CHAPTER XXXII.
Affairs or Kansas. — Congressional Proceedings.
The thirty-fourth session of congress convened at the capitol on the 3d of December, 1855. Nine weeks were spent in unsuccessful attempts to organize by the choice of a speaker. The plurality rule was finally adopted, and on the one hundred and thirty-third ballot, Nathaniel P. Banks, republican, was chosen by a vote of 103 to 100.
A history of the events which followed the organization of Kansas under the provisions of the act, may be gathered from the following extracts from official documents. On the 24th of January, 1856, President Pierce transmitted the following special message to congress on the affairs of Kansas:
MESSAGE OF THE PRESIDENT.
Circumstances have occurred to disturb the course of governmental organization in the territory of Kansas, and produce there a condition of things which renders it incumbent on me to call your attention to the subject, and urgently recommend the adoption by you of such measures of legislation as the grave exigencies of the case appear to require.
A brief exposition of the circumstances referred to, and of their causes, will be necessary to the full understanding of the recommendations which it is proposed to submit.
The act to organize the territories of Nebraska and Kansas was a manifestation of the legislative opinion of congress on two great points of constitutional construction: One, that the designation of the boundaries of a new territory, and provision for its political organization and administration as a territory, are measures which of right fall within the powers of the general government; and the other, that the inhabitants of any such territory, considered as an inchoate state, are entitled, in the exercise of self-government, to determine for themselves what shall be their own domestic institutions, subject only to the constitution and the laws duly enacted by congress under it, and to the power of the existing states to decide, according to the provisions and principles of
