The Perrysburg journal. [volume], September 08, 1855, Page 130, Image 2

About The Perrysburg journal. [volume] (Perrysburg, Ohio) 1853-1861

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130
THE PERRYSBURG JOURNAL.
The following article from the St. Louis
Intelligencer, of the 24th ult., is decidedly
remarkable, and as one of the signs of the
times, is worthy of the. closest attention.
The Bitter Fruits—The Suicide of Slavery.
Our news from western Missouri is of om
inous and most discouraging character. That
region is suffering from mildew and blight.
Its glory is dimmed, itsepirits abated and its
hope fading.
The emigration to Kansas has been almost
entirely checked. Emigrants from the nor
thern or free states have ceased to go to Kan
sas, because they can find as good lands else
where, not cursed by mob law, not ruled by
non-resident bullies. Emigrants from the
southern stales do not go to Kansas, because,
they will not put their slave property in per- J
11, by taking it into a territory where there
is a strong free soil element, threatening the
security of slaves.
Any man of sense might have foreseen this
result. Alabama and Georgia may hold pub
lic meetings, and resolve to sustain the slave
holders of Missouri in making Kansas a slave
state. But their resolutions comprise all
their aid which is not "material" enough for
the crisis. "When slaveholders of Alabama
and Georgia emigrate, they go to Louisiana,
Arkansas and Texas. They do not come,
with their slaves, to Missouri or to Kansas.
Call they that, backing their friends?
Thus the matter stonds: The northern
emigrants shun Missouri and Kansas as
.plague spots of the nation. The southern
emigrants shun Missouri and Kansas, because
here is the battle ground between slavery and
free soil.
The result is, Kansas, the fairest land un
der the sun, is neglected and idle ; occupied
by a few honest and earnest but disheartened
pioneers, and lorded over by a dozen or two
feudal tyrants of Missouri, who curse by
their presence the land they have desolated.
Such is Kansas poor, neglected and des
pised and western Missouri stands infected
by the horrible contagion of outlawry, and
dwindles away under the moral leprosy of
its mobocratic leaders. We are assured by
two gentlemen of high position in western
Missouri, but totally differing in political
sentiment one upholding the oligarchy that
controls the affairs and tramples upon the
people's sovereignty in Kansas, the other de
ploring the accursed madness' of the day
that matters are gloomy enough in western
Missouri. Business is dull. Commerce is
stagnant. Money is exceedingly scarce, anu
a panic pervades the people. The fifty thou
sand emigrants that ought, this season, to
have poured into Kansas, are not there. The
prairie sod remains unbroken. The sound of
the axe, and the whoop of the husbandman
is not heard. Western Missouri towns are
not thronged with settlers buying their out
fits and their equipments of husbandry. The
farmers find no market for their horses,mules,
oxen and cows. There is no new and large
trade springing up in Kansas. The much
vaunted Kansas towns lie neglected, a mock
ery to their owners and a laughingstock for
all men. " Dead, dead, dead," may be writ
ten on all the country, so deep and disas
trous has been the" fall from the high and
fond hopes of the past year.
In May last, the editor of the Intelligen
cer was in Kentucky, and he met numerous
of the most respectable and worthy farmers
of that state, such as form so large a portion
of the population of Missouri, who inquired
earnestly about the condition of things in
Kansas and western Missouri. They spoke
of the intention they had of removing to
Kansas or western Missouri ; but said they
had abandoned it utterly, for the reason that
they could never think of taking their fami
lies to a region where law was set aside.
presses mobbed, and men driven from the
country by irresponsible and unknown band
of Regulators. They preferred the rule of
law to anarchy, in a recent trip through
several north western states, we found that
the game circumstances were moil induetri-
emigration
Missouri
ously and fatallv used to divert
to those states, and to prejudice
and Kansas -.villi every class of people. The
most aggravating stories of insults and out
rages committed by Missourians on the per
sons of emigrants from the old world or from
the free states, who are found ascending the
Missouri river, are circulated in the newspa
pers all through the free states; and it is
impossible to conceive of the deep hatred
thus generated towards our whole state in
the northern half of the Union.
Between these fires, Missouri is leading on
her languid existence. St. Louis is retarded
in a most woful way. Our railroads creep
at snail's pace. We build ten miles while
other western stales build one hundred. In
every department of life we feel the paraly
sis. Instead of bounding forward, buoyant,
strong, end rejoicing, we sit with dull eyes
and heavy spirits, and listen to the tick of a
death-watch.
These are the bitter fruits of the repeal of
the Missouri compromise a wicked and
wrongful deed, that will yet bring a hell of
bitter self-reproaches to its authors. Mis
souri did not demand that repeal. The south
never asked it. Atchison solicited it and
in a moment of political insanity the south
consented to the wrong, and made the wrong
her own. This was the suicide of slavery.
Every step since taken has deepened the
wrong and enhanced the danger. The Free
States organized Aid Societies, and sent their
men to make Kansas free. It had been free
soil, by solemn compact, for thirty five years;
and they naturally were incensed to see its
character changed. The Souih would have
been far more indignant if a slave territory
had been thus, by unexpected act of Con
gress, converted into Free Soil.
