Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 2, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 March 1859 — A Significant Sign. [ARTICLE]

A Significant Sign.

The following is copied from the Chicago Press and Tribune ;■—-the leading ns well as the able free-soil journal of Illinois —of a recent date: “The fiee state.men of St. Joseph. Missouri, hehl a public meeting lately at Smith’s Hall, for the purpose of organizing and takirigisteps to contest the municipal election with the-pro slavery men, at the coming-city election. They res dved to start a paper as soon as navigation op ns, to advocate thencause, and pledged themselves to give it a hearty and substantial support. ‘‘The completion of the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad will give the free state men large reinforcements, as ;i great stream of travel from the free States will flow over that road to the territories west of the Missouri river In a few years St. Joseph'will be a Republican city'. It is questionable whether a majority of the inhabitants are not at present in favor of making Missouri a free State.” We only submit the above.asianother indication that the outposts of the institution of slavery are giving gradually away,’and that as soon as they do 1 give wav, the citadel itsell will be in danger, but not with , u.cli hope, as. we sorrowfully confess of arou v ing those most interested* to a proper sensij ol their condition. Missouri will become a free State,-i i n£T human probability, within halt' a decade. The exorbitant and unnatural prices. which negroes are now commanding in the 'more southern States are rapidly draining her, as well as the rest of the border States, of their slave population. Ii is not likely Mat-vland will remain a slave State ten years longer; and as lor Delaware, she has about a.- much pecuniary interest in tiie institution, as Vermont. - s In the meantime . the North has been strengthened ph the admission of Minnesota and Oregon, am! Kansas and Nebraska will unquestionably come in as -freesoil States prior to the Presidential election of jsfio. At the same time, owing to tiie high prices ot -negroes; the number of slaveholders is continually diminishing,, and the institution becoming weaker,in the lower slave .Stiff -s, yet let any one propose to. interest the whole people in the-.institution, and thus render it. impregnable, and be is at, once met With the combined of .those who have ail to lose and little or nothing" to gain! Alas, tor the short sightedness ot p or hunt n nature!— .V." O. Crescent.