est border postmaster, should decline to be its
tool; all these things and more were needed, and they were found in
the slave power of our Republic. There, sir, stands the criminal,
all unmasked before you--heartless, grasping, and tyrannical--with an
audacity beyond that of Verres, a subtlety beyond that of Machiavel, a
meanness beyond that of Bacon, and an ability beyond that of Hastings.
Justice to Kansas can be secured only by the prostration of this
influence; for this the power behind--greater than any President--which
succors and sustains the crime. Nay, the proceedings I now arraign
derive their fearful consequences only from this connection.

In now opening this great matter, I am not insensible to the austere
demands of the occasion; but the dependence of the crime against Kansas
upon the slave power is so peculiar and important, that I trust to be
pardoned while I impress it with an illustration, which to some may
seem trivial. It is related in Northern mythology that the god of Force,
visiting an enchanted region, was challenged by his royal entertainer to
what seemed an humble feat of strength--merely, sir, to lift a cat from
the ground. The god smiled at the challenge, and, calmly placing his
hand under the belly of the animal, with superhuman strength strove,
while the back of the feline monster arched far up-ward, even beyond
reach, and one paw actually forsook the earth, until at last the
discomfited divinity desisted; but he was little surprised at his
defeat when he learned that this creature, which seemed to be a cat, and
nothing more, was not merely a cat, but that it belonged to and was a
part of the great Terrestrial Serpent, which, in its innumerable folds,
encircled the whole globe. Even so the creature, whose paws are now
fastened upon Kansas, whatever it may seem to be, constitutes in reality
a part of the slave power, which, in its loathsome folds, is now
coiled about the whole land. Thus do I expose the extent of the present
contest, where we encounter not merely local resistance, but also the
unconquered sustaining arm behind. But out of the vastness of the crime
attempted, with all its woe and shame, I derive a well-founded assurance
of a commensurate vastness of effort against it by the aroused masses of
the country, determined not only to vindicate Right against Wrong,
but to redeem the Republic from the thraldom of that Oligarchy which
prompts, directs, and concentrates the distant wrong