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Updated: June 1, 2025
For years he had been accustomed to meet on the floor of the Capitol the leaders of the old Whig and Free-soil parties.
I was chosen as an elector on what was called the "Fillmore Ticket." I did not at that time believe very strongly in Fremont for President. During the same year, I was nominated as a candidate for the House of Representatives of the Illinois Legislature, and was supported by both the Fillmore party and the Free-soil party and thus elected.
The real and effective gain, therefore, was the more or less thorough alliance of the Whig party and the Free-soil party of the Northern States: wherever that was successful it gave immediate and available majorities to the opposition, which made their influence felt even in the very opening of the popular contest following the Congressional repeal.
The refusal of the Whigs and Democrats to take issue on slavery in the territories leads to the formation of the Free-soil party. The discovery of gold in California, the rush of people thither, and the formation of a free state seeking admission into the Union force the question of slavery on Congress. In 1850 an attempt is made to settle it by the "Compromise of 1850."
It was a logical, and an altogether probable conclusion that they only waited for the opportunity to invade the northern states and turn them from free-soil into slave territory. The indignation over this outrage not only flamed from thousands of pulpits, but newspapers and political clubs of all kinds took up the subject on one side or the other.
Still it will be regarded as incredible that a man should receive such treatment for uttering such words as I report myself to have uttered. The matter is plain enough when the facts are understood. Prior to August 17, 1855, there was no Free-soil party organized in Atchison county perhaps not in the whole Territory of Kansas.
Whatever may be the cost in money of joining the States which I have named to a free-soil Northern people, instead of allowing them to be buried in that dismal swamp which a confederacy of Southern slave States will produce, that cost can hardly be too much.
The Emigrant Aid Societies of New England raised large sums of money to send to the Territories Free-Soil settlers and other agitators. A counter-stream of agitators set in from Missouri, in sympathy with the slavery men, and the result was a long series of bloody disorders. In February, 1856, Mr. Toombs made a speech upon the message of the President in regard to the lawless condition of Kansas.
Abolition, in truth, is a political cry. It is the banner of defiance opposed to secession. As the differences between the North and South have grown with years, and have swelled to the proportions of national antipathy, Southern nullification has amplified itself into secession, and Northern free-soil principles have burst into this growth of abolition. Men have not calculated the results.
In the previous October, Reeder had been chosen Free-soil delegate to Congress. The Topeka freestate Legislature met on the 4th of March, 1856, and after petitioning Congress to admit Kansas under the Topeka constitution, adjourned until the 4th of July pending the action of Congress. Thus at the end of two years two distinct Governments had come into existence within the Territory of Kansas.
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