Submission of the Kansas Constitution to the Popular Vote

While we hold to the doctrine that it is for the Convention of Kansas to submit its work or not to the people, as it may choose, and that no power outside of Kansas can impeach its authority in this particular; yet, as a measure of expediency and good faith, we are decidedly in favor of such a submission. The refusal to submit their Constitution to the people of Kansas can accomplish nothing of practical advantage for the Pro-Slavery cause. If the majority of the people of the Territory are opposed to Slavery, it will avail nothing to obtain a Constitution authorizing it; for no sooner were the Territory created into a sovereign State, than a new Convention would be called, an Anti-Slavery Constitution adopted, and this all the more promptly and indignantly for the fraud which the majority would feel had been practiced upon them.

The submission of the Constitution of Kansas to the people is clearly demanded by the spirit of the Kansas-Nebraska act, as well as by the spirit and express letter of the Cincinnati resolutions. As a measure of practical expediency and political good faith, the Kansas Convention is bound to submit its work to popular ratification; and we should consider it an outrage upon the solemnly expressed sentiment of every Southern State except Maryland, and of the whole Democratic Party of the Southern States, for the Kansas Convention to send a constitution to Congress which had not received the popular ratification.