Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/826

 with intense interest, inasmuch as my highest hope of the perpetuity of our Union, and of the continued success of self-government, is based upon the progressive education and enlightenment of the people, enabling them fully to comprehend their own true interests, the incalculable advantages of our Union, the exemption from the power of demagogues, the control of sectional passions and prejudice, the progress of the arts and sciences, and the accumulation of knowledge, which is every day more and more becoming real power, and which will advance so much the great interests of our whole country.

These noble grants for schools and education in some of the new states have not produced all the advantages designed, for want of adequate checks and guards against improvident legislation; but I trust that the convention, by a distinct constitutional provision, will surround these lands with such guarantees, legislative, executive, judicial, and popular, as to require the combined action of the whole under the authority of the legislature in the administration of a fund so sacred.

It will be observed that these school sections and the five per cent, fund, or their equivalent, have always been made good to the new states by congress, whether the lands were sold in trust, for Indians, or otherwise.

Upon looking at the location of Kansas, equidistant from north to south, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, I find, that, within reasonable boundaries, she would be the central state of the American Union. On the north lies the Nebraska territory, soon to become a state; on the south the great and fertile southwestern Indian territory, soon, I hope, to become a state also. To the boundary of Kansas run nearly all the railroads of Missouri, whilst westward, northward, and southward, these routes continued through Kansas would connect her directly with Puget Sound, the mouth of the Oregon river, and San Francisco. The southern boundary of Kansas is but five hundred miles from the Gulf of Mexico, and the same railroad through the great southwestern Indian territory and Texas would connect her with New Orleans, with Galveston, with all the roads of Arkansas, and through Texas to San Francisco, and other points upon the Pacific; northward and eastward our lines would connect with the roads of Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and the lakes of the north.

It is the people of Kansas who, in forming their state constitution, are to declare the terms on which they propose to enter the Union. Congress can not compel the people of the territory to enter the Union as a state, or change, without their consent, the constitution framed by the people. Congress, it is true, may for constitutional reasons refuse admission, but the state alone, in forming her constitution, can prescribe the terms on which she will enter the Union. This power of the people of a territory in forming a state constitution is one of vital importance, especially in the states carved out of the public domain. Nearly all the lands of Kansas are public lands, and most of them are occupied by Indian tribes. These lands are the property of the federal government, but their right is exclusively that of a proprietor, carrying with it no political power.