A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 5, part 3: Franklin Pierce

by Unknown

Circumstances have occurred to disturb the course of governmental organization in the Territory of Kansas and produce there a condition of things which renders it incumbent on me to call your attention to the subject and urgently to recommend the adoption by you of such measures of legislation as the grave exigencies of the case appear to require.

A brief exposition of the circumstances referred to and of their causes will be necessary to the full understanding of the recommendations which it is proposed to submit.

The act to organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas was a manifestation of the legislative opinion of Congress on two great points of constitutional construction: One, that the designation of the boundaries of a new Territory and provision for its political organization and administration as a Territory are measures which of right fall within the powers of the General Government; and the other, that the inhabitants of any such Territory, considered as an inchoate State, are entitled, in the exercise of self-government, to determine for themselves what shall be their own domestic institutions, subject only to the Constitution and the laws duly enacted by Congress under it and to the power of the existing States to decide, according to the provisions and principles of the Constitution, at what time the Territory shall be received as a State into the Union. Such are the great political rights which are solemnly declared and affirmed by that act.

Based upon this theory, the act of Congress defined for each Territory the outlines of republican government, distributing public authority among lawfully created agents—executive, judicial, and legislative—to be appointed either by the General Government or by the Territory. The legislative functions were intrusted to a council and a house of representatives, duly elected, and empowered to enact all the local laws which they might deem essential to their prosperity, happiness, and good government. Acting in the same spirit, Congress also defined the persons who were in the first instance to be considered as the people of each Territory, enacting that every free white male inhabitant of the same above the age of 21 years, being an actual resident thereof and possessing the qualifications hereafter described, should be entitled to vote at the first election and be eligible to any office within the Territory, but that the qualification of voters and holding office at all subsequent elections should be such as might be prescribed by the legislative assembly; provided, however, that the right of suffrage and of holding office should be exercised only by citizens of the United States and those who should have declared on oath their intention to become such and have taken an oath to support the Constitution of the United States and the provisions of the act; and provided further, that no officer, soldier, seaman, or marine or other person in the Army or Navy of the United States or attached to troops in their service should be allowed to vote or hold office in either Territory by reason of being on service therein.

Such of the public officers of the Territories as by the provisions of the act were to be appointed by the General Government, including the governors, were appointed and commissioned in due season, the law having been enacted on the 30th of May, 1854, and the commission of the governor of the Territory of Nebraska being dated on the 2d day of August, 1854, and of the Territory of Kansas on the 29th day of June, 1854. Among the duties imposed by the act on the governors was that of directing and superintending the political organization of the respective Territories.

The governor of Kansas was required to cause a census or enumeration of the inhabitants and qualified voters of the several counties and districts of the Territory to be taken by such persons and in such mode as he might designate and appoint; to appoint and direct the time and places of holding the first elections, and the manner of conducting them, both as to the persons to superintend such elections and the returns thereof; to declare the number of the members of the council and the house of representatives for each county or district; to declare what persons might appear to be duly elected, and to appoint the time and place of the first meeting of the legislative assembly. In substance, the same duties were devolved on the governor of Nebraska.

While by this act the principle of constitution for each of the Territories was one and the same and the details of organic legislation regarding both were as nearly as could be identical, and while the Territory of Nebraska was tranquilly and successfully organized in the due course of law, and its first legislative assembly met on the 16th of January, 1855, the organization of Kansas was long delayed, and has been attended with serious difficulties and embarrassments, partly the consequence of local maladministration and partly of the unjustifiable interference of the inhabitants of some of the States, foreign by residence, interests, and rights to the Territory.

The governor of the Territory of Kansas, commissioned as before stated, on the 29th of June, 1854, did not reach the designated seat of his government until the 7th of the ensuing October, and even then failed to make the first step in its legal organization, that of ordering the census or enumeration of its inhabitants, until so late a day that the election of the members of the legislative assembly did not take place until the 30th of March, 1855, nor its meeting until the 2d of July, 1855. So that for a year after the Territory was constituted by the act of Congress and the officers to be appointed by the Federal Executive had been commissioned it was without a complete government, without any legislative authority, without local law, and, of course, without the ordinary guaranties of peace and public order.

In other respects the governor, instead of exercising constant vigilance and putting forth all his energies to prevent or counteract the tendencies to illegality which are prone to exist in all imperfectly organized and newly associated communities, allowed his attention to be diverted from official obligations by other objects, and himself set an example of the violation of law in the performance of acts which rendered it my duty in the sequel to remove him from the office of chief executive magistrate of the Territory.

Before the requisite preparation was accomplished for election of a Territorial legislature, an election of Delegate to Congress had been held in the Territory on the 29th day of November, 1854, and the Delegate took his seat in the House of Representatives without challenge. If arrangements had been perfected by the governor so that the election for members of the legislative assembly might be held in the several precincts at the same time as for Delegate to Congress, any question appertaining to the qualification of the persons voting as people of the Territory would have passed necessarily and at once under the supervision of Congress, as the judge of the validity of the return of the Delegate, and would have been determined before conflicting passions had become inflamed by time, and before opportunity could have been afforded for systematic interference of the people of individual States.