Kansas is, therefore, at this moment as much a slave-State as Georgia or South Carolina.

Without this, the equality of the sovereign States composing the Union would be violated, and the use and enjoyment of a territory acquired by the common treasure of all the States would be closed against the people and the property of nearly half the members of the Confederacy.
Slavery can, therefore, never be prohibited in Kansas except by means of a constitutional provision and in no other manner can this be obtained so promptly, if a majority of the people desire it, as by admitting it into the Union under its present constitution." In the light of subsequent history this extreme pro-slavery programme was not only wrong in morals and statesmanship, but short-sighted and foolhardy as a party policy.

But to the eyes of President Buchanan this latter view was not so plain.

The country was apparently in the full tide of a pro-slavery reaction.

He had not only been elected President, but the Democratic party had also recovered its control of Congress.