lers
themselves, with good wishes, but with no interference from without,
would have quietly determined the question which is at this time of such
disturbing character.

But we are constrained to turn our attention to the circumstances of
embarrassment as they now exist. It is the duty of the people of Kansas
to discountenance every act or purpose of resistance to its laws. Above
all, the emergency appeals to the citizens of the States, and especially
of those contiguous to the Territory, neither by intervention of
nonresidents in elections nor by unauthorized military force to attempt
to encroach upon or usurp the authority of the inhabitants of the
Territory.

No citizen of our country should permit himself to forget that he is a
part of its Government and entitled to be heard in the determination
of its policy and its measures, and that therefore the highest
considerations of personal honor and patriotism require him to maintain
by whatever of power or influence he may possess the integrity of the
laws of the Republic.

Entertaining these views, it will be my imperative duty to exert the
whole power of the Federal Executive to support public order in the
Territory; to vindicate its laws, whether Federal or local, against all
attempts of organized resistance, and so to protect its people in the
establishment of their own institutions, undisturbed by encroachment
from without, and in the full enjoyment of the rights of self-government
assured to them by the Constitution and the organic act of Congress.

Although serious and threatening disturbances in the Territory of
Kansas, announced to me by the governor in December last, were speedily
quieted without the effusion of blood and in a satisfactory manner,
there is, I regret to say, reason to apprehend that disorders will
continue to occur there, with increasing tendency to violence, until
some decisive measure be taken to dispose of the question itself which
constitutes the inducement or occasion of internal agitation and of
external interference.

This, it seems to me, can best be accomplished by providing that when
the inhabitants of Kansas may desire it and shall be of sufficient
number to constitute a State, a convention of delegates, duly elected by
the qualified voters, shall assemble to frame a constitution, and thus
to prepare through regular and lawful means for its admission into the
Union as a State.

I respectfully recommend the enactment of a law t