alternative had to be selected, it would have been an act of charity and mercy to the slaveholders of Missouri, to warn them in time of the necessity of abandoning their homes, or manumitting or selling their slaves—to give them ample time to determine between the sacrifice of fifty millions of slave property, or seventy millions of landed estate. Direct legislation would have been preferable to indirect legislation, leading to the same result, and the enforcement of the restriction in the settlement of Kansas was virtually the abolition of slavery in Missouri. But Congress acted more wisely, as we think, and with greater fidelity to the Constitution and the Union.

The history of the Kansas-Nebraska bill is known to the country. It abolished the geographical line of 36 deg. 30 min., by which the limits of slavery were restricted, and substituted a constitutional and just principle, which left to the settlers of the territories to adopt such domestic institutions as suited themselves. If ever there was a principle calculated to commend itself to all reasonable men, and reconcile all conflicting interests, this would seem to have been the one. It was the principle of popular sovereignty—the basis upon which our independence had been achieved—and it was therefore supposed to be justly dear to all Americans, of every latitude and every creed. But fanaticism was not satisfied. The abolitionists and their allies moved heaven and earth to accomplish its defeat, and although unsuccessful, they did not therefore despair. Out-voted in Congress, receiving no countenance from the Executive, they retired to another theatre of action, and, strange to say, they prostituted an ancient and respectable Commonwealth—one of the Old Thirteen—to commence, in her sovereign capacity as a State, with the means and imposing attitude incident to such a position, a crusade against slavery, novel in its character, more alarming in its features, and likely to be more fatal in its consequences, than all the fanatical movements hitherto attempted, since the appearance of abolitionism as a political party in 1835. They originated and matured a scheme, never before heard of or thought of in this country, the object and effect of which was to evade the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and in lieu of non-intervention by Congress, to substitute active intervention by the States. An act of incorporation was passed; a company with a capital of five millions was chartered; and this company was authorized to enlist an army of mercenary fanatics, and transport them to Kansas. Recruiting officers were stationed in places most likely to furnish the proper material; premiums were offered for recruits; the public mind was stimulated by glowing and false descriptions of the country proposed to be occupied, and a Hessian band of mercenaries was thus prepared and forwarded, to commence and carry on a war of extermination against slavery.

To call these people emigrants, is a sheer perversion of language. They are not sent to cultivate the soil, to better their social condition, to add to their individual comforts, or the aggregate wealth of the nation. They do not move from choice or taste, or from any motive affecting, or supposed to affect, themselves or their families. They have none of the marks of the old pioneers, who cut down the forests of Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana, or levelled the cane brakes of Tennessee and Mississippi, or broke up the plains of Illinois and Missouri. They are mostly ignorant of agriculture; picked up in cities or villages, they of course have no experience as farmers, and if left to their unaided resources—if not clothed and fed by the same power which has effected their transportation—they would starve or freeze. They are hirelings—an army of hirelings—recruited and shipped indirectly by a sovereign state of this Union, to make war upon an institution now existing in the Territory to which they are transplanted, and thence to inflict a fatal blow upon the resources, the prosperity and the peace of a neighboring State. They are military colonies, planted by a State government, to subdue a territory opened to settlement by Congress, and take exclusive possession thereof. In addition to that esprit du corps, which of necessity pervades such an organization, they have in common a reckless and desperate fanaticism, which teaches them that slavery is a sin, and that they are doing God's service in hastening its destruction. They have been picked and culled from the ignorant masses, which Old England and New England negro philanthropy has stirred up and aroused to madness on this topic, and have been selected with reference to their views on this topic alone. They are men with a single idea; and to carry out this, they have been instructed and taught to disregard the laws of God and man; to consider bloodshed and arson, insurrection, destruction of property, or servile war, as the merest trifles, compared with the glory and honor of seducing a single slave from his master, or harboring and protecting the thief who has carried him off!

That such a population would be fatal to the peace and security of the neighboring State of Missouri, and immediate destruction of such owners of slaves as had already moved to the Territory of Kansas, is too clear to admit of argument. A horde of our western savages, with avowed purposes of destruction to the white race, would be less formidable neighbors.

The colonization of Kansas with a population of this character was a circumstance which aroused attention, and excited alarm among our citizens here, and those who had already emigrated to Kansas. Could any other result have been expected? Did sensible men at the North—did the abolitionists themselves, expect any other?

Missouri contained, as we have seen, one hundred thousand slaves, and their value amounted to fifty millions of dollars. Had these fanatics who pronounced slavery an individual sin, and a national curse, ever yet pointed out any decently plausible scheme by which it could be removed? The entire revenue of our State, for ordinary fiscal purposes, scarcely reaches five hundred thousand dollars, and the abolition of slavery here would involve the destruction of productive capital estimated at fifty millions of dollars, or a taxation upon the people of five millions of dollars annually, which is the legalized interest upon this amount of capital, besides the additional tax which would be necessary to raise a sinking fund to pay off the debt created. The Constitution of Missouri prohibits the Legislature from passing laws emancipating slaves, without a full compensation to their owners; and it is therefore apparent, that ten-fold the entire revenue of the State would be barely sufficient to pay the interest upon a sum equivalent to the actual moneyed value of the slaves, without providing any means to extinguish the principal which such a debt would create. We omit altogether, in this calculation, the impracticability and impolicy and cruelty to both races, of liberating the slaves here, with no provision for their removal, and the additional debt which such removal would create, equal, in all probability, to that occasioned by their mere emancipation. It would seem then, that the merest glance at the statistical tables of our State, showing its population and revenue, must have satisfied the most sanguine abolitionist of the futility of his schemes. If the investigation was pursued further, and our estimate was made to embrace the three millions and a half of slaves now in the southern and south-western States, and the billions to which our computation must ascend in order to ascertain their value in money, this anti-slavery crusade, which presents itself in a form of open aggression against the white