F 685 
 
 ■P"* , REPORT OF THE MINORITY 
 
 Copy 1 
 
 OP THB 
 
 SELECT COMMITTEE, 
 
 RELATIVB TO THE 
 
 ADMISSION OF KANSAS INTO THE UNION. 
 
 MADE TO THB 
 
 SENATE OF PENNSYLVANIA, 
 
 MARCH 17, 1858. 
 
 H ARRISBURG: 
 A.. BOYD HAMILTON, STATE PRINTER, 
 
 1858. 
 
1^(02 kS 
 
 \.\ ■ / 
 

 REfORT. 
 
 The minority of the select committee, to whom were referred certain reso 
 lutions respecting the admission of Kansas into the Union as a State, beg leave 
 to report : 
 
 That they dissent from the recommendations of the majority of the com- 
 mittee, and from the views expressed in the written report accompanying those 
 recommendations. The minority, at the same time, though with due respect, 
 must express the opinion that it is needless to touch on every point of an argu- 
 ment, based on facts, that have been either misunderstood or assumed. Some 
 remarks, however, on the report of the majority, seem to be expected, and it 
 may, therefore, be proper to direct attention to some of its positions and re- 
 markable inferences, although it is believed that whatever may be the action 
 of the Senate, there is no more danger of the intelligent and patriotic citizens 
 of this State being misled by astute and learned arguments in favor of the 
 establishment of domestic tyranny, than there was that our ancestors would 
 be convinced by the legal sophistries addressed to them in favor of submitting 
 to a foreign despot. 
 
 Eeference is made in the report of the majority, to a portion of the Consti- 
 tutional history of this State to sustain their views ; but if that portion of our 
 history, torn though it be from its context, which every where negatives those 
 views, be examined with any care, it too will be found to refute the leading 
 doctrine of the report, which, as we understand it, is that if a minority of the 
 people can by fraud and violence obtain power, and by the same means hold it 
 for a time, all their subsequent acts become not only legal and constitutional, 
 but are in accordance with precedents set by the people of this Common- 
 wealth. We have not, however, so read the annals of the land of Penn ; nor 
 do we believe that this doctrine, even if supported by such precedents, is con- 
 sistent with the principles of American law ; and it is deeply mortifying to 
 us, that any Pennsylvanians could be found to assert, even though they failed 
 to prove, that the history of this State furnished precedents to sustain the 
 Lecompton Convention, or the recommendation of the President, that Con- 
 gress should approve and ratify the acts of that usurping body. In the opinion 
 of the minority, the whole of our State history disproves the conclusions at 
 which the majority were enabled to arrive, more, perhaps, through anxiety to 
 sustain the position taken by the President, than from the clear convictions 
 of their reason. Not only does the portion of our annals referred to, disprove 
 the position of those who, in assailing American liberty with the temerity, i( 
 not with the motive of him who fired the Ephesian dome, have pressed it into 
 the service of tyranny ; but if time and space permitted, it could be shown 
 that our whole history disproves it. But if there he Pennsylvania precedents 
 to sustain the legality and righteousness of the frauds committed in Kansas, 
 
by those who violated all law to obtain power over the people, and bj^ this 
 means temporarily acquired it, then indeed has our history been misunder- 
 stood from the time it bc^un down to the present day. The temporary suc- 
 cess of treason and fraud may need precedents, but even if found, they could 
 never make the Lecompton Constitution, the result of those crimes, legally 
 binding on a free people, or give to Congress a semblance of excuse for sanc- 
 tioninor it. No act of Congress can make binding on the people of Kansas a 
 Constitution which, at a legal election, recognized as such by the President 
 liimself, the people declared to be no act of theirs. At least this is so, if the 
 Constitution of the United States is still the supreme law of the land, of which, 
 however, there may be some doubts, for if the despotism of slavery can enforce 
 the dictum of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case, and the President 
 and Congress, in obedience to that power, can force the Lecompton Constitu- 
 tion on the protesting people of Kansas, then it must be admitted that the law 
 established bj^ our ancestors being overthrown, the President and Congress can 
 make anything legal which our domestic despotism dictates. It cannot be 
 denied that a despotism makes law, as well as the people, in countries that 
 are free, though the obligations to obey are widely diflerent. In the one case 
 the people are morally bound to sustain the law, while in the other, their duty 
 to God and to man — to ihcmselves and to posterity — calls on them by every 
 means in their power to overthrow it. 
 
