Speech #920003179

There could be nu doubt as to where Ross sympathies lay. for his entire career was one of determined opposition to the slave States of the South. their practices and their friends. In 1854. when only 28. he had taken part in the mob rescue of a fugitive slave in Milwaukee. In 1856. he had joined that flood of antislavery immigrants to "bleeding" Kansas who Intended to keep It a free territory. Disgusted with the Democratic Party of his youth. he had left that party. and volunteered in the Kansas Free State army to drive back a force of proslavery men invading the territory. In 1862. he had given up his newspaper work to enlist in the Union Army. from which he emerged a major.