without reference to the action of congress upon their application for admi into the Union.
Your committee are not aware of any case in the history of our own country, which can be fairly cited as an example, much less a justification, for these extraordinary proceedings. Cases have occurred in which the inhabitants of particular territories have been permitted to form constitutions, and take the initiatory steps for the organization of state governments, preparatory to their admission into the Union, without obtaining the previous assent of congress; but in every instance the proceeding has originated with, and been conducted in subordination to, the authority of the local governments established or recognized by the government of the United States. Michigan, Arkansas, Florida, and California, are sometimes cited as cases in point.
In tracing, step by step, the origin and history of these Kansas difficulties, your committee have been profoundly impressed with the significant fact, that each one has resulted from an attempt to violate or circumvent the principles and provisions of the act of congress for the organization of Kansas and Nebraska. The leading idea and fundamental principle of the Kansas-Nebraska act, as expressed in the law itself, was to leave the actual settlers and bona fide inhabitants of each territory "perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the constitution of the United States." While this is declared to be "the true intent and meaning of the act," those who were opposed to allowing the people of the territory, preparatory to their admission into the Union as a state, to decide the slavery question for themselves, failing to accomplish their purpose in the halls of congress, and under the authority of the constitution, immediately resorted, in their respective states, to unusual and extraordinary means to control the political destinies and shape the domestic institutions of Kansas, in defiance of the wishes, and regardless of the rights, of the people of that territory, as guarantied by their organic law. Combinations, in one section of the Union, to stimulate an unnatural and false system of emigration, with the view of controlling the elections, and forcing the domestic institutions of the territory to assimilate to those of the non-slaveholding states, were followed, as might have been foreseen, by the use of similar means in the slaveholding states, to produce directly the opposite result. To these causes, and to these alone, in the opinion of your committee, may be traced the origin and progress of all the controversies and disturbances with which Kansas is now convulsed.
If these unfortunate troubles have resulted, as natural consequences, from unauthorized and improper schemes of foreign interference with the internal atfairs and domestic concerns of the territory, it is apparent that the remedy must be sought in a strict adherence to the principles, and rigid enforcement, of the provisions, of the organic law. In this connection, your committee feel sincere satisfaction in commending the messages and proclamation of the president of the United States, in which we have the gratifying assurance that the supremacy of the laws will be maintained; that rebellion will be crushed; that insurrection will be suppressed; that aggressive intrusion for the purpose of
