Summary

The tone of this article towards slavery was clearly negative, yet it was not shrill. It argued that slavery had been imposed upon people who did not want it, and that the controversy would disappear if Democrats did not agitate the issue. Democratic aggressiveness in promoting slavery, the Repository editors contended, was proof of their desire to "aggravate the political disorders to the utmost."

EXCERPT:

"Mr. Buchanan and the Administration sought by the most outrages [sic] measures, to establish Slavery in Kansas in the face of a popular majority of 10,000 against it. He stood by the Lecompton Constitution to the last, and stands by it now."

"The Administration backs the Slave Power not only in those of its aggresssions which promise favorable results, but yields to its malignant dictates where apparently it only seeks to humiliate those who oppose its universal sway."

Full-text web version of newspaper

"In the first half of 1860 Republican editors in Franklin's Repository and Transcript attacked slavery as a violation of nature that stole from the workingman the fruits of his labor; they focused mainly on slavery's potential to undermine free labor."