Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States. v. 2 (of 2)Curtis, George Ticknor
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Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States. v. 2 (of 2)
Curtis, George Ticknor
Buchanan, James, 1791-1868
Who contests the principle that the will of the majority shall
govern? What genuine republican of any party can deny this? The
opposition have never met this question fairly. Within a brief
period, the people of this country will condemn their own folly
for suffering the assertion of so plain and elementary a principle
of all popular governments to have endangered our blessed
Constitution and Union, which owe their origin to this very
principle.
I congratulate you, my friends and neighbors, that peace has been
restored to Kansas. As a Pennsylvanian I rejoice that this good
work has been accomplished by two sons of our good old mother
State, God bless her! We have reason to be proud of Colonel Geary
and General Smith. We shall hear no more of bleeding Kansas. There
will be no more shrieks for her unhappy destiny. The people of
this fine country, protected from external violence and internal
commotion, will decide the question of slavery for themselves, and
then slide gracefully into the Union and become one of the sisters
in our great Confederacy.
Indeed, viewed in the eye of sober reason, this Kansas question is
one of the most absurd of all the Proteus-like forms which
abolition fanaticism has ever assumed to divide and distract the
country. And why do I say this? Kansas might enter the Union with
a free constitution to-day, and once admitted, no human power
known to the Constitution could prevent her from establishing
slavery to-morrow. No free-soiler has ever even contended that she
would not possess this power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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