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Submission criteria. Educate Classroom materials Tours and events Professional support. The sacred principle of popular sovereignty has been invoked in favor of the enemies of law and order in Kansas. But in what manner is popular sovereignty to be exercised in this country, if not through the instrumentality of established law? In certain small republics of ancient times the people did assemble in primary meetings, passed laws, and directed public affairs.
In our country this is manifestly impossible. Popular sovereignty can be exercised here only through the ballot- box; and if the people will refuse to exercise it in this manner, as they have done in Kansas at the election of delegates, it is not for them to complain that their rights have been violated.
The question of slavery was submitted to an election of the people of Kansas on the 21st December last, in obedience to the mandate of the Constitution. Here, again, a fair opportunity was presented to the adherents of the Topeka constitution, if they were the majority, to decide this exciting question "in their own way," and thus restore peace to the distracted Territory; but they again refused to exercise their right of popular sovereignty, and again suffered the election to pass by default.
The people of Kansas have, then, "in their own way," and in strict accordance with the organic act, framed a constitution and State government; have submitted the all-important question of slavery to the people, and have elected a governor, a member to represent them in Congress, members of the State legislature, and other State officers.
They now ask admission into the Union under this constitution, which is republican in its form. It is for Congress to decide whether they will admit or reject the State which has thus been created. For my own part, I am decidedly in favor of its admission, and thus terminating the Kansas question.
This will carry out the great principle of non-intervention recognized and sanctioned by the organic act, which declares in express language in favor of "non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States or Territories," leaving "the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.
It is proper that I should briefly refer to the election held under an act of the territorial legislature, on the first Monday of January last, on the Lecompton constitution. This election was held after the Territory had been prepared for admission into the Union as a sovereign State, and when or change its character. The election, which was peaceably conducted under my instructions, involved a strange inconsistency.
A large majority of the persons who voted against the Lecompton constitution were at the very same time and place recognizing its valid existence in the most solemn and authentic manner, by voting under its provisions. I have yet received no official information of the result of this election. After reading this document does it appear to you that President Buchanan believes people in the territory of Kansas, or any other territory for that matter, have the right to establish slavery of they want it?
Why or why not? Using a map of the Missouri Compromise and a map of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, have students contrast the two so that they can see how much the country had grown and to analyze new developments in the map of in order to appreciate the urgency of the arguments advanced in the arguments over slavery. Divide the students into two groups. Why were people all over the country talking about Kansas and the LeCompton Constitution?
Why was it so important that Kansas enter the Union as either slave or free? Was President Buchanan really pro-slavery or was he just trying to keep the South happy and prevent a Civil War? If you were a settler in Kansas which is more important to you? Arguing over slavery, or arguing over the right to choose if Kansas is slave or free? Illegal voting takes place. The majority of votes are cast for proslavery delegates. Congressional debate on the act continued discussion of the question of whether or not slavery would be allowed to expand into newly opened territories.
The act provided that each territory would decide the issue through the constitution under which it would enter the Union. Kansas Territory, because of its proximity to Missouri, a slave state, became a political and literal battleground for proslavery and antislavery forces.
Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Kansas, situated on the American Great Plains, became the 34th state on January 29, Its path to statehood was long and bloody: After the Kansas-Nebraska Act of opened the two territories to settlement and allowed the new settlers to determine whether the states would Known as the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the controversial bill raised the possibility that slavery could Douglas in a series of seven debates.
Thousands of spectators and newspaper reporters from around the country watched as Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries people were kidnapped from the continent of Africa, forced into slavery in the American colonies and exploited to work as indentured servants and labor in the production of crops such as tobacco and cotton.
By the midth century, An ambiguous, controversial concept, Jacksonian Democracy in the strictest sense refers simply to the ascendancy of Andrew Jackson and the Democratic party after In , amid growing sectional tensions over the issue of slavery, the U. During this era, America became Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault.
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