 If it shall appear, notwithstanding the case presented by the majority of 
 the committee, that our history furnishes precedents in favor of the rule, that 
 the majority uf the people shall govern, and none in favor of the opposite 
 doctrine, it will hardly be expected that more than a cursory notice shall be 
 taken of the latter portion of the majority report, which refers to the state- 
 ments and opinions of Governor Walker. And as a few words will dispose 
 of that, we propose to get it out of the way at once. The majority of the 
 committee have presented the statements made by that gentleman, when, as 
 Governor of Kansas, he was the agent of the slave power, and doing all that 
 a pro-slavery man, not lost to honor, could do to make Kansas a slave State, 
 and have coa)pared and contrasted these with the sentiments subsequently 
 expressed by him, when constrained by patriotism, and his written and spokea 
 pledges, to revolt against the crimes he was required to encourage, and when 
 to escape the immeasurable infamy he was expected to assume in carrying out 
 the views of his superiors, he had resigned office. A seeming inconsistency 
 on the part of Governor Walker, it may be admitted, is thus established. But 
 if the declarations and reports of every pro-slavery Governor who was sent 
 to Kansas for the purpose of defeating the will of the people, sufficiently 
 proves that his subsequent testimony and declarations are inconsistent, it is 
 still difficult to discover how this impairs the force of facts and arguments 
 adduced by the Fiee State men of Kansas, or their Republican friends else- 
 where, or how it strengthens arguments deduced from a mistaken view of 
 Pennsylvania precedents. Has it come to this, that men against whom the 
 highest crimes have been proven by the admitted testimony of hundreds of 
 honest witnesses, are to be acquitted, and their usurpations ratified and con- 
 firmed by Congress, on the miserable plea that a person who at one time, and 
 to a certain extent, was particeps criminis, appears by his retractions and sub- 
 sequent declarations to be inconsistent; and yet such would seem to be the 
 expectation of the majority of the committee, when they gravely quote the 
 reports of Governor Walker when in office, and under its temptations, against 
 the evidence which that gentleman gives after he had revolted against the 
 acxumulating iniquities required of him, and had returiied to private life to 
 preserve his own character, and save, if he could, the people of Kansas from 
 further oppression I 
 
If this disposes, as we think it does, of tlie latter liulf of the inajority re- 
 port, we may return to that part of the subject from which we have thu«" 
 briefly digressed. 
 
 As the report of the majority of tlie committee has been printed by order 
 of the Senate, without either of the resohitions referred to it, or even the 
 amendment recommended by the majority, it becomes desirable to set forth 
 the several resolutions in this report, to correct mi.sapprehensjons which have 
 arisen respecting them. These will, at least in part, be corrected when it is 
 seen that the amendment reported by the majority of the committee is in its 
 words and objects opposed to the resolution of the Senator from Allegheny, 
 (Mr. Wilkins,) to which only, in parliamentary phrase, it can be deemed au 
 amendment. The action of Congress recommended by the resolution offered 
 by the senior Senator from Allegheny, is deemed wholly inadequate to its 
 professed objects, and would doubtless open the way for a repetition of those 
 cruel and disgraceful deceptions so long and constantly practiced on the peo- 
 ple of Kansas by the National administration, yet it may well be presumed, 
 from the antecedent course of that Senator in this Legislature, that in his 
 opinion, the ultimate result would be to secure by peaceable means the free 
 institutions desired by the people of Kansas, and we must admit that such 
 were the objects he probably had in view. The President, in his late mes- 
 sage, stated that if Congress, "in the act of admission, should think proper 
 to recognize the fundamental principles of American freedom, he could per- 
 ceive no objections to such a course," and from the passages of the message 
 immediately preceding these words, it is evident that the President meant by 
 them just what the senior Senator from Allegheny intended to recommend by 
 his resolution, viz : — a Congressional declaration of the right of the people 
 of Kansas to abrogate the Lecompton Constitution forthwith, if their State 
 were admitted under it. But, notwithstanding these declarations of the Presi- 
 dent, recent experience instructs us that no sooner would the act admitting 
 Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution, and containing this qualification, 
 become a law, than the President and his whole Cabinet would adopt the 
 views of the ultra opponents of such a declaration by Congress, and would 
 with them deny that it possessed the force and virtue which at the present 
 moment the President vainly tries to make the people believe it does. 
 
