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In the first place, no such provision had ever before been put in any similar act passed by Congress. I did not suppose that there was an honest man who would pretend that the omission of such a clause furnished evidence of a conspiracy or attempt to impose on the people. It could not be expected that such of us as did not think that omission was evidence of such a scheme, would offer such an amendment ; but if Trumbull then believed what he now says, why did he not offer the amendment, and try to prevent it, when he was, as he says, invited to do so?
In this connection I will tell you what the main point of discussion was: There was a bill pending to admit Kansas whenever she should have a population of 93,420, that being the ratio required for a member of Congress. Under that bill Kansas could not have become a State for some years, because she could not have had the requisite population. Mr. Toombs took it into his head to bring in a bill to admit Kansas then, with only twenty-five or thirty thousand people, and the question was whether we would allow Kansas to come in under this bill, or keep her out under mine until she had 93,420 people. The Committee considered that question, and overruled me by deciding in favor of the immediate admission of Kansas, and I reported accordingly. I hold in my hand a copy of the Report which I made at that time. I will read from it “The point upon which your Committee have entertained the most serious and grave doubts in regard to the propriety of indorsing the proposition, relates to the fact that, in the absence of any census of the inhabitants, there is reason to apprehend that the Territory does not contain sufficient population to entitle them to demand admission under the treaty with France, if we take the ratio of representation for a member of Congress as the rule.”
Thus you see that in the written report accompanying the bill, I said that the great difficulty with the Committee was the question of population. In the same report I happened to refer to the question of submission. Now, listen to what I said about that:
In the opinion of your Committee, whenever a Constitution shall be formed in any Territory, preparatory to its admission into the Union as a State, justice, the genius of our institutions, the whole theory of our republican system, imperatively demands that the voice of the people shall be fairly expressed, and their will embodied in that fundamental law without fraud or violence, or intimidation, or any other improper or unlawful influence, and subject to no other restrictions than those imposed by the Constitution of the United States.
I read this from the Report I made at the time, on the Toombs bill. I will read yet another passage from the same Report; after setting out the features of the Toombs bill, I contrast it with the proposition of Senator Seward, saying :
The revised proposition of the Senator from Georgia refers all matters in dispute to the decision of the present population, with guaranties of fairness and safeguards against frauds and violence, to which no reasonable man can find just grounds of exception, while the Senator from New York, if his proposition is designed to recognize and impart vitality to the Topeka Constitution, proposes to disfranchise not only all the emigrants who have arrived in the Territory this year, but all the law-abiding men who refused to join in the act of open rebellion against the constituted authorities of the Territory last year by making the unauthorized and unlawful action of a political party the fundamental law of the whole people.
Then, again, I repeat that under that bill the question is to be referred to the present population to decide for or against coming into the Union under the Constitution they may adopt.
Mr. Trumbull, when at Chicago, rested his charge upon the allegation that the clause requiring submission was originally in the bill, and was stricken out by me. When that falsehood was exposed by a publication of the record, he went to Alton and made another speech, repeating the charge and referring to other and different evidence to sustain it. He saw that he was caught in his first falsehood, so he changed the issue, and instead of resting upon the allegation of striking out, be made