The Free States had a right to be indig
nant that a life-long Compromise had been
repealed and they had aright to try to keep
Kansas free as it had been, by peaceable col
onization. They attempted nothing else.
But a portion of the citizens of Missouri,
headed by Atchison and Stringfellow, de
nounced the northern emigrants as " paupers
and hirelings," because they were sent west
by the money of a society ; and so they held
county meetings in Missouri and raised mo
ney and sent Missourians to Kansas to make
Kansas a slave territory! Were th?se Mis
sourians " hirelings" too ? And did these
two wrongs make one right?
Atchison and Stringfellow, with their
Missouri followers, overwhelmed the settlers;
in Kansas, brow beat and bullied them, and1
took the government from their hands. Mi:
souri votes elected the present body of men,
who insult public intelligence and popular
rights by styling themselves " the Legisla
ture of Kansas." Thisbodv of men are help-
ing themselves to fat speculations by loca-
ling" me seal oi government" and getting
town lots for their votes. They are passing
laws disfranchising all the citizens of Kansas
who do not believe negro slavery to be a
Christian institution and a national blessing.
They are proposing to punish with impris
onment the utterance of views inconsistent1
with their own. And they are trying to per
petuate their preposterous and infernal tyran
ny.by appointingor a term of years creatures
of their own, as commissioners in every coun
ty, to lay and collect taxes, and see that the
laws they are passing are. faithfully executed.
Has this age anything to compare with these
acts in audacity ?
The Free State men of Kansas have resolv
ed not to submit to this daring usurpation of
a nonresident oligarchy. They have called
a convention of the people of Kansas, to
meet in September next, and frame a Con
stitution for their government. This move
ment will be supported by thousands in Kan
sas ; and it will rally and bring to their aid
the Northern States that have been for the
time staggered and confused by the untoward
events in Kansas.
The next Congress will find, the n, this issue
before them a free Btate constitution, pre-
sented by one portion of the people of Kan
sas, and the pro-slavery territorial laws of
the present fraudulent Legislature. The
House of Representatives of the next Con
gress will be. largely Free Soil or Anti-Nebraska.
The pro-slavery laws of the bogus
Legislature will be rejected, and without
Congressional sanction, they are not valid
and the contest will then be on accepting
the Constitution presented by the Free Slate
people. This Free State Constitution may
pass the House, but not the Senate. But the
effect will be as disastrous to Missouri and
the. South. Kansas will be left to anarchy;
The slavery that is there will flee from it
and perhaps even the slave property of Wes
tern Missouri give way umW the. panic, and
seek safety in the cotton fields and sugar
plantations of Texas.
It has been the common opinion with
thoughtless persons and thick headed bullies
of the West, that the Northern and Eastern"
men will not fight. Never was a greater
mistake. The sons of New England and of
the Middle States do not like to light. They
would rather work plough build towns,
railroads make money, and raise families,
than fight. But fight they will, if need be.
Remember, the sons of New England shed
the first blood in the American Revolution,
and they were the last to furl their flags iii
that terrible struggle. They have never dis
graced their country by cowardice, and they1
will not. They arc Americans, with spirit,
courage, endurance, and deep love of liber
ty, to animate them. The Free State men
in Kansas will fight before they will be dis
franchised and trampled on. Mark the wonL
Here comes, then, the suicide of Slavery.
The outrages committed by Atchison and
his fellows in the repeal of the Missouri Com
promise, and by Stringfellow and his follow
ers in subjugating Kansas to non-resident
rule, will bring on a collision, first in Con
gress and then in Kansas and who shall tell
the end ?
Slavery will never sustain itself in a bor
der State by the Sword. It may conquer in
some respects; but it can never ' conquer a
peace." Never, never ! Once light the fires
of internecine war in defense of Slavery,
and it will perish while you defend it. Slave
holders will not stay to meet the fight. Prop
erty is timid, and the slaves will be sent to
Texas to bo. in a " safe place" while the fight
lasts ; and us soon as the slaves are gone it
will be found that Missouri has nothing to
fight about, and the fight will end " before it
begins.'
lhus the Navery propagandists who re
pealed the. Missouri Compromise to make
Kansas a Slave State, will make Missouri
free; and in endeavoring to expel Abolition
ism from Kansas, ihey will find both Kan-
sas and Missouri with an entire free white
population worth more to the two states
than all the. negroes in America.
Is not the Kansas outrage tip suicide of
Slavery? Have not the people of Missouri,
interested in the preservation of Slavery iu
the State, bro't themselves into a desperate
predicament by following the insane coun
sels of Atchison and Stringfellow?
The Lake Superior copper mines are esti
moted to produce this year 4100 tons of cop
per. The most productive appears to be the
Cliff mine, which is rated at 1500 tons, and
next to it is the Minnesota mine, rated at
1000 tons, following it the North American,
at 500 tons. Copper at the mines is $100
per ton, making a sum total of 81,640,000
as the value of this year's copper from that
region, against an expenditure of $2,000,000,
or a deficit of 8360,000. This does not look
like a very profitable business, but the cop
per men seem sanguine of ultimate profits,
and it is confidently predicted that next
year the mines will more than payexpenses.
This latter is spoken of as an event unpar
elleled in the history of mining enterprises,
when we take into consideration the short
time the mines have been worked, and the
amount of capital invested. Phil. N.Arner,