Clayton] a moment-he, in common with other gentlemen, seems to anticipate that if you send volunteers into the country you must necessarily have war. I do not anticipate that the volunteers are to be sent there until you do have war. There must be an actual subsisting state of war, before the emergency arises which authorizes the calling out of the troops; but I repeat-for I take this to be a matter of vast importance to the country, one which the Senate ought well to consider—if the Secretary is right in his anticipation that the Indians are going to commence hostilities very early in the spring, and that the only way of meeting them is to call out volunteers, shall you not put that sort of force at his disposition which he asks for, in order to meet the emergency? My friend from Texas tells you that you cannot organize these regiments until the fall. Suppose war breaks out in the springthen what? Are the Indians to go unchecked through the whole summer until you can organize the regular regiments which are to constitute a part of the military establishment of the country? That is what the volunteers are asked for. If no emergency arises, the President

will not call them out.

ADMISSION OF MINNESOTA.

SPEECH IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, FEBRUARY 1, 1858, ON THE ADMISSION OF MINNESOTA AS A STATE.

I APPRECIATE, sir, the suggestion made by the senator from Illinois, that in discussing a question relating to the order of business, we had better not wander so far off as to discuss everything; and in the remarks which I shall submit on this occasion, I shall not allude to Kansas further than is necessary to illustrate the views I have in reference to the point before us, which is, whether this subject ought to be considered now, or whether it had better be postponed to a subsequent day.

At the last session, Congress passed what was termed an enabling act for Minnesota; such an act as the senator from Illinois has assured us was, in his judgment, absolutely necessary to enable a territory to form a constitution preparatory to coming into the Union as a state. He notified us, in his opening argument on the Kansas question, that a territory could do nothing which it was not authorized to do by the enabling act. If that be true, and there have been in Minnesota those irregularities which gentlemen on all hands admit to have existed, I submit whether the enabling act amounts to anything. If it be necessary to pass an enabling act, there must exist a necessity for obeying the act after it is passed; and that seems, in the case of Minnesota, not to have been done. What is the necessity for an enabling act, if the territorial legislature and the people of the territory do not regard the act after it is passed? As I understand the case before us, there is no pretence that the enabling act has been obeyed by the authorities in Minnesota. But, says the senator from Massachusetts, these defects were cured

by the subsequent action of the people. I say again, if there was a necessity for passing the enabling act, and nothing could be done till it was passed, then I want to know how it is that the people of a territory can cure defects which must have been fatal in themselves, except upon the ground which we take in reference to Kansas, that the power emanates from the people, that no enabling act is necessary, that when the people have acted they give vitality to the constitution, and whether it is made in obedience to an enabling act or not, is of no consequence; and because of these arguments, we desire to see these two states brought in together. I want to know whether my honorable friend from Illinois. means to take the ground that an enabling act is necessary, and when the act has been disregarded, vote for the admission of Minnesota, and then vote to exclude Kansas because in that case there has been no enabling act. When he does that, I wish him to do it altogether, so that the two things may stand in such juxtaposition that the whole country may see what he has done.

I raise no question in reference to the enabling act, or that the people have disregarded it. I think the act was unnecessary. If I had known the full tendency of it, I should have opposed it on other grounds than those on which I placed my opposition last year. I think, when the proper time comes, I shall be able to demonstrate that no such act is necessary. The senator from Illinois, however, takes a different ground. He says the act is necessary. Then, I say, admitting his premises, there is a necessity for obeying the act. What! an enabling act totally disregarded, and defects cured afterwards by a popular vote, and admit the state; and in the next breath tell us that Kansas cannot come in because there is no enabling act for her! If there be such power in the people of Minnesota, that they may not only make a constitution without an enabling act, but in violation and total disregard to it, I shall want to know, at the proper time, why the same rule does not apply to Kansas?

But the senator from Massachusetts tells us, as an argument why we ought to act at once on this subject, that the legislature has gone on, and that the governor chosen under this constitution not yet acted on by Congress, has been signing laws, and that a secretary, whose existence under the constitution has not been recognised, has been countersigning them. I should like to inquire of the senator if these laws are put in force there. Are the laws thus signed by a governor unknown to Congress, and unknown to the president in a territory, enforced in Minnesota?

