HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.
![handle is hein.slavery/iaknss0001 and id is 1 raw text is:
The immediate admission of Kansas as a State.
SPEECH
OF
iON. WILLIAM HI. SEWARD,
OF NEW YORK.
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, APRIL 9, 1856.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 1856.
The special order of the day having been resumed,
Mr. SEWARD addressed the Senate as fol-
lows :
MR. PRESIDENT: To obtain empire is easy
and common; to govern it well is difficult and
rare indeed. I salute the Congress of the United
States in the exercise of its most important func-
tion-that of extending the Federal Constitution
over added domains; and I salute especially the
Senate in the most august of all its manifold
characters, itself a Congress of thirty-one free,
equal, sovereign States, assembled to decide
whether the majestic and fraternal circle shall be
opened to receive yet another free, equal and
sovereign State. The Constitution prescribes
only two qualifications for new States, namely-
a substantial civil community, and a republican
Government. Kansas has both of these. The
circumstances of Kansas, and her relations to-
wards the Union, are peculiar, anomalous, and
deeply interesting. The United States acquired
the province of Louisiana, (which included the
present Territory of Kansas,) from France, in
1803, by a treaty, in which they agreed that its
inhabitants should be incorporated into the Fed-
eral Union, and admitted as soon as possible,
according to the principles of the Constitution,
to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages,
and immunities of citizens of the United States.
Nevertheless, Kansas was in 1820 assigned as a
home for an indefinite period to several savage
Indian tribes, and closed against immigration
and all other than aboriginal civilization, but not
without a cotemporaneous pledge to the Amer-
ican people and to mankind that neither Slavery
nor involuntary servitude should be tolerated
therein forever. In 1854 Congress directed a
removal of the Indian tribes; and organized and
opened Kansas to civilization, but by the same
act rescinded the pledge of perpetual dedication
to Freedom, and substituted for it another,
which declared that the [future] people of Kan-
sas should be left perfectly free to establish or to
exclude Slavery, as they should decide through
the action of the Republican Government, which
Congress modeled and authorized them to estab-
lish, under the protection of the United States.
Notwithstanding this latter pledge, when the
newly associated people of Kansas, in 1855, were
proceeding with the machinery of popular elec-
tions, in the manner prescribed by Congress, to
choose legislative bodies for the purpose of or-
ganizing that republican government, armed
bands of invaders from the State of Missouri en-
tered the Territory, seized the polls, overpowered
or drove away the inhabitants, usurped the elec-
tive franchise, deposited false and spurious bal-
lots without regard to regularity of qualification
or of numbers, procured official certificates of the
result by fraud and force, and thus created and
constituted legislative bodies to act for and in
the name of the people of the Territory. These
legislative bodies afterward assembled, assumed
to be a legitimate Legislature, set forth a code
of municipal laws, created public offices and
filled them with officers appointed for consider-
able periods by themselves, and thus established
a complete and effective foreign tyranny over the
people of the Territory. These high-handed
transactions were consummated with the express
purpose of establishing African Slavery as a per-
manent institution within the Territory byr force,
in violation of the natural rights of the' people
solemnly guaranteed to them by the Congress of
the United States. The President of the United
States has been an accessory to these political
transactions, with full complicity in regard to
the purpose for which they were committed. He
has adopted the usurpation, and made it his own,
and he is now maintaining it with the military
arm of the Republic. Thus Kansas has been
revolutionized, and she now lies subjugated and
prostrate at the feet of the President of the
United States, while he, through the agency of
a foreign tyranny established within her borders,
is forcibly introducing and establishing Slavery
Reproduced with permission from the University of Illinois at Chicago
Fl FOR SALE AT THE OFFICE OF THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE. PRICE, PER DozEN COPIES 20c.;
rER HUNDRED, $1 25.; PER THOUSAND, $10.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.slavery/iaknss0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)