again the name of FRANKLIN PIERCE, a Representative from New Hampshire. Thus, in that day, by triumphant votes, did the cause of Kansas prevail in the name of Michigan. A popular Convention, called absolutely without authority, and containing delegates from a portion only of the population,--called, too, in opposition to constituted authorities, and in derogation of another Convention assembled under forms of law,--stigmatized as a caucus and a criminal meeting, whose authors were liable to indictment, trial, and punishment,--was, after ample debate, recognized by Congress as valid; and Michigan now holds her place in the Union, and her Senators sit on this floor, by virtue of that act. Sir, if Michigan is legitimate, Kansas cannot be illegitimate. You bastardize Michigan, when you refuse to recognize Kansas. But this is not all. The precedent is still more clinching. Thus far I have followed exclusively the public documents laid before Congress, and illustrated by the debates of that body; but well-authenticated facts, not of record here, make the case stronger still. It is sometimes said that the proceedings in Kansas are defective because they originated in a party. This is not true; but even if it were true, yet would they find support in the example of Michigan, where all the proceedings, stretching through successive years, began and ended in party. The proposed State Government was pressed by the Democrats as a _party test_; and all who did not embark in it were denounced. Of the Legislative Council which called the first Constitutional Convention in 1835, all were Democrats; and in the Convention itself, composed of eighty-seven members, only seven were Whigs. The Convention of 1836 which gave the final assent originated in a Democratic Convention, on the 29th of October, in the County of Wayne, composed of one hundred and twenty-four delegates, all Democrats, who proceeded to resolve:-- “That the delegates of the _Democratic party_ of Wayne, solemnly impressed with the spreading evils and dangers which a refusal to go into the Union has brought upon the people of Michigan, earnestly recommend meetings to be immediately convened by their fellow-citizens in every county of the State, with a view to the expression of their sentiments in favor of the election and call of another Convention, in time to secure our admission into the Union before the first of January next.”