because if successful they would thus have removed an obstacle out of
the way of their own revolutionary constitution. They would have done
this, not upon a consideration of the merits of the whole or any part of
the Lecompton constitution, but simply because they have ever resisted
the authority of the government authorized by Congress, from which it
emanated.

Such being the unfortunate condition of affairs in the Territory, what
was the right as well as the duty of the law-abiding people? Were they
silently and patiently to submit to the Topeka usurpation, or adopt the
necessary measures to establish a constitution under the authority of
the organic law of Congress?

That this law recognized the right of the people of the Territory,
without any enabling act from Congress, to form a State constitution
is too clear for argument. For Congress "to leave the people of the
Territory perfectly free," in framing their constitution, "to form and
regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to
the Constitution of the United States," and then to say that they shall
not be permitted to proceed and frame a constitution in their own way
without an express authority from Congress, appears to be almost a
contradiction in terms. It would be much more plausible to contend
that Congress had no power to pass such an enabling act than to argue
that the people of a Territory might be kept out of the Union for an
indefinite period, and until it might please Congress to permit them
to exercise the right of self-government. This would be to adopt not
"their own way," but the way which Congress might prescribe.

It is impossible that any people could have proceeded with more
regularity in the formation of a constitution than the people of Kansas