select from the report some extracts referring to very important points, particularly that portion wherein the power of Congress to establish Territorial governments is considered as a necessity arising in the exercise of the power to admit new states. The report says:

Your committee deem this an appropriate occasion to state briefly, but distinctly, the principles upon which new states may be admitted and Territories organized under the authority of the Constitution of the United States.

The Constitution (section 3, article 4) provides that "new states may be admitted by the Congress into this Union."

Section 8, article 1: "Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or office thereof."

10th amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

A state of the federal Union is a sovereign power, limited only by the Constitution of the United States.

The limitations which that instrument has imposed are few, specific, and uniform-applicable alike to all the states, old and new. There is no authority for putting a restriction upon the sovereignty of a new state which the Constitution has not placed on the original states. Indeed, if such a restriction could be imposed on any state, it would instantly cease to be a state within the meaning of the federal Constitution, and, in consequence of the inequality, would assimilate to the condition of a province or dependency. Hence equality among all the states of the Union is a fundamental principle in our federative system-a principle embodied in the Constitution, as the basis upon which the American Union rests.

African slavery existed in all the colonies, under the sanction of the British government, prior to the Declaration of Independence. When the Constitution of the United States was adopted, it became the supreme law and bond of union between twelve slaveholding states and one non-slaveholding state; each state reserved the right to decide the question of slavery for itself to continue it as a domestic institution as long as it pleased, and to abolish it when it chose.

In pursuance of this reserved right, six of the original slaveholding states have since abolished and prohibited slavery within their limits respectively, without consulting Congress or their sister states, while the other six have retained and sustained it as a domestic institution, which, in their opinion, had become so firmly ingrafted on their social systems that the relation between the master and slave could not be dissolved with safety to either. In the mean time, eighteen new states have been admitted into the Union, in obedience to the federal Constitution, on an equal footing with the original states, including, of course, the right of each to decide the question of slavery for itself. In deciding this question, it has so happened that nine of these new states have abolished and prohibited slavery, while the other nine have retained and regulated it. That these new states had at the time of their admission, and still retain, an equal right, under the federal Constitution, with the original states, to decide all questions of domestic policy for themselves, including that of African slavery, ought not to be seriously questioned, and certainly can not be successfully controverted.

They are all subject to the same supreme law, which, by the consent of each, constitutes the only limitation upon their sovereign authority.

Since we find the right to admit new states enumerated among the powers expressly delegated in the Constitution, the question arises, Whence does Congress derive authority to organize temporary governments for the Territories preparatory to their admission into the Union on an equal footing with the original states? Your committee are not prepared to adopt the reasoning which deduces the power from that other clause of the Constitution which says,

"Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United States."

The language of this clause is much more appropriate when applied to property than to persons. It would seem to have been employed for the purpose of conferring upon Congress the power of disposing of the public lands and other property belonging to the United States, and to make all needful rules and regulations for that purpose, rather than to govern the people who might purchase those lands from the United States and become residents thereon. The word "territory" was an appropriate expression to designate that large area of public lands of which the United States had become the owner by virtue of the Revolution, and the cession by the several states. The additional words, "or other property belonging to the United States," clearly show that the term "territory" was used in its ordinary geographical sense to designate the public domain, and not as descriptive of the whole body of the people, constituting a distinct political community, who have no representation in Congress, and consequently no voice in making the laws upon which all their rights and liberties would depend, if it were conceded that Congress had the general and unlimited power to make all "needful rules and regulations concerning" their internal affairs and domestic concerns. It is under this clause of the Constitution, and from this alone, that Congress derives authority to provide for the surveys of the public lands, for securing pre-emption rights to actual settlers, for the establishment of land-offices in the several states and Territories, for exposing the lands to private and public sale, for issuing patents and confirming titles, and, in short, for making all needful rules and regulations for protecting and disposing of the public domain and other property belonging to the United States.

These needful rules and regulations may be embraced, and usually are found, in general laws applicable alike to states and Territories wherever the United States may be the owner of the lands or other property to be regulated or disposed of. It can make no difference, under this clause of the Constitution, whether the "territory, or other property belonging to the United States," shall be situated in Ohio or Kansas, in Alabama or Minnesota, in California or Oregon; the power of Congress to make needful rules and regulations is the same in the states and Territories, to the extent that the title is vested in the United States. Inasmuch as the right of legislation in such cases rests exclusively upon the fact of ownership, it is obvious it can extend only to the tracts of land to which the United States possess the title, and must cease in respect to each tract the instant it becomes private property by purchase from the United States. It will scarcely be contended that Congress possesses the power to legislate for the people of those states in which public lands may be located, in respect to their internal affairs and domestic concerns, merely because the United States may be so fortunate as to own a portion of the territory and other property within the limits of those states. Yet it should be borne in mind that this clause of the Constitution confers upon Congress the same power to make needful rules and regulations in the states as it does in the Territories, concerning the territory or other property belonging to the United States.

