When I visited the people of Mississippi last year, the question of greatest public excitement, was connected with the action of the Executive in relation to the admission of Kansas as a State of the Union.  You had been led to suppose that the President would attempt to control the action of the convention, and if the constitution was not submitted to a popular vote, would oppose by all the means within his power, the admission of the State within the Union.  You were also excited at a dogma which had been put forth, to the effect that no more slave States should be admitted.  I agreed with you then, that if the President took such position he would violate the obligations of his office, and be faithless to the trust which you had reposed in him.  I agreed with you then, that the exclusion of a State, because it was slaveholding, would be such an offence against your equality as would demand at your hands the vindication of your rights.  What has been the result?  The convention framed the constitution, submitted only the clause relating to slavery to a popular vote, and applied for admission.  The President in his annual message referred in favorable terms to the application, then not formally made, and when the Constitution reached him transmitted it to Congress with a special message, in which he fully and emphatically maintained the right of admission.

After the convention had adjourned, Mr. Stanton, acting Governor of the Territory, called and extra session of the Freesoil Legislature, which has been elected, and it passed an act to submit the whole constitution to a popular vote.  The President removed him from office,—­a further evidence of the sincerity with which he was fulfiling your expectations in relation to Kansas.  And it gives me pleasure here to say of him, what I am assured I can now say with confidence, that he will not shrink a hair’s breadth from the position he has taken, but will move another step in advance, and fall, if fall he must, manfully upholding the rights and defying the insolence of ill-gotten power.

When the bill was presented to the Senate for the admission of the State of Kansas, after a long discussion, it was adopted, with a provision which required the State after admission to relinquish its claim to all the land asked for in its ordinance, except 5,000,000 acres, that being the largest amount which had been ever granted to a State at the period of its admission.  There was also a provision declaratory of the right of the people to change their constitution at any time; though the instrument itself had restricted them for a term of years.  I considered both those provisions objectionable; the first, because it was directory of legislation to be enacted by a State; and the second, because it was inviting to a disregard of the fundamental law, and had too much the seeming of a concession to the anti-slavery feeling which was impatient for a change of the constitution.  That bill failed in the House, and was succeeded by a bill of the Opposition which recognized the right of Kansas to be admitted with a pro-slavery constitution, provided it should be adopted by a popular vote.  This also failed, and in the division between the two Houses, a com- {sic}