US Presidency
1858

For my own part, I am decidedly in favor of its admission, and thus terminating the Kansas question. This will carry out the great principle of nonintervention recognized and sanctioned by the organic act, which declares in express language in favor of nonintervention by Congress with slavery in the States or Territories, leaving the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States. In this manner, by localizing the question of slavery and confining it to the people whom it immediately concerned, every patriot anxiously expected that this question would be banished from the halls of Congress, where it has always exerted a baneful influence throughout the whole country. It is proper that I should briefly refer to the election held under an act of the Territorial legislature on the first Monday of January last on the Lecompton constitution.