I regret, with all
this company, the absence of Mr. Whitman of Kansas, whose narrative was to
constitute the interest of this meeting. Mr. Whitman is not here; but knowing,
as we all do, why he is not, what duties kept him at home, he is more than
present. His vacant chair speaks for him. For quite other reasons, I had been
wiser to have stayed at home, unskilled as I am to address a political meeting,
but it is impossible for the most recluse to extricate himself from the
questions of the times.
There is this
peculiarity about the case of Kansas, that all the right is on one side. We
hear the screams of hunted wives and children answered by the howl of the
butchers. The testimony of the telegraphs from St. Louis and the border confirm
the worst details. The printed letters of the border ruffians avow the facts.
When pressed to look at the cause of the mischief in the Kansas laws, the
President falters and declines the discussion; but his supporters in the
Senate, Mr. Cass, Mr. Geyer, Mr. Hunter, speak out, and declare the intolerable
atrocity of the code. It is a maxim that all party spirit produces the
incapacity to receive natural impressions from facts; and our recent political
history has abundantly borne out the maxim. But these details that have come
from Kansas are so horrible, that the hostile press have but one word in reply,
namely, that it is all exaggeration, It is an Abolition lie. Do the Committee
of Investigation say that the outrages have been overstated? Does their dismal
catalogue of private tragedies show it? Do the private letters? Is it an
exaggeration, that Mr. Hopps of Somerville, Mr. Hoyt of Deerfield, Mr. Jennison
of Groton, Mr. Phillips of Berkshire, have been murdered? That Mr. Robinson of
Fitchburg has been imprisoned? Rev. Mr. Nute of Springfield seized, and up to
this time we have no tidings of his fate?
In these calamities
under which they suffer, and the worse which threaten them, the people of
Kansas ask for bread, clothes, arms and men, to save them alive, and enable
them to stand against these enemies of the human race. They have a right to be
helped, for they have helped themselves.
This aid must be
sent, and this is not to be doled out as an ordinary charity; but bestowed up
to the magnitude of the want, and, as has been elsewhere said, “on the scale of
a national action.” I think we are to give largely, lavishly, to these men. And
we must prepare to do it. We must learn to do with less, live in a smaller
tenement, sell our apple-trees, our acres, our pleasant houses. I know people
who are making haste to reduce their expenses and pay their debts, not with a
view to new accumulations, but in preparation to save and earn for the benefit
of the Kansas emigrants.
We must have aid
from individuals, — we must also have aid from the State. I know that the last
Legislature refused that aid. I know that lawyers hesitate on technical
grounds, and wonder what method of relief the Legislature will apply. But I
submit that, in a case like this, where citizens of Massachusetts, legal voters
here, have emigrated to national territory under the sanction of every law, and
are then set on by highwaymen, driven from their new homes, pillaged, and
numbers of them killed and scalped, and the whole world knows that this is no accidental
brawl, but a systematic war to the knife, and in defiance of all laws and
liberties, I submit that the Governor and Legislature should neither slumber
nor sleep till they have found out how to send effectual aid and comfort to
these poor farmers, or else should resign their seats to those who can. But
first let them hang the halls of the State House with black crape, and order
funeral service to be said there for the citizens whom they were unable to
defend.
We stick at the
technical difficulties. I think there never was a people so choked and
stultified by forms. We adore the forms of law, instead of making them vehicles
of wisdom and justice. I like the primary assembly. I own I have little esteem
for governments. I esteem them only good in the moment when they are
established. I set the private man first. He only who is able to stand alone is
qualified to be a citizen. Next to the private man, I value the primary
assembly, met to watch the government and to correct it. That is the theory of
the American State, that it exists to execute the will of the citizens, is
always responsible to them, and is always to be changed when it does not.
First, the private citizen, then the primary assembly, and the government last.
In this country for
the last few years the government has been the chief obstruction to the common
weal. Who doubts that Kansas would have been very well settled, if the United
States had let it alone? The government armed and led the ruffians against the
poor farmers. I do not know any story so gloomy as the politics of this country
for the last twenty years, centralizing ever more manifestly round one spring,
and that a vast crime, and ever more plainly, until it is notorious that all
promotion, power and policy are dictated from one source, — illustrating the
fatal effects of a false position to demoralize legislation and put the best
people always at a disadvantage; — one crime always present, always to be
varnished over, to find fine names for; and we free-statesmen, as accomplices to
the guilt, ever in the power of the grand offender.
