AP Success - AP US History: DBQ Kansas-Nebraska Act and Start of the Civil War

We arraign this bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from vast unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our States, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves.

That the Constitution, and all laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within the said Territory of Kansas as elsewhere within the United States, except the eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March sixth, eighteen hundred and twenty, which, being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of eighteen hundred and fifty, commonly called the Compromise Measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.

Nebraska & Kansas turned out as I feared, but I hope New England people every where
will resolve that Kansas shall be on the side of freedom. The soil and climate are much the same as Illinois, & the face of the country similar, and if free emmigration will only pour rapidly into the Territory, the "compromise" outrage will be avenged. I see a colony of 30 active men have already reached there from Mass. under the auspices of a society for that purpose, and I hope hundreds will soon follow of the same stamp. If I were a young man I would go there at once. But I shall tire you with the length of my epistle, so I will close. Please make my regards to Mr. Stone.

I have just returned from the Kansas War (about which you have no doubt learned by the newspapers;) & find your Letter of the 19th Nov. As I intend to send you shortly a paper published here giving you a more full account of the invasion than I can consistently afford the time to give; I will only say at this time that the Territory is now entirely in the power of the Free State men; & notwithstanding this result has been secured by means of some bravery, & tact; with a good deal of trickery on the one side; & of cowardice, folly, & drunkenness on the other yet so it is; & I believe the Missourians will give up all further hope of making Kansas a Slave State.
Tomorrow the people of Kansas will decide whether to adopt or to reject the Free
Constitution submitted to them; & I have no doubt of its adoption. Indeed I consider it no longer a question whether this is to be a Free or a Slave State. 

Battle of Osawatomie
Being routed from Black Jack by Old John Browns small company, Reid made a night
march for Osawatomie, The proslavery leaders having had the company of M.S. Dragoons[,] which had been camped on the Potowatomi near the town[,] recalled the night before unbeknown to the people, thus clearing the way for the enemy to march into the unsuspecting town at sunrise [text stricken through] on the morning of August 30th -- Seeing the gleaming bayonets in the west lighted up by the first rays of the rising sun thrown over the sleeping town, Spencer hastened to alarm the people of the coming danger -- The [text stricken through] men flew to arms -- whilst the women in their night clothes bearing their children in their arms fled to the woods.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction...

Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. 
If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”