In view of these considerations, your committee are not prepared to affirm

that Congress derives authority to institute governments for the people of the Territories from that clause of the Constitution which confers the right to make needful rules and regulations concerning the territory or other property belonging to the United States; much less can we deduce the power from any supposed necessity, arising outside of the Constitution, and not provided for in that instrument. The federal government is one of delegated and limited powers, clothed with no rightful authority which does not result directly and necessarily from the Constitution. Necessity, when experience shall have clearly demonstrated its existence, may furnish satisfactory reasons for enlarging the authority of the federal government, by amendments to the Constitution, in the mode prescribed in that instrument, but can not afford the slightest excuse for the assumption of powers not delegated, and which, by the tenth amendment, are expressly "reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." Hence, before the power can be safely exercised, the right of Congress to organize Territories, by instituting temporary governments, must be traced directly to some provision of the Constitution conferring the authority in express terms, or as a means necessary and proper to carry into effect some one or more of the powers which are specifically delegated. Is not the organization of a Territory eminently necessary and proper as a means of enabling the people thereof to form and mould their local and domestic institutions, and establish a state government under the authority of the Constitution, preparatory to its admission into the Union? If so, the right of Congress to pass the organic act for the temporary government is clearly included in the provision which authorizes the admission of new states. This power, however, being an incident to an express grant, and resulting from it by necessary implication, as an appropriate means for carrying it into effect, must be exercised in harmony with the nature and objects of the grant from which it is deduced. The organic act of the Territory, deriving its validity from the power of Congress to admit new states, must contain no provision or restriction which would destroy or impair the equality of the proposed state with the original states, or impose any limitation upon its sovereignty which the Constitution has not placed on all the states. So far as the organization of a Territory may be necessary and proper as a means of carrying into effect the provision of the Constitution for the admission of new states, and when exercised with reference only to that end, the power of Congress is clear and explicit; but beyond that point the authority can not extend, for the reason that all "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." In other words, the organic act of the Territory, conforming to the spirit of the grant from which it receives its validity, must leave the people entirely free to form and regulate their domestic institutions and internal concerns in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States, to the end that when they attain the requisite population, and establish a state government in conformity to the federal Constitution, they may be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original states in all respects whatsoever.

[He then traced the history of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, and of the Missouri organizations, and proceeded as follows:]

If the people of any state should become so much enamored with their own peculiar institution as to conceive the philanthropic scheme of forcing so great a blessing on their unwilling neighbors, and with that view should create a mammoth moneyed corporation, for the avowed purpose of sending a sufficient number of their young men into a neighboring state, to remain long enough to acquire the right of voting, with the fixed and paramount object of reversing the settled policy and changing the domestic institutions of such state, would it not be deemed an act of aggression, as offensive and flagrant N

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as if attempted by direct and open violence? It is a well-settled principle of constitutional law in this country, that while all the states of the Union are united in one for certain purposes, yet each state, in respect to every thing which affects its domestic policy and internal concerns, stands in the relation of a foreign power to every other state.

Hence no state has a right to pass any law, or do or authorize any act, with the view to influence or change the domestic policy of any other state or Territory of the Union, more than it would with reference to France or England, or any other foreign state with which we are at peace. Indeed, every state of this Union is under higher obligations to observe a friendly forbearance and generous comity toward each other member of the confederacy than the laws of nations can impose on foreign states. While foreign states are restrained from all acts of aggression and unkindness only by that spirit of comity which the laws of nations enjoin upon all friendly powers, we have assumed the additional obligation to obey the Constitution, which secures to every state the right to control its own internal affairs. If repugnance to domestic slavery can justify Massachusetts in incorporating a mammoth company to influence and control that question in any state or Territory of this Union, the same principle of action would authorize France or England to use the same means to accomplish the same end in Brazil or Cuba, or in fifteen states of this Union; while it would license the United States to interfere with serfdom in Russia, or polygamy in Turkey, or any other obnoxious institution in any part of the world. The same principle of action, when sanctioned by our example, would authorize all the kingdoms, and empires, and despotisms in the world to engage in a common crusade against republicanism in America, as an institution quite as obnoxious to them as domestic slavery is to any portion of the people of the United States.

