Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/820

 Governor Walker reached Kansas on the 25th of May, and a few days after he issued his inaugural address at Lecompton. This document was intended to conciliate both political parties.


 * At the earnest request of the president of the United States, I have accepted the position of governor of the territory of Kansas. The president, with the cordial concurrence of all his cabinet, expressed to me the conviction that the condition of Kansas was fraught with imminent peril to the Union, and asked me to undertake the settlement of that momentous question, which has introduced discord and civil war throughout your borders, and threatens to involve you and our country in the same common ruin. This was a duty thus presented, the performance of which I could not decline consistently with my view of the sacred obligation which every citizen owes to his country.

The mode of adjustment is provided in the act organizing your territory— namely, by the people of Kansas, who, by a majority of their own votes, must decide this question for themselves in forming their state constitution.

Under our practice, the preliminary act of framing a state constitution is uniformly performed through the instrumentality of a convention of delegates chosen by the people themselves. That convention is now about to be elected by you under the call of the territorial legislature, created and still recognized by the authority of congress, and clothed by it, in the comprehensive language of the organic law, with full power to make such an enactment. The territorial legislature, then, in assembling this convention, were fully sustained by the act of congress, and the authority of the convention is distinctly recognized in my instructions from the President of the United States. Those who oppose this course cannot aver the alleged irregularity of the territorial legislature, whose laws in town and city elections, in corporate franchises, and on all other subjects but slavery, they acknowledge by their votes and acquiescence. If that legislature was invalid, then are we without law or order in Kansas; without town, city, or county organization; all legal and judicial transactions are void, all titles null, and anarchy reigns throughout our borders.

It is my duty, in seeing that all constitutional laws are executed, to take care, as far as practicable, that this election of delegates to the convention shall be free from fraud or violence, and that they shall be protected in their deliberations.

The people of Kansas, then, are invited by the highest authority known to the constitution to participate freely and fairly in the election of delegates to frame a constitution and state government. The law has performed its entire appropriate function when it extends to the people the right of suffrage, but it cannot compel the performance of that duty. Throughout our whole union, however, and wherever free government prevails, those who abstain from the exercise of the right of suffrage authorize those who do vote to act for them in