er their
revolutionary Topeka organization.

A wiser and better spirit seemed to prevail before the first Monday
of January last, when an election was held under the constitution.
A majority of the people then voted for a governor and other State
officers, for a Member of Congress and members of the State legislature.
This election was warmly contested by the two political parties in
Kansas, and a greater vote was polled than at any previous election.
A large majority of the members of the legislature elect belonged to
that party which had previously refused to vote. The antislavery party
were thus placed in the ascendant, and the political power of the State
was in their own hands. Had Congress admitted Kansas into the Union
under the Lecompton constitution, the legislature might at its very
first session have submitted the question to a vote of the people
whether they would or would not have a convention to amend their
constitution, either on the slavery or any other question, and have
adopted all necessary means for giving speedy effect to the will of
the majority. Thus the Kansas question would have been immediately
and finally settled.

Under these circumstances I submitted to Congress the constitution thus
framed, with all the officers already elected necessary to put the State
government into operation, accompanied by a strong recommendation in
favor of the admission of Kansas as a State. In the course of my long
public life I have never performed any official act which in the
retrospect has afforded me more heartfelt satisfaction. Its admission
could have inflicted no possible injury on any human being, whilst it
would within a brief period have restored peace to Kansas and harmony to
the Union. In that event the slavery question would ere this have been
finally settled according to the legally expressed will of a majority of
the voters, and popular sovereignty would thus have been vindicated in
a constitutional manner.

With my deep convictions of duty I could have pursued no other course.
It is true that as an individual I had expressed an opinion, both before
and during the session of the convention, in favor of submitting the
remaining clauses of the constitution, as well as that concerning
slavery, to the people. But, acting in an official character, neither
myself nor any human authority had the power to rejudge the proceedings
of the convention and declare the constitution which it had framed to be
a