allowed;
but as you see by the Kansas slave code, which, as you know, is the
Missouri slave code, merely ferried across the river, it is a felony
to even express an opinion hostile to that foul blot in the land of
Washington and the Declaration of Independence. [Sensation.]

In Kentucky--my State--in 1849, on a test vote, the mighty influence
of Henry Clay and many other good then there could not get a symptom of
expression in favor of gradual emancipation on a plain issue of marching
toward the light of civilization with Ohio and Illinois; but the State of
Boone and Hardin and Henry Clay, with a nigger under each arm, took the
black trail toward the deadly swamps of barbarism. Is there--can there
be--any doubt about this thing? And is there any doubt that we must all
lay aside our prejudices and march, shoulder to shoulder, in the great
army of Freedom? [Applause.]

Every Fourth of July our young orators all proclaim this to be "the land
of the free and the home of the brave!" Well, now, when you orators get
that off next year, and, may be, this very year, how would you like some
old grizzled farmer to get up in the grove and deny it? [Laughter.] How
would you like that? But suppose Kansas comes in as a slave State, and
all the "border ruffians" have barbecues about it, and free-State men come
trailing back to the dishonored North, like whipped dogs with their tails
between their legs, it is--ain't it?--evident that this is no more the
"land of the free"; and if we let it go so, we won't dare to say "home of
the brave" out loud. [Sensation and confusion.]

Can any man doubt that, even in spite of the people's will, slavery will
triumph through violence, unless that will be made manifest and enforced?
Even Governor Reeder claimed at the outset that the contest in Kansas was
to be fair, but he got his eyes open at last; and I believe that, as a
result of this moral and physical violence, Kansas will soon apply for
admission as a slave State. And yet we can't mistake that the people
don't want it so, and that it is a land which is free both by natural
and political law. No law, is free law! Such is the understanding of all
Christendom. In the Somerset case, decided nearly a century ago, the great
Lord Mansfield held that slavery was of such a nature that it must take
its rise in positive (as distinguished from natural) law; and that in no
country or age could it be traced back to any other source. Will some
one please