in express language in favor of “nonintervention by Congress with slavery in the States or Territories,” leaving “the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.”  In this manner, by localizing the question of slavery and confining it to the people whom it immediately concerned, every patriot anxiously expected that this question would be banished from the halls of Congress, where it has always exerted a baneful influence throughout the whole country.

It is proper that I should briefly refer to the election held under an act of the Territorial legislature on the first Monday of January last on the Lecompton constitution.  This election was held after the Territory had been prepared for admission into the Union as a sovereign State, and when no authority existed in the Territorial legislature which could possibly destroy its existence or change its character.  The election, which was peaceably conducted under my instructions, involved a strange inconsistency.  A large majority of the persons who voted against the Lecompton constitution were at the very same time and place recognizing its valid existence in the most solemn and authentic manner by voting under its provisions.  I have yet received no official information of the result of this election.

As a question of expediency, after the right has been maintained, it may be wise to reflect upon the benefits to Kansas and to the whole country which would result from its immediate admission into the Union, as well as the disasters which may follow its rejection.  Domestic peace will be the happy consequence of its admission, and that fine Territory, which has hitherto been torn by dissensions, will rapidly increase in population and wealth and speedily realize the blessings and the comforts which follow in the train of agricultural and mechanical industry.  The people will then be sovereign and can regulate their own affairs in their own way.  If a majority of them desire to abolish domestic slavery within the State, there is no other possible mode by which this can be effected so speedily as by prompt admission.  The will of the majority is supreme and irresistible when expressed in an orderly and lawful manner.  They can make and unmake constitutions at pleasure.  It would be absurd to say that they can impose fetters upon their own power which they can not afterwards remove.  If they could do this, they might tie their own hands for a hundred as well as for ten years.  These are fundamental principles of American freedom, and are recognized, I believe, in some form or other by every State constitution; and if Congress, in the act of admission, should think proper to recognize them I can perceive no objection to such a course.  This has been done emphatically in the constitution of Kansas.  It declares in the bill of rights that “all political power is inherent in the