[531] Stanwood, History of the Presidency, p. 267.
[532] Washington Union, June 7, 1856.
[533] Correspondent to Cincinnati Enquirer, June 12, 1856.
[534] The letter read, "This legislation is founded upon principles as ancient as free government itself, and in accordance with them has simply declared that the people of a Territory like those of a State, shall decide for themselves whether slavery shall or shall not exist within their limits. The Kansas-Nebraska Act does no more than give the force of law to this elementary principle of self-government, declaring it to be 'the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave 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.' How vain and illusory would any other principle prove in practice in regard to the Territories," etc. Cincinnati Enquirer, June 22, 1856.
[535] Stanwood, History of the Presidency, pp. 269-274.
CHAPTER XIII[ToC]
THE TESTING OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY
The author of the Kansas-Nebraska bill doubtless anticipated a gradual and natural occupation of the new Territories by settlers like those home-seekers who had taken up government lands in Iowa and other States of the Northwest. In the course of time, it was to be expected, such communities would form their own social and political institutions, and so determine whether they would permit or forbid slave-labor. By that rapid, and yet on the whole strangely conservative, American process the people of the Territories would become politically self-conscious and ready for statehood. Not all at once, but gradually, a politically self-sufficient entity would come into being. Such had been the history of American colonization; it seemed the part of wise statesmanship to follow the trend of that history.