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WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1856
be agitated in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. Will any one deny the power of Congress to repeal the organic act constituting the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska? It is a mere act of Congress. It was said that the Missouri Compromise was nothing but an act of Congress and therefore repealable. Is this organic act of Congress more important from its nature-is it more important from its antiquity, and from the benign influ- ences which it has shed upon the country-than was the Missouri Compromise? If that was repealed, after the lapse of a third of a century, I contend that the present organic law of the Terri- tory of Kansas is repealable; and of course all acts done in sub- ordination to the organic law, or under pretext of obedience to that law, are subject to revision and repeal by the Congress of the United States. A Territory has none of the attributes of sovereignty. Sovereignty is above control; it is either hereditary, or it is constituted and acquiesced in by the will of the people, and has no superior. I shall not expatiate upon the existing evils in Kansas, and their causes and consequences. I wish I had not heard so many reasons as I have heard for deploring their condition. The measure that produced them has been one of eminent confusion and misfortune, to say the least of it. I have no doubt that the occurrences in that Territory have been exaggerated on both sides; but to my mind, one fact is made very clear; that the people of Kansas, did not of their own accord, as a separate community uninfluenced by external pressure, enact the laws which are now said to exist in that Territory. They were enacted by an extraneous influence and not by the inhabitants of the Territory. Some of the laws themselves are proscriptive and inhibitory; and, as the distinguished Senator from Michigan [Mr. Cass] has said, a disgrace to the age. I will add that they are a disgrace to any people. I believe that a majority of the members of this body concur that some redress is necessary. Efforts have been made by each House which were thought to afford that redress; but they have not been in harmony with each other, and they yet remain sus- pended. What action is hereafter to be taken, I know not; but all concede that a remedy for existing evils is necessary, and that some of the provisions of the oppressive and unconstitutional laws which exist in that Territory ought to be repealed. This is my own desire, and it is in harmony with that of the majority. I was not here when the bill passed by the Senate last month, was voted upon, but I should have favored its passage, because I
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