 The votes given by the senior Senator from Allegheny, in this Legislature 
 in 1819, and his recent declarations on the floor of the Senate, justify, how- 
 ever, the belief that he, at least, was sincere in considering that such a Con- 
 gressional declaration might secure justice for Kansas, and leave her people 
 free to form their own institutions, even if admitted under the Lecomptou 
 Constitution. 
 
 If this reference to, and the formal repetition of the resolutions which foL 
 lows, should excite surprise, it may be well to remark, that had the Senate nat 
 refused to instruct the committee to report the minutes of their proceedings, 
 (thereby suppressing them,) surprise would probably have given place to a 
 stronger emotion. Yielding, however, to the alleged parliamentarj^ rule, that 
 the proceedings, in committee, are not to be promulged without the consent of 
 the committee, or the order of the Senate, tlie minoiitj^ will confine them- 
 selves to that portion of the proceedings which was reported to the Senate. 
 
 The resolution offered by the Senator from Allegheny, (Mr. Gazzam,) is as 
 follows, viz : 
 
 '■'■Resolved by the General Jlssembhj of the Commonumtlth of Pennsyivanin^ 
 That Simon Cameron, United States Senator from this State, be instructed, 
 and the Representatives in Congress from this State be requested, to vote 
 agiinst any bill admiuiag tlie Slate of "ansas Inlo the Ualon, tkat mayrccog- 
 
nize the so-called Lecompton Constitution as an act of the people of Kansas, 
 or as in any way binding on them." 
 
 The resolution offered by the senior Senator from Allegheny, (Mr. Wilkins,) 
 is as follows : 
 
 " Resolved^ That the immediate admission of Kansas as a State of the Union, 
 with a full and complete recognition by Congress, in the act of admission, of 
 the rio-ht of the people of Kansas over their own Constitution, would meet our 
 hearty approbation, and ought to restore peace and quiet to the people of the 
 States of the Union." 
 
 And the above resolution, as amended by the majority of the committee, by 
 striking out all after the word " Resolved," is as follows : 
 
 " Resolved by the Semite and House of Represe?itatives of the Commonwealth 
 of Pe7insylvania in General Assembly met, That this General Assembly doth 
 fully approve the recommendation of the President of the United States, as 
 made to Congress, in favor of the immediate admission of Kansas into the 
 Union as a State, under a Constitution lawfully made, and republican in its 
 form, and doth therefore counsel and endorse the said measure of admission 
 as both wise and just." 
 
 If the course which the first resolution recommends were pursued, the out- 
 laws who formed the Lecompton swindle would at once be defeated, though 
 not sufficiently punished, and the majority of the people of Kansas could pro- 
 ceed without further embarrassment to form their own Constitution ; whereas, 
 if the recommendations of the President, which the amended resolution so 
 emphatically endorses, or his Delphic intimations, which the second resolution 
 seems to favor, should be sustained by Congress, the only peaceful mode by 
 which the people of Kansas could possibly obtain their rights, would involve 
 the perjury of their Representatives, who, before taking office under the Le- 
 comption Constitution, would have to swear to support that Constitution, includ- 
 ino-the provisions which forever entail slavery, and forbid amendments before 
 the year IStii. 
 
 That a President of the United States, for the unholy purpose of extending 
 or perpetuating slavery, should recommend to Congress to sanction such a 
 Constitution, or intimate such a mode of procuring its amendment, would in- 
 deed, be incredible, if slavery had not heretofore been correctly defined to be 
 "the sum of all vilianies," a Constitution which the people of Kansas never 
 authorized to be made, but which, at an election, recognized as legal by the 
 President himself, they had rejected by a vote of ten thousand two hundred 
 and twenty-six against it, to a vote of only one hundred and thirty-eight in 
 its favor. 
 
