned
upon the weak republic of Milexico, and, in order to
make more slave States, wrested from her twice as
many hundred thousands of square miles, to which
we had not a shadow of right.
Notwithstanding all these extra efforts, they saw
symptoms that the political power so long held with
a firml grasp was in danger of slipping from their
hands, by reason of the extension of abolition sentiments, and the greater prosperity of free States.
Emboldened by continual success in aggression, they
made use of the pretence of "' squatter sovereignty"
to break the league into which they had formerly
cajoled the servile representatives of our blinded people, by which all the territory of the United States
south of 36~ 80' was guarantied to slavery, and all
north of it to freedom. Thus Kansas became the
battle-ground of the antagonistic elements in our
government. Ruffians hired by the slave power
were sent thither temporarily to do the voting and
drive from the polls the legal voters, who were often
mnurdered in the process. Names copied from the
1 The following senators, Mr. Niles of Connecticut, Mr. Dix of
New York, and Mr. Tappan of Ohio, published statements that their
votes had been obtained by false representations; and they declared
that the case was the same with Mr. Heywood of North Carolina.