If Congress, for the sake of those men who refused to vote for delegates
to the convention when they might have excluded slavery from the
constitution, and who afterwards refused to vote on the 21st December
last, when they might, as they claim, have stricken slavery from the
constitution, should now reject the State because slavery remains in the
constitution, it is manifest that the agitation upon this dangerous
subject will be renewed in a more alarming form than it has ever yet
assumed.

Every patriot in the country had indulged the hope that the Kansas and
Nebraska act would put a final end to the slavery agitation, at least in
Congress, which had for more than twenty years convulsed the country
and endangered the Union. This act involved great and fundamental
principles, and if fairly carried into effect will settle the question.
Should the agitation be again revived, should the people of the sister
States be again estranged from each other with more than their former
bitterness, this will arise from a cause, so far as the interests of
Kansas are concerned, more trifling and insignificant than has ever
stirred the elements of a great people into commotion. To the people of
Kansas the only practical difference between admission or rejection
depends simply upon the fact whether they can themselves more speedily
change the present constitution if it does not accord with the will of
the majority, or frame a second constitution to be submitted to Congress
hereafter. Even if this were a question of mere expediency, and not of
right, the small difference of time one way or the other is of not the
least importance when contrasted with the evils which must necessarily
result to the whole country from a revival of the slavery agitation.

In considering this question it should never be forgotten that in
proportion to its insignificance, let the decision be what it may so far