 We have said that recent experience shows that if an act of Congress were 
 passed, admitting Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution, it would be fol- 
 lowed by another deception on the part of the administration, and no reasona- 
 'ble and dispassionate mind can doubt it. Why, if this be not intended, has 
 General Calhoun, the president of the Lecompton Convention, been encouraged 
 to retain to this day the returns of the votes given for members of the Legis- 
 lature! Is it not palpably for the purpose of securing by another false return 
 a pro-slavery majority that will refuse to call a convention to alter or amend 
 the work of their own party 1 
 
 But, notwithstanding that these facts are known to all men, and, even like 
 letters of brass on some foul image of the heathen, can be read on the brazen 
 foreheads of the Lecompton party of Kansas, yet a committee of this Senate 
 has declared the President's recommendation "both wise and just," and, 
 therefore, we must proceed a little further to see how they are sustained by 
 Pennsylvania precedents. 
 
The Pennsylvania constitutions of 177G and 1790, were formed by conven- 
 tions composed of such delegates as Benjamin Franklin, David Rittenhouse, 
 Thomas M'Kean, Thomas Mifllin, Joseph Hiester, Alexander Addison, James 
 Ross, Albert Gallatin, and other honest and patriotic men in whose tried in- 
 tegrity and wisdom during the Revolution, or in the years immediately fol- 
 lowing, the people had full confidence, and of whom, therefore, no portion of 
 the people demanded a submission of the work intrusted to them. Nor had 
 the Democratic party of this State at that time, as they did subsequently, 
 made it an article of their creed that all constitutions and all constitutional 
 amendments should be submitted to a vote of the people, and derive their 
 validity from the people directly. This precaution, however uncalled for in 
 1776 and 1790, had became necessary in more modern times, when the influ- 
 ence of slavery had corrupted so many of tlie political agents of the people. 
 Some counterpoise was required to a pov/er alternately insidious and arrogant, 
 though, unfortunately, none has yet been found that is an effectual barrier to 
 its political usurpations. If, instead of a horde of political knaves, who, 
 when candidates, pledged themselves to vote for the submission of the Consti- 
 tution to the people of Kansas, and shamefully violated that pledge after their 
 election, the Lccompton convention had been composed of such delegates as 
 Franklin, Rittenhouse, Mifflin, M'Kean, and their compeers, and had no voice 
 in that Territory demanded the submission of the Constitution, and had the 
 Constitution itself been as just and as republican as our own, and finally, had 
 the whole people, for all these reasons, quietly and unanimously acquiesced 
 in its going into operation, as was the case in Pennsylvania at the times re- 
 ferred to, then, perhaps, notwithstanding the recent doctrine of the Demo- 
 cratic party in this State, the precedents adduced by the majority of the 
 committee might have some weight. But as the very reverse of all this is 
 the case, the argument based on Pennsylvania precedent falls to the ground. 
 
 Should the Legislature adopt the resolution first referred to the committee, 
 and this should be followed by the action of Congress which it recommends, 
 the people of Kansas would have some guarantee that another fraud is not 
 intended by the party in power. But how could they, or the people of Penn- 
 sylvania, believe a party whose public men, while alfecyng to advocate the 
 right of the people of Kansas to abolish the Lecompton Constitution as soon 
 as they were admitted into the Union, should refuse to ask Congress to sanc- 
 tion that doctrine, and at the same time attempt to prove by precedents, that 
 the people are bound by the acts of a usurping minority, and should further 
 attempt to show that if such minority, after having destroyed the /atf, only 
 assume to themselves the forms of law, those forms become binding on the 
 people, and resistance to them by the majority is treason. 
 
 Even if such precedents, as the majority of the committee allege, did exist, 
 it would be a duty which Americans in Kansas owe to the Constitution of the 
 United States, to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and to 
 their country, wholly to disregard them. When Gov. Hutchinson, a tyrant 
 minion of a British King, required the oppressed people of Massachusetts to 
 >ubmit to what he called law and order^ and when he referred to precedents, 
 and tauntingly desired the people to disprove, if they could, the legal doctrine 
 of the supremacy of Parliament, they answered not as skilful lawyers, who 
 " knew the right but still the wrong pursued," but as determined freemen, who, 
 however ignorant of special pleading, believed and knew that the gVand prin- 
 ciple and ground work of British la\f was British liberty. They knew that 
 from the time of Magna Charta, till the convention of 1688, and from that 
 again until the unlawful attempt of the British King to impose taxes on his 
 American subjects without their consent, Biitish tyrants had ever appealed to 
 precedents to justify their usurpations, and that, not unfrequently, by skill and 
 
8 
 
 chicanery had made that appear a precedent for power which, when fairly ex- 
 amined, proved to be a precedent in favor of liberty. A.nd so the minority of 
 your committee are convinced it will be found in the history of Pennsylvania, 
 from the time that the Declaration of Independence, proclaimed from the steps 
 of our own capitol, that liberty was the supreme law of the land, down to 
 that day, if it should ever arrive, when the people of this State, repudiating 
 all their past history, should sanction by their votes the Lecompton fraud. 
 
