A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 5, part 4: James Buchanan
History
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 5, part 4: James Buchanan
Buchanan, James, 1791-1868; Presidents -- United States; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government
Immediately upon the formation of a new Territory people from different
States and from foreign countries rush into it for the laudable purpose
of improving their condition. Their first duty to themselves is to open
and cultivate farms, to construct roads, to establish schools, to erect
places of religious worship, and to devote their energies generally
to reclaim the wilderness and to lay the foundations of a flourishing
and prosperous commonwealth. If in this incipient condition, with a
population of a few thousand, they should prematurely enter the Union,
they are oppressed by the burden of State taxation, and the means
necessary for the improvement of the Territory and the advancement of
their own interests are thus diverted to very different purposes.
The Federal Government has ever been a liberal parent to the Territories
and a generous contributor to the useful enterprises of the early
settlers. It has paid the expenses of their governments and legislative
assemblies out of the common Treasury, and thus relieved them from a
heavy charge. Under these circumstances nothing can be better calculated
to retard their material progress than to divert them from their useful
employments by prematurely exciting angry political contests among
themselves for the benefit of aspiring leaders. It is surely no hardship
for embryo governors, Senators, and Members of Congress to wait until
the number of inhabitants shall equal those of a single Congressional
district. They surely ought not to be permitted to rush into the Union
with a population less than one-half of several of the large counties
in the interior of some of the States. This was the condition of Kansas
when it made application to be admitted under the Topeka constitution.
Besides, it requires some time to render the mass of a population
collected in a new Territory at all homogeneous and to unite them on
anything like a fixed policy. Establish the rule, and all will look
forward to it and govern themselves accordingly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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