last session of Congress.

The Supreme Court of the United States had previously decided that all
American citizens have an equal right to take into the Territories
whatever is held as property under the laws of any of the States,
and to hold such property there under the guardianship of the Federal
Constitution so long as the Territorial condition shall remain.

This is now a well-established position, and the proceedings of the last
session were alone wanting to give it practical effect. The principle
has been recognized in some form or other by an almost unanimous vote of
both Houses of Congress that a Territory has a right to come into the
Union either as a free or a slave State, according to the will of a
majority of its people. The just equality of all the States has thus
been vindicated and a fruitful source of dangerous dissension among them
has been removed.

Whilst such has been the beneficial tendency of your legislative
proceedings outside of Kansas, their influence has nowhere been so happy
as within that Territory itself. Left to manage and control its own
affairs in its own way, without the pressure of external influence, the
revolutionary Topeka organization and all resistance to the Territorial
government established by Congress have been finally abandoned. As a
natural consequence that fine Territory now appears to be tranquil and
prosperous and is attracting increasing thousands of immigrants to make
it their happy home.

The past unfortunate experience of Kansas has enforced the lesson, so
often already taught, that resistance to lawful authority under our
form of government can not fail in the end to prove disastrous to its