US Presidency
1858

They did not think proper to submit the whole of this constitution to a popular vote, but they did submit the question whether Kansas should be a free or a slave State to the people. This was the question which had convulsed the Union and shaken it to its very center. This was the question which had lighted up the flames of civil war in Kansas and had produced dangerous sectional parties throughout the Confederacy. It was of a character so paramount in respect to the condition of Kansas as to rivet the anxious attention of the people of the whole country upon it, and it alone. No person thought of any other question. For my own part, when I instructed Governor Walker in general terms in favor of submitting the constitution to the people, I had no object in view except the all absorbing question of slavery. In what manner the people of Kansas might regulate their other concerns was not a subject which attracted any attention.