the question which had convulsed the Union and shaken it to its very
center. This was the question which had lighted up the flames of civil
war in Kansas and had produced dangerous sectional parties throughout
the Confederacy. It was of a character so paramount in respect to the
condition of Kansas as to rivet the anxious attention of the people of
the whole country upon it, and it alone. No person thought of any other
question. For my own part, when I instructed Governor Walker in general
terms in favor of submitting the constitution to the people, I had no
object in view except the all-absorbing question of slavery. In what
manner the people of Kansas might regulate their other concerns was not
a subject which attracted any attention. In fact, the general provisions
of our recent State constitutions, after an experience of eight years,
are so similar and so excellent that it would be difficult to go far
wrong at the present day in framing a new constitution.

I then believed and still believe that under the organic act the Kansas
convention were bound to submit this all-important question of slavery
to the people. It was never, however, my opinion that, independently
of this act, they would have been bound to submit any portion of the
constitution to a popular vote in order to give it validity. Had I
entertained such an opinion, this would have been in opposition to
many precedents in our history, commencing in the very best age of
the Republic. It would have been in opposition to the principle which
pervades our institutions, and which is every day carried out into
practice, that the people have the right to delegate to representatives
chosen by themselves their sovereign power to frame constitutions, enact
laws, and perform many other important acts without requiring that these
should be subjected to their subsequent approbation. It would be a most
inconvenient limitation of their own power, imposed by the people upon
themselves, to exclude them from exercising their sovereignty in any