10 wise and less fortunate. He resigned. Pactus Thrasea (we are informed by Tacitus) had been often present in the Senate, when the fathers descended to unworthy acts, and did not rise in opposition ; but on the occasion when Nero procured from them a decree to celebrate, as a festival, the day on which he had murdered his mother, Agrippina, Paetus left his seat, and walked out of the chamber—thus by his virtue provoking future vengeance, and yet doing no service to the cause of Liberty. Possibly Robert J. Walker may find a less stern historian. The new Secretary, Mr. Denver, became Governor of Kansas, the fifth incumbent of that office appointed within less than four years, the legal term of one. Happily, however, for the honor of the country, three of the recalls were made on the ground of the virtues of the parties disgraced. .The Pro-Consuls of the Roman provinces were brought back to the Capital to answer for their crimes. The proceeding which the late Secretary Stanton had so wisely instituted, nevertheless, went on; and it has become, as I trust, the principal means of rescuing from tyranny the people whom he governed so briefly and yet so well. The Lecompton Constitution had directed, that on the 4th of January elections should be held to fill the State offices and the offices of members of the Legislature and member of Congress, to assume their trusts when the new State should be admitted into the Union. The Legislature of the Territory now enacted salutary laws for preserving the purity of elections in all cases. It directed the Lecompton Constitution to be submitted to a fair vote on that day, the ballots being made to express a consent to the Constitution, or a rejection of it, with or without Slavery. The Free Labor party debated anxiously on the question, whether, besides voting against that Constitution, they should, under protest, vote also for officers to assume^the trusts created by it, if Congress should admit the State under it. After a majority had decided that no such votes should be cast, a minority hastily rejected the decision, and nominated candidates for those places, to be supported under protest. The success of the movement, made under the most serious disadvantages, is conclusive evidence of their strength. While the election held on the 21st of December, allowing all fraudulent votes, showed some six thousand majority for the Constitution with Sia* very, over some five hundred votes for the Constitution without Slavery, the election on the 4th of January showed an aggregate majority of eleven thousand against the Constitution itself in any form, with the choice, under protest, of a Representative in Congress, and of a large majority of all the candidates nominated by the Free Labor party for the various Executive and Legislative trusts under the Lecompton Constitution. The Territorial Legislature has abolished Slavery by a law to take effect in March, 1858, though the Lecompton Constitution contains provisions anticipating, and designed to defeat, this iciamo uuawot; vi vuc m me uw great act of justice and humanity. It has organ- States in the House of Representatives, and esized a militia, which stands ready for the defence pecially in the Senate, co-operating with the of the rights of the people against any power. The President of the Lecompton Convention has fled the Territory, charged with an attempt to procure fraudulent returns to reverse the already declared results of the last election, and he holds the public in suspense as to his success until after his arrival at the Capital, and the decision of Congress on the acceptance of the Lecompton Constitution. In the mean time, the Territorial Legislature has called a Convention, subject t© the popular approval, to be held in March next, and to form a Constitution to be submitted to the people, and, when adopted, to be the organic law of the new State of Kansas, subject to her admission into the Union. The President of the United States, having received the Lecompton Constitution, has submitted it to Congress, and insisting that the vote taken on the juggle of the Lecompton Convention, held on the 21st of December, is legally conclusive of its acceptance by the people, and absolute against the fair, direct, and unimpeachable rejection of it by that people, made on the 4th of January last, he recommends and urges and implores the admission of Kansas as a State into the Federal Union, under that false, pretended, and spurious Constitution. I refrain from any examination of this extraordinary message. My recital is less complete than I have g hoped, if it does not overthrow all the President’s arguments in favor of the acceptance of the Lecompton Constitution as an act of the people of Kansas, however specious, and without descending to any details. In Congress, those who seek the admission of Kansas under that Constitution, strive to delay the admission of Minnesota, until their opponents shall compromise on that paramount question. This, Mr. President, is a concise account of the national intervention in the Territories in favor of slave labor and slave States since 1820. No wonder that the question before us excites apprehensions and alarms. There is at last a North side of this Chamber, a North side of the Chamber of Representatives, a North side of the Union, as well as South sides of all these. Each of them is watchful, jealous, and resolute. If it be true, as has so often been asserted, that this Union cannot survive the decision by Congress of a direct question involving the adoption of a free State which will establish the ascendency of free States under the Constitution, and draw after, it the restoration of the influence of Freedom in the domestic and foreign conduct of the Government, then the day of dissolution is at hand. I have thus, Mr. President, arrived at the third circumstance attending the Kansas question which I have thought worthy of consideration, namely, that the national intervention in the Territories in favor of slave labor and slave States is opposed to the material, moral, and social developments of the Republic. The proposition , seems to involve a paradox, but it is easy to understand that the checks which^the Constitution applies, through prudent caution, to the rel tive increase of the representation of th free
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