Territory, should be allowed to act on the subject of slavery in any way; but they proclaimed as their doctrine that when the people of a Territory, acting under the authority of an organic law, should frame and adopt a State constitution, they should be at liberty to make their State free or slave as they might see fit. Before this period the Cincinnati platform was silent; and it was silent because its framers did not see fit to trammel themselves or their candidate with a doctrine of “popular sovereignty” irreconcilable with the governing authority of Congress, and also because in this matter of slavery there was a question of property involved. When, therefore, Mr. Buchanan accepted the Cincinnati platform, and was elected upon it, he went into the office of President without being in any way committed to the doctrine of “popular sovereignty,” as expounded by Mr. Douglas. But the Kansas-Nebraska Act was both a bone of contention between two portions of the Democratic party and a law of the land. As President, Mr. Buchanan had only to construe and administer it. It contained, as explanatory of the purpose of Congress in abolishing the Missouri Compromise restriction, the following declaration: “It being the true intent and meaning of this Act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.” This was in one respect ambiguous, and in another not so. It was ambiguous in not clearly defining the time at which this right to form their own domestic institutions was to be considered as inhering in the people of a Territory. It was unambiguous in subordinating the exercise of this right to the Constitution of the United States. In carrying out the law, the President had to consider what was the limitation imposed by the Constitution of the United States upon the operation of this newly created right. This brought before him the action of the Supreme Court of the United States on the subject of slave property in the Territories, which had occurred a few days after his inauguration.