n of it and practice under it from
the earliest period of our history, the Territories
had been subjected to the absolute control
of the General Government. By the Kansas
and Nebraska Bill they were withdrawn
from that control. The principle of Popular
Sovereignty, it was said, applied to them as
well as to the States; and this bill declared
that the people of the Territories should be
perfectly free to choose their own domestic
institutions and regulate their own affairs in
their own way."

The means employed to carry out this plan and the ultimate failure of
the plan itself are sketched with a boldness and vigor that our limits,
much to our regret, forbid our reproducing. Mr. Fisher, however, fails
to notice the wretched plea put forth by the Democratic managers,
in favor of the recognition by Congress of the Lecompton
Constitution,--that it had been officially authenticated. All might be
wrong, but the official record pronounced it right; and behind that
record Congress had no authority to go. And this plea was advanced in
the face of overwhelming evidence tending to show that the officials,
for whose record so inviolable a sanctity was claimed, were appointed
for the express purpose of falsifying that record! If confirmation be
wanted, we need go no farther than the fate of Robert J. Walker, who was
eager to make Kansas a Slave State, but was so false to every principle
of Democratic integrity as to confine himself to legitimate means to
bring about that result,--a remissness for which he was promptly removed
by President Buchanan! Mr. Fisher pertinently says,--

"Two great facts were plainly visible through the flimsy web of attorney
logic and quibbling technicality, not very ingeniously woven to conceal
them. One of these facts was, that the people of Kansas were heartily
and almost unanimously averse to slavery; the other was, that the
Government was trying by every means in its power to impose slavery upon
them."

After describing the contemptuous rejection by the people of Kansas of
the pro-slavery constitution, Mr. Fisher proceeds with an analysis of
the Kansas-Nebraska fraud, so clear and so masterly that we must again
quote his own language, with an occasional condensation or omission.

"It was clear, therefore, that the principle of Popular Sovereignty,
introduced by the Kansas and Nebraska Bill, a principle before unknown
to the law and practice of our government, would not sui