After the lapse of many years, upon a calm review of that decision it is difficult to say whether the historical errors, the feeble reasoning, or the immoral sentiments most awaken our surprise and contempt. It is sufficient for our purpose at this time to know that this decision threw a vast influence against the Free-State men. If it were final, then their struggle was all in vain. Strive as much as they would, and suffer as much as they might, they could never make Kansas a free State. And yet, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, the hostility of the Administration, and all other adverse forces and circumstances, they held on. To this result had our country come through the compromises and surrenders of three-quarters of a century: slavery in possession of the machinery of government, nationalized by the highest tribunal in the land, declared to have equal rights with freedom in all the public domain, and, in logical sequence, not to be shut out from even the free States. Every institution of thirty millions of freemen was to be judged and graded, encouraged or restrained, with supreme reference to the interests of this institution. Dominant at home, it was already taking steps preparatory to foreign conquest, and the only effective obstacle in the way of the consummation of its plans was the life-and-death tenacity with which the free settlers of Kansas held to their determination that theirs should be a free State. The contest continued for four years before any substantial advantage was gained for the Free State party. Four governors, three appointed by President Pierce and one by President Buchanan, had successively been sent, and then deposed and disgraced because they could not, or would not, carry out the unjust measures proposed by the Administration. The victory in Congress in 1858 was simply a resubmission of the Lecompton constitution to the people of the State to be voted upon, whether they would accept it or frame one for themselves. They of course buried it amid universal execrations. Slight and unmistakably just as was this concession of Congress, it was nevertheless secured but by a small majority. The change of five votes would have passed the notorious Lecompton Bill, admitted the State with slavery into the Union, added two senators to the slave-power, restored the supremacy of that power in the Senate of the United States, to be followed by the carrying out the Dred Scott decision to its logical consequences, slavery supremacy at home, slavery aggression, annexation, and expansion over Cuba and Central America, abroad. A vast slave-empire stretching from the lakes to the southern shores of the Caribbean Sea seemed not an improbable dream, if there had not been wisdom enough or will enough to fight the battle out in Kansas. All honor to those brave men and women who in those days saved this Territory to the North! All honor to those who stood by them and helped them to win! A more important battle was never