356 
KANSAS. 
present oppressive territorial government, and also that they be admitted 
into the Union as an equal and independent state. 
Knowing that one great party in Congress, with the President at its head, 
was in principle committed to our defence, and believing that many from 
the other parties would, if not from principle, as an act of justice, be in¬ 
duced to look upon us with favor, we had a right to anticipate a speedy 
termination of our present thraldom. However, owing to an apparent mis¬ 
understanding of the constitutional movements in Kansas, the President 
intimates in a special message that Congress must interfere and make the 
people undo what, with great care and expense, they have so well done. 
This message, as it refers exclusively to Kansas, should receive some atten¬ 
tion from the General Assembly. Kansas men, s< squatter sovereignty ” 
men, cannot fail to be somewhat surprised at its purport. It is somewhat 
belligerent in its tone, threatening to bring against the people of Kansas 
the army and navy of the United States ; and, should this force be inade¬ 
quate to the task, the militia of the several states are to be brought into 
requisition to compel the people to submit to what they do not recognize as 
laws, and to laws, according to his own showing, the people of Missouri, 
with the aid of the executive which he appointed, have enacted. 
But it is to be hoped that, by the time his forces are raised and marched 
into the territory, he will find, like His Excellency Governor Shannon, that 
the people are not so deserving of annihilation as he had supposed. 
The President gives the details of the invasion of Kansas and the Govern¬ 
or’s connection therewith, and does not deny that the so-called territorial 
Legislature was elected by the people of Missouri; but because the Gov¬ 
ernor, his appointee, chose to grant certificates of election to a majority of 
persons elected by the people of a neighboring state, therefore their laws 
are binding upon the people. To strengthen his argument, he might have 
accused the Governor of still further complicity with the invaders, and 
have said that although this territory is hundreds of miles in extent, and 
the people were politically unorganized, yet he gave them but four days in 
which to contest the election, and would not extend the time one hour; for 
it is said that a protest arrived at one o’clock on the morning of the fifth 
day, which, had it been regarded, would have changed five seats in the 
Legislature; but it was too late by one hour, and could not be received. 
The argument of the President may be good against any objection to the 
acts of the Legislature on his part, as, in the first place, he refused to protect 
the ballot-box from fraud, and, in the second place, so far as lay in his 
power, his appointee legalized it; but is it good against the people ? 
The organic act provides for a Legislature to be elected from, and by, the 
voters; and a voter is to be “ an actual resident of said territory ;” and if 
any other set of men, either with or without the sanction of the executive, 
claim to be the Legislature, ahi the people bound to regard them as such ? 
