hrough the wisdom and energy of the present
executive of Kansas and the prudence, firmness, and vigilance of the
military officers on duty there tranquillity has been restored without
one drop of blood having been shed in its accomplishment by the forces
of the United States.

The restoration of comparative tranquillity in that Territory furnishes
the means of observing calmly and appreciating at their just value the
events which have occurred there and the discussions of which the
government of the Territory has been the subject.

We perceive that controversy concerning its future domestic institutions
was inevitable; that no human prudence, no form of legislation, no
wisdom on the part of Congress, could have prevented it.

It is idle to suppose that the particular provisions of their organic
law were the cause of agitation. Those provisions were but the occasion,
or the pretext, of an agitation which was inherent in the nature of
things. Congress legislated upon the subject in such terms as were most
consonant with the principle of popular sovereignty which underlies our
Government. It could not have legislated otherwise without doing
violence to another great principle of our institutions--the
imprescriptible right of equality of the several States.

We perceive also that sectional interests and party passions have been
the great impediment to the salutary operation of the organic principles
adopted and the chief cause of the successive disturbances in Kansas,
The assumption that because in the organization of the Territories of
Nebraska and Kansas Congress abstained from imposing restraints upon
them to which certain other Territories had been subject, therefore
disorders occurred in the latter Territory, is emphatically contradicted
by the fact that none have occurred in the former. Those disorders were
not the consequence, in Kansas, of the freedom of self-government
conceded to that Territory by Congress, but of unjust interference on
the part of persons not inhabitants of the Territory. Such interference,
wherever it has exhibited itself by acts of insurrectionary character or
of obstruction to process of law, has been repelled or suppressed by all
the means which the Constitution and the laws place in the hands of the
Executive.

In those parts of the United States where, by reason of the inflamed
state of the public mind, false rumors and misrepresentations have
the greatest currency it has been assumed