Mr. Buchanan reiterated that assertion in his
Inaugural address, and in subsequent communications. When he
appointed Mr. Robert J. Walker Governor of the Territory, he
instructed him to assure the people that they should be guarantied
against all "fraud or violence" when they should be called upon
"to vote for or against the Constitution which would be submitted to
them," so that there might be "a fair expression of the popular will."
Nothing, in short, could have been clearer, more direct, more
frequently repeated, than the asseverations of the "Democratic Party,"
made through its official representatives, its newspapers, and its
orators,--to the effect, that its only object, in its Kansas policy,
was to secure "the great principle of Popular Sovereignty." On the
strength of these assurances alone, it was enabled to achieve its
hard-won victory in the last Presidential campaign. Mr. Buchanan
owes his position to them, as is repeatedly admitted by Mr. Douglas
in his speech of December 9th last,--and the whole nation, having
discussed and battled and voted on the principle, acquiesced, as it
is accustomed to do after an election, in the ascendency of the
victors. It prepared itself to see the application of the principle
which had been announced and defended as so important and wise.
Under these pledges and promises, what has been the performance? A
Convention, for which, inasmuch as it was illegally called by an
illegal body, a large proportion of the citizens of Kansas refused
to vote, frames a Constitution, in the interest and according to the
convictions of the slenderest minority of the people; it
incorporates in that Constitution a recognition of old Territorial
laws to the last degree offensive to the majority of the people; it
incorporates in it a clause establishing slavery in perpetuity; it
connects with it a Schedule perpetuating the existing slavery,
whatever it may be, against all future remedy which has not the
sanction of the slave-master; and then, by a miserable chicane, it
submits the Constitution to a vote of the people, but it submits it
under such terms, that the people, if they vote at all, must vote
_for_ it, whether they like it or not, while the only part in
which they can exercise any choice is the _clause_ which relates to
future slavery.
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