 The majority of the committee admit that the people of this State abolished 
 the Constitution of 1776, regardless of its express provisions, and established 
 that of 1790, without revolution or disturbance. Here, then, is a Pennsylva- 
 nia precedent, adduced by the majority themselves, which sustains the right 
 of the people of Kansas to disregard the forms of law, if such forms conflict 
 with the great principles of American law, set forth in the Declaration of In- 
 dependence and embodied in the Constitution of the United States, which 
 was ordained, as its preamble shows, to establish justice and secure the 
 blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. 
 
 More attention has perhaps already been given to the report of the majority 
 than was necessary, considering that the whole subject has been thoroughly 
 canvassed, and is well understood by the people of the free States, whom 
 neither ingenuity, nor research, nor casuistry can longer deceive. They 
 have, at last, learned that, in all its various phases, the true issue before 
 them is, shall the slave power or the people rule 1 and they see that other 
 questions are raised only to distract their attention from that issue. This, 
 the true issue, involves, or may indeed be considered identical with that ques- 
 tion, which, differing from it only in words, now agitates th^ Democratic 
 party, viz : Shall the minority continue to rule, or shall the majority, as is 
 their right, make and execute the laws 1 for after all, the slave power, though 
 controlling the Government and ruling by fraud and force, is clearly the mi- 
 nority. 
 
 The people of this State, though long misled by their public agents, and 
 though their patriotic love for the Union was made the means of inducing 
 them to support the men and measures of the sectional party of Disunion^ 
 have ever deplored the spread of slavery, whose power they unconsciously 
 supported. But however heretofore blinded by party, and lured by the 
 name of Democracy, and however deceived by a pensioned press, and by the 
 harangues and arguments of men who hold or desire to hold place under pro- 
 slavery administrations, — the day, at last, has come, when their eyes are 
 opened, and they see with disgust and horror that in the dictum of the Su- 
 preme Court in the Dred Scott case, and in the attempted subjugation of the 
 people of Kansas, the Constitution is destroyed and liberty annihilated, unless 
 a new and reformed democracy — the democracy of numbers and of free labor — 
 should overthrow the pretended democracy of slavery despotism. Well may 
 they regret, as many of them do, that compromise with slavery in 1820, 
 which was obtained under the false pretense that the Union was then in dan- 
 ger, and they see that the danger which now really does threaten the peace 
 and union of the country is owing to that and subsequent compromises, or 
 Tather, concessions. 
 
 Forgetful that the Union itself was but a meiins for securing liberty and 
 the rights of individual man, too many for a time lost sight of the true ends 
 for which the government was established. The minority of the committee 
 believe, however, that Pennsylvania, A^ith a unanimity unknown for many 
 years, is about to re-assert what were the principles of her whole people be- 
 fore the disastrous compromise of 1820. It may be sufficient here to intro- 
 duce two memorable avowals of those principles, thou;;h any number could 
 be adduced if the reasonable limits of this report permitted. These two ex- 
 
9 
 
 pressions of popular opinion, if proper allowance be made for the natural in- 
 fluence of subsequent frauds, deceptions and fake pledges, prove that the 
 people of this State, like those of Kansas, are opposed to the extension of 
 slavery, and the growth of its power. In the one case the people indirectly, 
 by the unanimous vote of their Legislature, and in the other directly, by the 
 popular voice of Lancaster, responding to the public voice every where else, 
 declared Pcnnsyh^ania opposed to slavery, and to the rule of the minority, 
 which even then the slave power was plotting to establish. The following 
 resolutions passed the Legislature of Pennsylvania in December, 1819 : 
 
