Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/840

 Lawrence, contains an open defiance of the Constitution and laws of the United States. The Governor says: "The Convention which framed the Constitution at Topeka originated with the people of Kansas Territory. They have adopted and ratified the same twice by a direct vote, and also indirectly through two elections of State officers and members of the State Legislature. Yet it has pleased the administration to regard the whole proceeding revolutionary."

This Topeka government, adhered to with such treasonable pertinacity, is a government in direct opposition to the existing government prescribed and recognized by Congress. It is a usurpation of the-same character as it would be for a portion of the people of any State of the Union to undertake to establish a separate government, within its limits, for the purpose of redressing any grievance, real or imaginary, of which they might complain, against the legitimate State government, touch a principle, if carried into execution, would destroy all lawful authority and produce universal anarchy.

From this statement of facts, the reason becomes palpable why the enemies of the [sic]governmeut authorized by Congress have refused to vote for delegates to the Kansas Constitutional Convention, and also afterwards on the question of slavery submitted by it to the people. It is because they have ever refused to sanction or recognize any other Constitution than that framed at Topeka.

Had the whole Lecompton Constitution been submitted to the people, the adherents of this organization would doubtless have voted against it, because, if successful, they would thus have removed an obstacle out of the way of their own revolutionary Constitution. They would have done this, not upon a consideration of the merits of the whole or any part of the Lecompton Constitution, but simply because they have ever resisted the authority of the government authorized by Congress, from which it emanated.

Such being the unfortunate condition of affairs in the Territory, what was the right, as well as the duty, of the law-abiding people? Were they silently and patiently to submit to the Topeka usurpation, or adopt the necessary measures to establish a Constitution under the authority of the organic law of Congress?

That this law recognized the right of the people of the Territory, without any enabling act from Congress, to form a State Constitution, is too clear for argument. For Congress "to leave the people of the Territory perfectly free," in framing their Constitution, "to form and regulate their domestic institutions, in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States," and then to say that they shall not be permitted to proceed and frame a Constitution in their own way, without an express authority from Congress, appears to be almost a contradiction in terms. It would be much more plausible to contend that Congress had no power to pass such an enabling act, than to argue that the people of a Territory might be kept out of the Union for an indefinite period, and until it might please Congress to permit them to exercise