exposition of the circumstances referred to and of their causes
will be necessary to the full understanding of the recommendations which
it is proposed to submit.

The act to organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas was a
manifestation of the legislative opinion of Congress on two great
points of constitutional construction: One, that the designation of
the boundaries of a new Territory and provision for its political
organization and administration as a Territory are measures which of
right fall within the powers of the General Government; and the other,
that the inhabitants of any such Territory, considered as an inchoate
State, are entitled, in the exercise of self-government, to determine
for themselves what shall be their own domestic institutions, subject
only to the Constitution and the laws duly enacted by Congress under
it and to the power of the existing States to decide, according to
the provisions and principles of the Constitution, at what time the
Territory shall be received as a State into the Union. Such are the
great political rights which are solemnly declared and affirmed by
that act.

Based upon this theory, the act of Congress defined for each Territory
the outlines of republican government, distributing public authority
among lawfully created agents--executive, judicial, and legislative--to
be appointed either by the General Government or by the Territory.
The legislative functions were intrusted to a council and a house of
representatives, duly elected, and empowered to enact all the local laws
which they might deem essential to their prosperity, happiness, and good
government. Acting in the same spirit, Congress also defined the persons
who were in the first instance to be considered as the people of each
Territory, enacting that every free white male inhabitant of the same
above the age of 21 years, being an actual resident thereof and
possessing the qualifications hereafter described, should be entitled
to vote at the first election and be eligible to any office within the
Territory, but that the qualification of voters and holding office at
all subsequent elections should be such as might be prescribed by the
legislative assembly; provided, however, that the right of suffrage and
of holding office should be exercised only by citizens of the United
States and those who should have declared on oath their intention to
become such and have taken an oath to support the Constitution of the