nullity. To have done this would have been a violation of the Kansas
and Nebraska act, which left the people of the Territory "perfectly
free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way,
subject only to the Constitution of the United States." It would
equally have violated the great principle of popular sovereignty, at
the foundation of our institutions, to deprive the people of the power,
if they thought proper to exercise it, of confiding to delegates elected
by themselves the trust of framing a constitution without requiring them
to subject their constituents to the trouble, expense, and delay of a
second election. It would have been in opposition to many precedents in
our history, commencing in the very best age of the Republic, of the
admission of Territories as States into the Union without a previous
vote of the people approving their constitution.

It is to be lamented that a question so insignificant when viewed in its
practical effects on the people of Kansas, whether decided one way or
the other, should have kindled such a flame of excitement throughout
the country. This reflection may prove to be a lesson of wisdom and of
warning for our future guidance. Practically considered, the question is
simply whether the people of that Territory should first come into the
Union and then change any provision in their constitution not agreeable
to themselves, or accomplish the very same object by remaining out of
the Union and framing another constitution in accordance with their
will. In either case the result would be precisely the same. The only
difference, in point of fact, is that the object would have been much
sooner attained and the pacification of Kansas more speedily effected
had it been admitted as a State during the last session of Congress.

My recommendation, however, for the immediate admission of Kansas failed
to meet the approbation of Congress. They deemed it wiser to adopt a
different measure for the settlement of the question. For my own part, I
should have been willing to yield my assent to almost any constitutional
measure to accomplish this object. I therefore cordially acquiesced in
what has been called the English compromise and approved the "act for
the admission of the State of Kansas into the Union" upon the terms
therein prescribed.

Under the ordinance which accompanied the Lecompton constitution the
people of Kansas had claimed double the quantity of public lands fo