As neither of the great
political parties of the day filled its ranks from either section,
so in both sections there were many who espoused, as many who
denied, the right of men to own slaves. We speak of slavery as the
one great question of that day. It was not and never has been the
greatest. The question of democracy--that was even then, and it is
now, the greatest question.
Here on the deck of the steamer at the little city of Pittsburg,
then gateway of the West, there appeared men of purposes and
beliefs as mixed as this mixed country from which they came. Some
were pushing out into what now is known as Kansas, others going to
take up lands in Missouri. Some were to pass south to the slave
country, others north to the free lands; men of all sorts and
conditions, many men, of many minds, that was true, and all
hurrying into new lands, new problems, new dangers, new remedies.
It was a great and splendid day, a great and vital time, that
threshold-time, when our western traffic increased so rapidly and
assuredly that steamers scarcely could be built rapidly enough to
accommodate it, and the young rails leaped westward at a speed
before then unknown in the world.
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