the Constitution of
the United States. Kansas is therefore at this moment as much a slave
State as Georgia or South Carolina. Without this the equality of the
sovereign States composing the Union would be violated and the use and
enjoyment of a territory acquired by the common treasure of all the
States would be closed against the people and the property of nearly
half the members of the Confederacy. Slavery can therefore never be
prohibited in Kansas except by means of a constitutional provision, and
in no other manner can this be obtained so promptly, if a majority of
the people desire it, as by admitting it into the Union under its
present constitution.

On the other hand, should Congress reject the constitution under the
idea of affording the disaffected in Kansas a third opportunity of
prohibiting slavery in the State, which they might have done twice
before if in the majority, no man can foretell the consequences.

If Congress, for the sake of those men who refused to vote for delegates
to the convention when they might have excluded slavery from the
constitution, and who afterwards refused to vote on the 21st December
last, when they might, as they claim, have stricken slavery from the
constitution, should now reject the State because slavery remains in the
constitution, it is manifest that the agitation upon this dangerous
subject will be renewed in a more alarming form than it has ever yet
assumed.

Every patriot in the country had indulged the hope that the Kansas and
Nebraska act would put a final end to the slavery agitation, at least in
Congress, which had for more than twenty years convulsed the country
and endangered the Union. This act involved great and fundamental
principles, and if fairly carried into effect will settle the question.
Should the agitation be again revived, should the people of the sister
States be again estranged from each other with more than their former
bitterness, this will arise from a cause, so far as the interests of
Kansas are concerned, more trifling and insignificant than has ever
stirred the elements of a great people into commotion. To the people of
Kansas the only practical difference between admission or rejection
depends simply upon the fact whether they can themselves more speedily
change the present constitution if it does not accord with the will of
the majority, or frame a second constitution to be submitted to Congress
hereafter. Even if this were a question of