Mr. WILSON. I cannot tell whether those laws are enforced or not. I have heard of laws, some dozen or twenty, I think, passed, not by the territorial legislature, but by the legislature elected under the constitution, and signed by the secretary of the territory as acting governor.

Mr. DOUGLAS. He is acting governor in the absence of the governor of the territory. They are signed by him as acting governor.

Mr. BROWN. I did not precisely understand it. I supposed the governor elected under the new constitution had signed the laws.

Mr. DOUGLAS. No, sir; but the secretary of the territory, as acting governor.

Mr. BROWN. I did not know but that you were getting back to the days of Topeka, and that some such man as Governor Robinson was signing laws there. All I desire to add is in reference to a remark

uttered by the senator from New Hampshire. If Kansas is to be excluded, under the circumstances mentioned by the senator from Virginia, he expressed the hope that the number of states never would exceed thirty-one. Am I mistaken?

Mr. HALE.

Yes, sir.

Mr. BROWN. Will the senator repeat what he did say?

Mr. HALE. Yes, sir. I said that if the senator from Virginia was correct in announcing that that was to be a test, that the admission of Kansas, under all the objections which exist to her, was to be made the price of the admission of any state from any quarter, it would be a great while before our numerical number of states would exceed thirtyone. That is what I said, exactly.

Mr. BROWN. That varies it a little, but, I think, not a great deal. I can say, however, to the senator from New Hampshire, that, if one rule is to be applied to Kansas, she asking admission as a slave state, and she is to be excluded on that rule, and then, when the same rule applies to Minnesota, she is admitted notwithstanding the rule, the number of states never will exceed thirty-one. If you admit Minnesota and exclude Kansas, standing on the same principle, the spirit of our revolutionary fathers is utterly extinct if the government can last for one short twelvemonth. I am sure you will not do it; I entertain no serious apprehension that you are about to do it; but I do not understand this impatience, this exceeding anxiety to force Minnesota into the Union. When we know that Kansas will be asking for admission, as the senator from Virginia has already announced, certainly this week, and possibly to-morrow, why this exceeding haste to put Minnesota ahead? Do Republican senators hope to have two more senators on this floor to aid them in the exclusion of Kansas? Is that what they. are driving at? If it be, I trust there is a firmness and decision on this side of the House that will resist to the bitter end the consummation of any such design. I know nothing of the views of the two honorable gentlemen asking admission on this floor as senators from Minnesota. I know not upon which side of this question they will vote. I know them to be honorable men, as all of us know them to be. But when I find such exceeding anxiety on the other side of the Chamber to bring them in, 1 expect that gentlemen look for some aid and comfort from that quarter. They would hardly manifest such exceeding zeal in getting in two additional senators, if they believed they would vote against them, when they came in, on the vital question of the session. I do not know that they will vote against us; I do not state that they will; because, on that question, I know nothing; but I would rather try this question before the old Senate, without the addition of any new material. Whether we can carry it is another proposition. What will result to the country if we fail, I pretend not to say. I hope I may not be misunderstood on that point. What I say is, that if you admit Minnesota, and Kansas applies substantially on the same grounds, you must not exclude her. If Kansas be excluded on account of irregularities in the formation of her constitution, then let Minnesota be excluded for the same reason, and there will be peace all over the country. Nobody in my section will complain, for an instant, that you apply the same rule to the one that you apply to the other. Our point is, that you shall not apply

one rule for the admission of a free state, and then exclude a state asking admission as a slave state on the same principle.

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In a few remarks submitted by me in the earlier part of the debate, I assumed that the senator from Illinois had taken the ground that an enabling act was necessary to a territory in the formation of a state constitution. I based that declaration on his opening speech in the debate, in which I thought I was not mistaken; and upon recurring to the speech I find that I was right. I do not know that the senator expressed himself in the precise language in which his maturer judgment would require him to express an opinion; but in that speech, beyond all question he did take the ground that an enabling act was necessary. That speech is the one upon which I based my remark, and I was not aware that he had qualified it in such broad terms as he states to-day that he has done in the debates which followed. I have in my hand a copy of that speech. Said the senator :—

more.