Language has lost
its meaning in the universal cant. Representative Government is really
misrepresentative; Union is a conspiracy against the Northern States
which the Northern States are to have the privilege of paying for; the adding
of Cuba and Central America to the slave marts is enlarging the area of
Freedom. Manifest Destiny, Democracy, Freedom, fine names for an ugly
thing. They call it otto of rose and lavender, — I call it bilge water. They
call it Chivalry and Freedom; I call it the stealing all the earnings of a poor
man and the earnings of his little girl and boy, and the earnings of all that
shall come from him, his children's children forever.
But this is Union,
and this is Democracy; and our poor people, led by the nose by these fine
words, dance and sing, ring bells and fire cannon, with every new link of the
chain which is forged for their limbs by the plotters in the Capitol.
What are the results
of law and union? There is no Union. Can any citizen of Massachusetts travel in
honor through Kentucky and Alabama and speak his mind? Or can any citizen of
the Southern country who happens to think kidnapping a bad thing, say so? Let
Mr. Underwood of Virginia answer. Is it to be supposed that there are no men in
Carolina who dissent from the popular sentiment now reigning there? It must
happen, in the variety of human opinions, that there are dissenters. They are
silent as the grave. Are there no women in that country, — women, who always
carry the conscience of a people? Yet we have not heard one discordant whisper.
In the free States,
we give a snivelling support to slavery. The judges give cowardly
interpretations to the law, in direct opposition to the known foundation of all
law, that every immoral statute is void. And here of Kansas, the
President says: “Let the complainants go to the courts;” though he knows that
when the poor plundered farmer comes to the court, he finds the ringleader who
has robbed him, dismounting from his own horse, and unbuckling his knife to sit
as his judge.
The President told
the Kansas Committee that the whole difficulty grew from “the factions spirit
of the Kansas people, respecting institutions which they need not have
concerned themselves about.” A very remarkable speech from a Democratic
President to his fellow citizens, that they are not to concern themselves with
institutions which they alone are to create and determine. The President is a
lawyer, and should know the statutes of the land. But I borrow the language of
an eminent man, used long since, with far less occasion: “If that be law, let
the ploughshare be run under the foundations of the Capitol;” — and if that be
Government, extirpation is the only cure.
I am glad to see
that the terror at disunion and anarchy is disappearing. Massachusetts, in its
heroic day, had no government — was an anarchy. Every man stood on his own
feet, was his own governor; and there was no breach of peace from Cape Cod to
Mount Hoosac. California, a few years ago, by the testimony of all people at
that time in the country, had the best government that ever existed. Pans of
gold lay drying outside of every man’s tent, in perfect security. The land was
measured into little strips of a few feet wide, all side by side. A bit of
ground that your hand could cover was worth one or two hundred dollars, on the
edge of your strip; and there was no dispute. Every man throughout the country
was armed with knife and revolver, and it was known that instant justice would
be administered to each offence, and perfect peace reigned. For the Saxon man,
when he is well awake, is not a pirate but a citizen, all made of hooks and
eyes, and links himself naturally to his brothers, as bees hook themselves to
one another and to their queen in a loyal swarm.
But the hour is
coming when the strongest will not be strong enough. A harder task will the new
revolution of the nineteenth century be, than was the revolution of the
eighteenth century. I think the American Revolution bought its glory cheap. If
the problem was new, it was simple. If there were few people, they were united,
and the enemy 3,000 miles off. But now, vast property, gigantic interests,
family connections, webs of party, cover the land with a network that immensely
multiplies the dangers of war.
Fellow Citizens, in
these times full of the fate of the Republic, I think the towns should hold
town meetings, and resolve themselves into Committees of Safety, go into
permanent sessions, adjourning from week to week, from month to month. I wish
we could send the Sergeant-at-arms to stop every American who is about to leave
the country. Send home every one who is abroad, lest they should find no
country to return to. Come home and stay at home, while there is a country to
save. When it is lost it will be time enough then for any who are luckless
enough to remain alive to gather up their clothes and depart to some land where
freedom exists.
SOURCE: The Works of
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 11: Miscellanies, p. 241-7; Franklin B.
Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 500
