FRANKLIN PIERCE.

WASHINGTON, January 23, 1856.

To the Senate of the United States: 

I communicate herewith to the Senate, for its constitutional action thereon, a treaty between the United States and the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes of Indians, made and concluded in this city on the 22d day of June, 1855.

FRANKLIN PIERCE.

WASHINGTON, January 24, 1856.

To the Senate and House of Representatives: 

Circumstances have occurred to disturb the course of governmental organization in the Territory of Kansas and produce there a condition of things which renders it incumbent on me to call your attention to the subject and urgently to recommend the adoption by you of such measures of legislation as the grave exigencies of the case appear to require.

A brief exposition of the circumstances referred to and of their causes will be necessary to the full understanding of the recommendations which it is proposed to submit.

The act to organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas was a manifestation of the legislative opinion of Congress on two great points of constitutional construction:  One, that the designation of the boundaries of a new Territory and provision for its political organization and administration as a Territory are measures which of right fall within the powers of the General Government; and the other, that the inhabitants of any such Territory, considered as an inchoate State, are entitled, in the exercise of self-government, to determine for themselves what shall be their own domestic institutions, subject only to the Constitution and the laws duly enacted by Congress under it and to the power of the existing States to decide, according to the provisions and principles of the Constitution, at what time the Territory shall be received as a State into the Union.  Such are the great political rights which are solemnly declared and affirmed by that act.

Based upon this theory, the act of Congress defined for each Territory the outlines of republican government, distributing public authority among lawfully created agents—­executive, judicial, and legislative—­to be appointed either by the General Government or by the Territory.  The legislative functions were intrusted to a council and a house of representatives, duly elected, and empowered to enact all the local laws which they might deem essential to their prosperity, happiness, and good government.  Acting in the same spirit, Congress also defined the persons who were in the first instance to be considered as the people of each Territory, enacting that every free white male inhabitant of the same above the age of 21 years, being an actual resident thereof and possessing the qualifications hereafter described, should be entitled to vote at the first election and be eligible to any office within the Territory, but that the qualification of voters and holding office at all subsequent elections