"A territorial legislature possesses whatever power its organic act gives it, and no The organic act of Arkansas provided that the législative power should be vested in the territorial legislature, the same as the organic act of Kansas provides that the legislative power and authority shall be vested in the legislature. But what is the extent of that legislative power? It is to legislate for that territory under the organic act, and in obedience to it. It does not include any power to subvert the organic act under which it was brought into existence. It has the power to protect it, the power to execute it, the power to carry it into effect; but it has no power to subvert, none to destroy: and hence that power can only be obtained by applying to Congress, the same authority which created the territory itself."

Now, sir, according to the senator, when the territorial legislature provides for forming a constitution, that is an act of subversion. It is a subversion of the organic act, because it proposes the substitution of altogether a different form of government; and I understood the senator to say distinctly in that speech that that could not be done (for that was the point in controversy) without applying directly to Congress for the power to do it; in other words, that when the territorial government was to give way and a state government to be substituted, that could be done. by the authority of Congress, and in no other manner. Upon another page of the same speech, the senator, after speaking of Arkansas again, used this language:

"If you apply these principles to the Kansas convention, you find that it had no power to do any act as a convention forming a government; you find that the act calling it was null and void from the beginning; you find that the legislature could confer no power whatever on the convention."

Why? Because it had not been authorized by Congress; there was no enabling act. The act of the legislature calling a convention, said the senator, was absolutely null and void from the beginning. It could be null and void but for one reason, and that was, that Congress had not authorized it. A territorial legislature can do nothing, said the senator, which the organic act does not authorize it to do; and if it undertakes to substitute one form of government for another, it must come to the source of its power, to Congress. If I have been led into an error from not exactly keeping up with the debates in the Senate, or not reading or listening to all the speeches of the honorable senator, I hope I shall be excused. I based my remarks on the reading of this speech, which has unquestionably been more extensively read than any other speech

delivered at this session, by the senator or anybody else. I am glad he makes the correction. I am glad he comes forward, and says in terms which are not to be mistaken--and it is to that point, and to vindicate myself, that I rose now-that an enabling act is not necessary.

I return my thanks for that declaration. We have the senator's authority, and it is a potential authority in the country, that no enabling act is necessary. He goes further, and tells us that the act of submission is not essential. Not only does he say now, and I thank him for saying so, I repeat again, in terms so plain that the whole country will understand, that an enabling act was not necessary-but he says that a submission of the constitution to the people was not necessary. That gets us clear of two troublesome propositions in the discussion of the Kansas question. Let us hear no more of this argument, then, anywhere. If the great chieftain gives up the question, I take it for granted that the subalterns will do it of course, and that hereafter we shall hear no more that Kansas does not present herself properly, because there was no enabling act; and we shall hear no more complaint of Kansas that she did not submit her constitution to the people.

The senator tells us to-day that neither the one nor the other was necessary. All we have to inquire now is, as to whether the constitution she is about to present is the work of her people. What the people desire is to be expressed through the ballot-box. The will of the people, what they desire, is to be ascertained through the ballot-box; and, as I now understand the question, if we shall be enabled to show that the people of Kansas, expressing their will through the ballot-box, under the forms of law, have organized this constitution, then we have nothign beyond that to establish. Two points, I want it noted, are now out of the question-no enabling act is necessary, and no submission of the constitution to the people is necessary. All you are to learn is, whether it is the will of the people.

Then the point which I submit to the senator for his reflection is simply this: Has the will of Kansas been ascertained in the mode and manner prescribed by the laws of the land? Has the ballot-box been thrown open? Have the people been allowed to vote freely? If they have, then I claim that they stand on as good a footing before us to-day as does Minnesota. I ignore the proposition, if it shall be made from any quarter, that you shall compel them to vote whether they will or not. I am glad to see the issue narrowing down; I am glad that we are to have no question except the simple one, is this the work of the people of Kansas? We are not to be embarrassed with vague ideas about enabling acts, or about propositions to submit constitutions to the people. All that is out of the way from this time on. All we have to inquire is, as I said before, has this constitution been made by the people of Kansas, and have we ascertained that fact under the forms of the laws of Kansas? I think, when the proper time comes, we shall be enabled to show that, in the mode pointed out by the law, the fact has been ascertained that the people of Kansas do sustain the constitution.

On the 25th March, 1858, Mr. BROWN continued the debate on the admission of Minnesota as follows:

I am very desirous to vote for the admission of Minnesota. We stand agreed, honorably bound, to admit her, and I shall regret exceedingly