The Negro in Our History

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ...because it did not guarantee the suspects any right of trial by jury and did not permit a fugitive to a This is well expressed by Giddings's speech in the Appendix. testify in his own behalf. In the midst of so many conflicting efforts to bring about a compromise between two militant sections, far-sighted men like William H. Seward4 and Henry Ward Beecher saw no hope for peace in the Omnibus Bill. A more interesting constitutional question arose some years later when out of the territory in the West it was proposed to organize Kansas and Nebraska without regard to slavery. Stephen A. Douglas, the champion of this movement, seemed to stultify him The Kansas-self in trying Nebraska to harmonize Question.. his theory of squatter sovereignty with that of the freedom of the people in determining for themselves how the new commonwealth should come into the Union. How Douglas could make it possible for a man to take his slaves wherever he would and still hold them as goods and chattels, while at the same time the law would guarantee to the people in a new commonwealth when framing the Constitution the right to decide for themselves whether or not the State should be free, was never satisfactorily explained to the increasing number of antislavery men. The most formidable of all of these protagonists, however, was not among the first to appear. He was a back Henry Ward Beecher, a champion of freedom See Appendix for Seward's Higher Law. woodsman born in Kentucky and developed to manhood in Indiana and Illinois. As a rail-splitter he could understand the hardships entailed upon those compelled Lincoln on to engage in drudgery. When a young man slavery, he went on a flat boat on a trading trip to New Orleans. On the market square he saw human...