 '■'■Resolved by the Senate and Hotisc of Representatives of the Commonwealth 
 of Pennsylvania in General jJssembly met, That the Senators of this State in 
 the Congress of the United States be, and they are hereby instructed, and 
 that the Kepresentatives of this State in the Congress of the United States be, 
 and they aie hereby requested, to vote against the admission of any Territory 
 as a State into the Union, unless said Territory shall stipulate and agree that 
 'the further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude, except for the 
 punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall 
 be prohibited ; and that all children born within the said Territory, after its 
 admission into the Union as a State, shall be free, but may be held to service 
 until the age of twenty-five years.' " 
 
 '■'■Resolved, That the Governor be and he is hereby requested to cause a copy 
 of the foregoing resolution to be transmitted to each of the Senators and 
 Kepresenlatives of this State in the Congress of the United States." 
 
 These resolutions were introduced into the House of Kepresentatives by 
 Mr. Duane, and were adopted in the House by a unanimous vote — yeas, seven- 
 ty-four ; (fifty-four Democrats and twenty Federalists;) nays, none. Among 
 the yeas were David R. Porter, late Governor; Josiah Randall, now a Whig sup- 
 porter of JMr. Buchanan; William Wilkins, at present a member of the Senate 
 from Allegheny county; Dr. Daniel Sturgeon, late United States Senator, and 
 now an officer in the United States Mint ; William Duane, editor of " The Aur- 
 rora," then the Democratic organ of the State. The Senate unanimously 
 concurred, and the resolutions were signed by Governor William Findlay. 
 
 And the following are the resolutions unanimously adopted by a large and 
 enthusiastic meeting of citizens of Lancaster, held December 24-, 1819, at 
 which, it Avill be seen, that Mr. Buchanan, now President of the United States, 
 occupied a prominent position, having been one of the committee who reported 
 the resolutions, and most likely the author of them : 
 
 '■'Resolved, That the Representatives in Congress from this district be and 
 they are hereby most earnestly requested to use their utmost endeavors, 
 as members of the National Legislature, to prevent the existence of slavery 
 in any of the Territories or new States which may be erected by Congress. 
 
 "Resolved, As the opinion of this meeting, that, as the Legislature of this 
 State will shortly be in session, it will be highly deserving their wisdom and 
 patriotism to take into their early and most serious consideration the propriety 
 of instructing our Representatives in the National Legislature to use the most 
 zealous and strenuous exertions to inhibit the existence of slavery in any of 
 the Territories or States which may hereafter be created by Congress ; and 
 that the members of As.sembly from this county be requested to embrace the 
 earliest opportunity of bringing the subject before both Houses of the Legis- 
 lature. 
 
 "Resolved, That, in the opinion of this meeting, the members of Congress 
 who, at.the last session, sustained the cause of justice, humanity, and patriot- 
 ism in opposing the introduction of slavery into the State then endeavored to 
 be formed out of the Missouri Territory, are entitled to the warmest thanks 
 of every friend of humanity. 
 
10 
 
 ^^Resolved, That the proceedings of this meeting be published in the news- 
 papers of this citv." 
 
 JAMES HOPKINS, 
 WILLIAM JENKINS, 
 JAxMES BUCHANAN. 
 The foregoing resolutions being read, were unanimously adopted; after 
 which the meeting adjourned. 
 
 WALTER FRANKLIN, Chairman. 
 Attest: William Jenkins, Secretary. 
 
 These late precedents from Pennsylvania history, following strictly those of 
 the earlier and better days of the republic, are directly applicable to the true 
 issue now before Congress and the people. Founded on right and justice, they 
 nlford a safe guide to American statesmen, and cannot be too earnestly com- 
 mended to the Senate. The one was established by the unanimous vote of the 
 Legislature of this State, among whose members, at the time, were eminent 
 nnd trusted leaders of the Democratic party, and leading men of the opposi- 
 tion of equal distinction and influence. And the other sets forth the unbouglit 
 and unbiased opinions and principles of the people themselves, including the 
 present President of the United States in the days of his early manhood, when 
 his head was clear and his heart was pure, and before a political association 
 of nearly forty years with the slave power and diplomatic intercourse with 
 foreign princes, had seared the heart and darkened the understanding. 
 
