That object is nothing
less than an attempt to cover the enormous frauds which have marked
the proceedings of the Pro-Slavery agents in Kansas, from their
initiation, with a varnish of smooth and plausible pretexts.
Adroitly taking up the question at the point which it had reached
when his own administration began, he leaves out of view all the
antecedent crimes, treacheries, and tricks by which the people of
the Territory had been led into civil war, and thus assumes that the
late Lecompton Convention was a legitimate Convention, and that the
Constitution framed by it (or said to have been framed by it,--for
there is no official report of the instrument as yet) was framed in
pursuance of proper authority or law. He does not tell us that the
Territorial legislature which called this Convention was a usurping
legislature, brought together, as the Congressional records show, by
an invading horde from a neighboring State; he does not tell us, that,
even if it had been a properly constituted body in itself, it had no
right to call a Convention for the purpose of superseding the
Territorial organization; he does not tell us that the Convention,
as assembled, represented but one-tenth of the legal voters of the
Territory; nor does he seem to regard the fact, that the other
nine-tenths of the people were virtually disfranchised by that
Convention, so far as their right to determine the provisions of
their organic law is concerned, as at all a vital and important fact.
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