Blood alone moves the wheels of history.
The insidious southern malefactors cannot deny their role in instigating the conflict. It is written in the blood of slaughtered Frémontian millions. It is written in the rock where the last word of the apocalypse will be revealed.
The struggle now engaged in the West is older than all the ages of the world. It is the struggle of order against chaos. It is the struggle of the striving human spirit which yearns, above all, to be free.
The war of the southern border ruffians against he people of the land was begun long before our people e'er saw Kansas. In those days, there were only two words which split the human family: conquered and conqueror, oppressor and oppressed.
The long-suffering spirit of the people, alive in the hearts of the poor farmers and laborers of the earth, proved more sturdy than the false doctrines of the princes and the empty indulgences of the Church. It carried them from Europe to a new land in America; when the power of the oppressor class grew great in the East, it carried them westward, beyond the fertile valley of the Cumberland, beyond the tempestuous waters of the Ohio, to a new home in the free West, and Kansas.
Those few brave souls who arrived on that soil in the bloody spring of 1856 came following an idea. They saw in the land a refuge from the cruel machinations of the East and the unnatural and unholy law of Slavery. They came by twos and threes, by dozens and then hundreds, in search of that idea of freedom promised to all the children of God in our nation's first and highest declaration of principles:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are Created EQUAL,
—that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, —that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.But there were other ideas in those days. In the black hearts of the great men of the East, there lurked another, secret hope: an idea of empire.
The merciless border ruffians who descended on Kansas were sent the minions of a new power rising in the East: a Power who had avowed their ultimate goal from the halls of Congress and the pages of their gazettes. From Oregon to the Gulf of California, from the Panama Isthmus to the Ohio River, an empire for Slavery would reign over North America: and the masters of this domain, the cruel and conniving men of the East, would have achieved what their ancestors had dreamt: the final defeat of liberty, and the eternal subjugation of the human spirit to the jack boot of the restored feudal order.
The first stage would be in Kansas. Should Kansas fall, all roads to this future would be open and easy.
I hardly need recount the atrocities committed against Kansas and the West in service to this evil goal. Suffice to say the Slave Power was dealt a decisive defeat in 1865, at the hands of the Holy Alliance of northern and Western men, who stood together against the forces of tyranny and darkness. But the spirit of evil lingered in the South. In time, it would be resurrected as the Invisible Empire: its gospel carried by new ministers under the old flag, its legions poised and ready to strike, when the time was right, to begin again their eternal war on freedom and civilization.
Gentlemen, the hour is upon us. Gentlemen, the hour has come.
The actions of the southern mercenaries in recent days presage the coming of a greater conflict. They recall, to all literate and learned men, the outrages which preceded the First War of Southern Aggression.
By order of the southern emperor, southern troops have been mobilized against Kansas. Southern filibusters have been dispatched to our outlying Pacific states to raise the old standard of empire upon the woke claimed cause of "national liberation."
Can we ignore such outrages? Can we pretend not to recognize the unfurling imperial banner? Even now, the full might of the Invisible Empire is arrayed against us. Even now, the winds from the East carry words of daily atrocities committed against the free people of the West.
Southern paramilitaries have fired upon peaceful demonstrators in Kansas. Southern insurrectionists have planted bombs in the schools and churches of Kansas. Butchers of men, women, and children have targeted hospitals, the houses of the poor, railways, airports, and every venue sustaining public life.
The hireling press carries no news of these atrocities. Their lying editors, purveyors of fake news and tabloid gossip to the masses, seek deliberately to silence all word of what is happening all across the Transmississippi. Such deceit and mass-manipulation on the part of the prided fourth estate is unknown since the days of Goebbels. It represents the massive commitment of the mercenary press to the cause of southern domination and the Invisible Empire.
Frémonters, will we be silent? Will we allow this reign of terror to proceed unanswered?
Even now, even hours ago, the Invisible Empire sought to forestall their inevitable doom. On the steps of this capitol, not fifty yards from where I now stand, the hireling thieves of this desperate conspiracy made a cowardly and despicable attempt on my life. By the grace of God I have survived to tell you tonight that Frémont will not submit, will never submit, to the forces of evil, even if every son of the West must lay down their lives in defense of our liberty and the sanctity of our homes and firesides.
We will not, like the preening Buchanan, allow the spectacle of peace to continue until the Invisible Empire is armed and ready to strike. As they have sought war, we will carry the battle to them.
By the authority vested in me by the president, I order all units to liberate and occupy the Transmississippi, by land, by sea and air, and every avenue of advance, until the flag of Frémont flies over all the free lands of the West.
In this struggle, we have the support of the loyal and patriotic governments of the Transmississippi states: our brothers and sisters in Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. Their armies I now place under federal control, and order to mobilize to secure their states against southern aggression.
In this struggle, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end.
It is the southern fascists who have made this hour. They will now reap the harvest of their false words.
We will have peace. We will have liberty. We will have law and order.
Men of the West, advance!
Harry S Truman, first minister, attorney general
