“On this subject of treating it as a wrong, and limiting its spread, let me say a word. Has anything ever threatened the existence of this Union save and except this very institution of slavery? What is it that we hold most dear among us? Our own liberty and prosperity. What has ever threatened our liberty and prosperity save and except this institution of slavery? If this is true, how do you propose to improve the condition of things? by enlarging slavery?—by spreading it out and making it bigger? You may have a wen or cancer upon your person and not be able to cut it out, lest you bleed to death; but surely it is no way to cure it, to engraft it and spread it over your whole body. That is no proper way of treating what you regard a wrong. You see this peaceful way of dealing with it as a wrong—restricting the spread of it, and not allowing it to go into new countries where it has not already existed. That is the peaceful way, the old-fashioned way, the way in which the fathers themselves set us the example.” The administration of Pierce had left that of Buchanan a dangerous legacy. He found the pro-slavery party in Congress temporarily triumphant, it is true, and supported by the action of Congress in rejecting the Topeka constitution and recognizing the territorial government, but he found that that decision was not acceptable either to the majority of the people in the country or to a rapidly rising anti-slavery sentiment in the North. Yet he saw but one course to pursue, and that was to sustain the territorial government, which had issued the call for the Lecompton convention. He was supported in this view by the action of the Supreme Court, which had decided that slavery existed in Kansas under the constitution of the United States, and that the people therein could only relieve themselves of it by the election of delegates who would prohibit it in the constitution to be framed by the Lecompton convention. The Free State men refused to recognize the call, made little, if any, preparation for the election, yet on the last day a number of them voted for State officials and a member of Congress under the Lecompton constitution. This had the effect of suspending hostilities between the parties, yet peace was actually maintained only by the intervention of U. S. troops, under the command of Col. Sumner, who afterwards won distinction in the war of the rebellion. The Free State people stood firmly by their Topeka constitution, and refused to vote on questions affecting delegates to the Lecompton convention. They had no confidence in Governor Walker, the appointee of President Buchanan, and his proclamations passed unheeded. They recognized their own Governor Robinson, who in a message dated December 7th, 1857, explained and defended their position in these words: