Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/675

 were as nearly as could be identical, and while the territory of Nebraska was tranquilly and successfully organized in the due course of law, and its first legislative assembly met on the 16th of January, 1855, the organization of Kansas was long delayed, and has been attended with serious difficulties and embarrassments, partly the consequence of local mal-administration, and partly of the unjustifiable interference of the inhabitants of some of the states, foreign by residence, interests and rights to the territory.

The governor of the territory of Kansas did not reach the designated seat of his government until the 1th of the ensuing October, and even then failed to make the first step in its legal organization—that of ordering the census or enumeration of its inhabitants—until so late a day that the % election of the members of the legislative assembly did not take place until the 30th of March, 1855, nor its meeting until the 2d of July, 1855; so that, for a year after the territory was constituted by the act of congress, and the officers to be appointed by the federal executive had been commissioned, it was without a complete government, without any legislative authority, without local law, and, of course, without the ordinary guarantees of peace and public order.

In other respects, the governor, instead of exercising constant vigilance and putting forth all his energies to prevent or counteract the tendencies to illegality which are prone to exist in all imperfectly-organized and newly-associated communities, allowed his attention to be diverted from official obligation by other objects, and himself sat an example of the violation of law in the performance of acts which rendered it my duty, in the sequel, to remove him from the office of chief executive magistrate of the territory.

Before the requisite preparation was accomplished for election of a territorial legislature, an election for delegate to congress had been held in the territory on the 29th day of November, 1854, and the delegate took his scat in the house of representatives without challenge. If arrangements had been perfected by the governor so that the election for members of the legislative assembly might be held in the several precincts at the same time as for delegate to congress, any question appertaining to the qualification of the persons voting as people of the territory, would have passed necessarily and at once under the supervision of congress, as the judge of the validity of the return of the delegate, and would have been determined before conflicting passions had become inflamed by time, and before opportunity could have been afforded for systematic interference of the people of individual states.

This interference, in so far as concerns its primary causes and its immediate commencement, was one of the incidents of that pernicious agitation on the subject of the condition of the colored persons held to service in some of the states, which has so long disturbed the repose of our country, and excited individuals, otherwise patriotic and law-abiding, to toil with misdirected zeal in the attempt to propagate their social theories by the perversion and abuse of the powers of congress.

The persons and parties whom the tenor of the act to organize the territories of Nebraska and Kansas thwarted in the endeavor to impose, through the