satisfactory to the legal mind, to the lay mind, to the average
citizen, it is a distinction without a difference, or, at best, with a
very slight difference. The Judge was giving what, in his opinion, was
the law of the land. It was his opinion, nay, it was his decision. Nor
was it the unanimous ruling of the court. Two justices dissented. The
words quoted are picturesque, and are well suited to a battle-cry. On
every side, with ominous emphasis in the North, one heard that the
negro had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. This was,
until 1860, the last and greatest exhibition of audacity on the part of
the slave power.

There was another exhibition of the spirit of slavery which deserves
special mention. This is the history of the settlement of Kansas. That
remarkable episode, lasting from 1854 to 1861, requires a volume, not a
paragraph, for its narration. It is almost impossible for the
imagination of those who live in an orderly, law-abiding community, to
conceive that such a condition of affairs ever existed in any portion
of the United States. The story of "bleeding Kansas" will long remain
an example of the proverb that truth is stranger than fiction.

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, in 1854, opened up to this free
territory the possibility of coming into the Union as a slave state. It
was to be left to the actual settlers to decide this question. This
principle was condensed into the phrase "squatter sovereignty." The
only resource left to those who wished Kansas to come in as a free
state was to settle it with an anti-slavery population.

With this purpose in view, societies were formed in anti-slavery
communities, extending as far east as the Atlantic coast, to assist
emigrants. From Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, and elsewhere,