It is not within the scope of human foresight to see the embarrassments which may arise in the execution of any policy.  When it was declared that soil, climate, and unrestrained migration should be left to fix the status of the territories, and institutions of the States to be formed out of them, no one probably anticipated that companies would be incorporated to transport colonists into a territory with a view to decide its political condition.  Congress, as he believed, yielding too far to the popular idea, had surrendered its right of revision and thus had recently lost its power to restrain improper legislation in the territories.  From these joint causes had arisen the unhappy strife in Kansas, which at one time threatened to terminate in civil war.  The Government had been denounced for the employment of United States troops.  Very briefly he would state the case.

The movement of the Emigrant Aid Societies of the North was met by counteracting movements in Missouri and other Southern States.  Thus opposing tides of emigration met on the plains of Kansas.  The land was a scene of confusion and violence.  Fortunately the murders which for a time filled the newspapers, existed nowhere else; and the men who were reported slain, usually turned up after a short period to enjoy the eulogies which their martyrdom had elicited.  But arson, theft and disgraceful scenes of disorder did really exist, and bands of armed men indicated the approach of actual hostilities.  What was the Government to do?  Perhaps you will say, call out the militia.  But that would have been to feed and arm one of the parties for the destruction of the other.  To call out the militia of neighboring States would have been but little better.  The sectional excitement then ran so high, that they would probably have met upon the fields of Kansas as combatants, the government in the meantime furnishing the supplies for both armies.  It was necessary to have a force—­one which would be free from sectional excitement or partisan zeal and under executive control.  The army fulfiled these conditions.  It was therefore employed.  It dispersed marauding parties, disarmed organized invaders, arrested disturbers of the peace, gave comparative quiet and repose to the territory, without taking a single life, aye, or shedding one drop of blood.  The end justified the means, and the result equaled all that could have been anticipated.

The anomalous condition of a territory possessing full legislative power, but not invested with the sovereignty of a State, justified the anxiety exhibited by Congress to be relieved from the embarrassment which the case of Kansas presented.  The Senate passed a bill to authorize a convention for the preparation of a constitution for the admission of Kansas as a State.  It however failed in the House of Representatives, and the legislature of Kansas, availing themselves of the plenary power conferred upon them by the organic act, proceeded to provide for the assembling of a