features which I considered objectionable. He concurred with me, and
promised to use his efforts to have them stricken out. When the
Mississippi delegation assembled, our conference was full, and marked
by the desire, first to protect the rights of our State, and secondly,
to secure unanimity of action by its delegation. The objections which
were urged, referred, as my memory serves me, entirely to the features
which I had reason to hope would be stricken out. One of the
delegation announced an unwillingness to support the proposed
modification of the Senate proposition, lest it should be considered
as yielding the point on which we had insisted that Congress could not
require the Constitution to be submitted to a popular vote. I refer to
the lamented Quitman, whose sincere devotion to Southern interests, no
one, who knew him, could question. I regretted that he deemed it
necessary to vote, finally, against the measure, but I honor the
motive which governed his course.

The ordinance which was attached to the Constitution, was not a part
of it, but a condition annexed to the application for admission. If
Congress had stricken the ordinance out, the effect, I believe, would
have been that of admitting the State without any reservation of the
public land; would have transferred as an attribute of sovereignty the
useful as well as the eminent domain. The Southern Senators who
received the soubriquet of Southern ultras, held that position in
1850, in relation to the public lands of California, and it
constituted one of their objections to the admission of that State at
the time it was effected. To modify the ordinance, that is to change
the condition on which the inhabitants of Kansas proposed to enter
into the Union was necessarily to give them the right to withdraw
their proposition.