 Will Pennsylvania Senators follow these precedents which coming genera- 
 tions will sanction and Heaven itself approve ; or are the conspiracies and out- 
 rages, the false returns and tyrannical dogmas of Atchison and Stringfellow, 
 o( Calhoun and of Henderson, to be ratified here, because the Constitution 
 framed by Franklin and his compatriots, for a people whom thej'^ had long 
 served but never betrayed, was ratified only by the quiet though unanimous 
 approval of a grateful constituency 1. Let the votes on the resolutions now un- 
 der consideration answer. 
 
 Before closing their report, the uiinority of the committee feel bound to 
 present the latest testimonj'^ against the Lecomption Constitution. Let it be 
 given in the solemn and indignant words of the Legislature of Kansas, whose 
 people by their legal and acknowledged representatives have, while there is 
 yet peace, made a last appeal to their countrymen to rescue them from the 
 tyranny with which they are threatened, not now by the outlawed ruffins of 
 Missouri, but for them, by the National administration, that other instrumen- 
 tality of the slave power. This righteous appeal is accompanied with notice 
 to all the world, that with or without our co-operation, the people of Kansas 
 will defend, at all hazards, their American birth-right of self-government. 
 
 The resolutions unanimousli) adopted on the last night of the session, by 
 both branches of the Kansas Legislature, merit the serious consideration of 
 Americans everywhere, and are as follows : 
 
 ''Resolved, By the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Kansas, the 
 Council concurring, That we do hereby for the last time solemnly protest 
 against the admission of Kansas into the Union under the Lecompton Consti- 
 tution — that we hurl back with scorn the libellous charge that the freemen of 
 Kansas -are a lawless people; that, relying upon the justice of our cause, we 
 do hereby, in behalf of the people we represent, solemnly pledge ourselves to 
 each other, to our friends in Congress and in the States, our lives, our fortunes, 
 and our sacred honor, to resist the Lecompton Constitution and government 
 by the force of arms, if necessary — that, in this perilous hour of our history, 
 we appeal to the civilized world for the rectitude of our position, and call 
 
11 
 
 upon the friends of freedom overj-wliere to array themselves against the hist 
 act of oppression in the Kansas drama. 
 
 "■Resolved, That the Governor be requested to inimediately transmit certified 
 copies of these resohitions to the President, Speaker of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives, and the President of the Senate of the Congress of the United 
 States, and to our member in Congress, and that the same be presented tobotli 
 branches of Congress.'' 
 
 The closing remarks of Hon. G. W. Deitzler, Speaker of the House, were 
 oqnally pointed, and will have the more weight, when it is remembered that 
 he is one of the most conservative and cautious of the Free State party. He 
 !»poke as follows: |i 
 
 " GcntJancn of the. JJomr of Representatives : — 1 am not a public speaker, but 
 I wish to return my thanks for the very complimentary, and I may say un- 
 merited, resolution of thanks, relative to myself, you have passed to-night. — 
 We are about leaving for our homes, I hope to prepare for the final struggle 
 for the freedom of Kansas. Again we have expressed our disapproval of the 
 infamous attempt to subvert our liberties. Should this Constitution be forced 
 upon us, we have but one method left, and that- is to resist its enforcement to 
 the last, and if I know anything of the freemen of Kansas, it will be done. — 
 We owe it to ourselves, and to the civilized world, to resist this fuul attempt 
 to subjugate a free peopled 
 
 The men of Pennsylvania and of New York, and of other States of the 
 free north, now settled in Kansas, have not forgotten the lessons taught by 
 Revolutionary sires; and shall we, who remain in the old States, the cradles 
 of American liberty, disregard their manly and heroic appeal. Have we for- 
 gotten the consequences which followed a similar appeal made against the 
 usurpations of King and Parliament by our common ancestors, to the people 
 of Great Britain, when it became known that that appeal was made in vain. 
 
 What this Senate may do we know not ; but of this, at least, we feel as- 
 sured, that the popular heart still throbs for liberty, and that at no distant day 
 the people of Pennsylvania will re-assert the principles of 1776 and of 1819, and 
 compel their public servants to respect and obey them. 
 
 EDWAKD D. GAZZAAI, 
 ANDREW GliEGG, 
 BARTRAM A. SHAEFFER. 
 
1 IBRftRY OF CONGRESS 
 
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