KANSAS. 47 5,564 were for the pro-slavery candidates; the excess of votes being so distributed through the different election precincts, that of the thirty-nine members of the legislature, but one free-State man was elected, and he was in the district farthest removed from Missouri. The election of nine members of the council, and eight members of the legislature, contested at the time before the governor, were, by reason of fraud and violence at the polls, set aside, and new elections ordered ; yet the legislature, without investigation, rejected all the members elected at the second election, and admitted to seats those whose election had been set aside, and to whom the governor refused certificates, a transaction unprecedented in the history of legislative bodies, and to be accounted for only on the ground that they were accomplices in the frauds The legislature thus constituted then enacted a code of laws denying the right of private judgment and the free expression of opinion, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, and, in certain cases, disfranchisement of political rights. In order that this code should be executed by its friends, this legislature provided for the appointment of all officers—civil, military, and judicial—not already appointed by the federal government, and then prolonged its own existence, by legislative act, till the 1st of January, 1857. As the council is elected for two sessions, no change can be made in that branch of the legislature until 1858 ; so that, from the time of the passage of the act organizing Kansas, which provides for annual sessions of the legislature, it will be almost four years before any change can be made by the people in the legislation thus imposed upon them. To sustain a government thus imposed upon an unwilling people, and marked by all the characteristics of deliberate oppression and wrong, armed men have been summoned from a neighboring State, and civil war is impending over the inhabitants of the Territory. As a remedy for these evils and a redress of such wrongs, it is proposed by their apologists to authorize the people, at some future time, to form another constitution, to be again submitted to Congress, with a new application for admission as a State. Why should their present application be rejected, and they be forced to pass through the mockery of another election, under the authority of this Territorial legislature, and subject to another invasion of non-residents ? Immediate action is necessary in order to put an end to the strife in the Territory, which, the President informs us, threatens the peace not only of Kansas, but of the Union. The representatives of freedom and of slavery, struggling for supremacy, rally to the plains of Kansas with the implements of war and violence. Is the bitterness engendered in these conflicts to be allayed, and the dangers of bloodshed to be averted, by Congress authorizing the people of the Territory at some future time to do what they already have the right to do without any such authority? An act of Congress authorizing them to form a State constitution confers no right that they do not already possess, and is no redress of present grievances, or relief against unjust and oppressive laws. The only political question upon which the people of Kansas are
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