vaded by the citizens of other
States, whether for the purpose of deciding elections or for any other,
and the local authorities find themselves unable to repel or withstand
it, they will be entitled to, and upon the fact being fully ascertained
they shall most certainly receive, the aid of the General Government.

But it is not the duty of the President of the United States to
volunteer interposition by force to preserve the purity of elections
either in a State or Territory. To do so would be subversive of public
freedom. And whether a law be wise or unwise, just or unjust, is not a
question for him to judge. If it be constitutional--that is, if it be
the law of the land--it is his duty to cause it to be executed, or to
sustain the authorities of any State or Territory in executing it in
opposition to all insurrectionary movements.

Our system affords no justification of revolutionary acts, for the
constitutional means of relieving the people of unjust administration
and laws, by a change of public agents and by repeal, are ample, and
more prompt and effective than illegal violence. These means must be
scrupulously guarded, this great prerogative of popular sovereignty
sacredly respected.

It is the undoubted right of the peaceable and orderly people of the
Territory of Kansas to elect their own legislative body, make their
own laws, and regulate their own social institutions, without foreign
or domestic molestation. Interference on the one hand to procure the
abolition or prohibition of slave labor in the Territory has produced
mischievous interference on the other for its maintenance or
introduction. One wrong begets another. Statements entirely unfounded,
or grossly exaggerated, concerning events within the Territory are
sedulously diffused through remote States to feed the flame of sectional
animosity there, and the agitators there exert themselves indefatigably
in return to encourage and stimulate strife within the Territory.

The inflammatory agitation, of which the present is but a part, has for
twenty years produced nothing save unmitigated evil, North and South.
But for it the character of the domestic institutions of the future new
State would have been a matter of too little interest to the inhabitants
of the contiguous States, personally or collectively, to produce among
them any political emotion. Climate, soil, production, hopes of rapid
advancement and the pursuit of happiness on the part of the sett