If our obligations arising under the law of nations are so imperative as to make it our duty to enact neutrality laws, and to exert the whole power and authority of the executive branch of the government, including the army and navy, to enforce them, in restraining our citizens from interfering with the internal concerns of foreign states, can the obligations of each state and Territory of this Union be less imperative under the federal Constitution to observe entire neutrality in respect to the domestic institutions of the several states and Territories? Non-interference with the internal concerns of other states is recognized by all civilized countries as a fundamental principle of the laws of nations, for the reason that the peace of the world could not be maintained for a single. day without it. How, then, can we hope to preserve peace and fraternal feelings among the different portions of this republic, unless we yield implicit obedience to a principle which has all the sanction of patriotic duty as well as constitutional obligation?

When the emigrants sent out by the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company, and their affiliated societies, passed through the state of Missouri in large numbers on their way to Kansas, the violence of their language, and the unmistakable indications of their determined hostility to the domestic institutions of that state created apprehensions that the object of the company was to abolitionize Kansas as a means of prosecuting a relentless warfare upon the institutions of slavery within the limits of Missouri. These apprehensions increased and spread with the progress of events, until they became the settled convictions of the people of that portion of the state most exposed to the danger by their proximity to the Kansas border. The natural consequence was, that immediate steps were taken by the people of the western counties of Missouri to stimulate, organize, and carry into effect a system of emigration similar to that of the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company, for the avowed purpose of counteracting the effects, and protecting themselves and their domestic institutions from the consequences of that company's operations.

The material difference in the character of the two rival and conflicting movements consists in the fact that the one had its origin in an aggressive, and the other in a defensive policy; the one was organized in pursuance of the provisions and claiming to act under the authority of a legislative enactment of a distant state, whose internal prosperity and domestic security did not depend upon the success of the movement; while the other was the spontaneous action of the people living in the immediate vicinity of the theatre of operations, excited, by a sense of common danger, to the necessity of protecting their own firesides from the apprehended horrors of servile insurrection and intestine war. Both parties, conceiving it to be essential to the success of their respective plans that they should be upon the field of operations prior to the first election in the Territory, selected principally young men, persons unencumbered by families, and whose conditions in life enabled them to leave at a moment's warning, and move with great celerity, to go at once, and select and occupy the most eligible sites and favored locations in the Territory, to be held by themselves and their associates who should follow them. For the successful prosecution of such a scheme, the Missourians who lived in the immediate vicinity possessed peculiar advantages over their rivals from the more remote portions of the Union. Each family could send one of its members across the line to mark out his claim, erect a cabin, and put in a small crop, sufficient to give him as valid a right to be deemed an actual settler and qualified voter as those who were being imported by the Emigrant Aid Societies. In an unoccupied Territory, where the lands have not been surveyed, and where there were no marks or lines to indicate the boundaries of sections and quarter sections, and where no legal title could be had until after the surveys should be made, disputes, quarrels, violence, and bloodshed might have been expected as the natural and inevitable consequences of such extraordinary systems of emigration, which divided and arrayed the settlers into two great hostile parties, each having an inducement to claim more than was his right, in order to hold it for some new-comer of his own party, and at the same time prevent persons belonging to the opposite party from settling in the neighborhood. As a result of this state of things, the great mass of emigrants from the Northwest and from other states, who went there on their own account, with no other object, and influence by no other motives than to improve their condition and secure good homes for their families, were compelled to array themselves under the banner of one of these hostile parties, in order to insure protection to themselves and their claims against the aggressions and violence of the other.

[He then traced minutely the history of all the elections held in Kansas, the charges of fraud, etc., and the legality of the existing Territorial Legislature, and proceeded :]

Your committee have not considered it any part of their duty to examine and review each enactment and provision of the large volume of laws adopted by the Legislature of Kansas upon almost every rightful subject of legislation, and affecting nearly every relation and interest in life, with a view either to their approval or their disapproval by Congress, for the reason that local laws, confined in their operation to the internal concerns of the Territory, the control and management of which, by the principles of the federal Constitution, as well as by the very terms of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, are confided to the people of the Territory, to be determined by themselves through their representatives in their local Legislature, and not by the Congress, in which they have no representatives, to give or withhold their assent to the laws upon which their rights and liberties may all depend. Under these laws marriages have taken place, children have been born, deaths have occurred, estates have been distributed, contracts have been made, and rights have accrued which it is not competent for Congress to divest. If there can