Non-fiction: Special Message on the Subject of Kansas

Context and purpose
Franklin Pierce addresses Congress amid escalating turmoil in Kansas Territory after the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. He frames the crisis as a test of constitutional principles and the federal obligation to ensure the faithful execution of laws. The message seeks to clarify the legal status of Kansas’s territorial institutions, apportion responsibility for the disorder, and set forth the administration’s policy for restoring peace and guiding the Territory toward eventual statehood.

Defense of the Kansas-Nebraska framework
Pierce reaffirms the core premise of the Kansas-Nebraska Act: that the people of a territory, acting under lawful territorial institutions and subject to the Constitution, decide their domestic institutions, including slavery. He portrays this policy as a restoration of constitutional equality among citizens and sections, repudiating congressional mandates like the former Missouri Compromise line. He insists Congress renounced any power to determine slavery in the territories and must remain neutral while ensuring equal access and protection for all settlers and their property.

Legitimacy of the territorial government
Acknowledging allegations of fraud and outside interference in the March 1855 Kansas elections, Pierce argues that such complaints must be redressed through legal mechanisms, not by repudiating the entire government. He upholds the “legally constituted” territorial legislature as the only lawful civil authority, emphasizing that territorial statutes provide remedies for contested seats and that the executive and courts are in place to address grievances. He notes the removal of Governor Andrew Reeder on grounds presented as administrative and personal, not political, and points to the current administration in the Territory as committed to enforcing the laws.

Condemnation of the Topeka movement
Pierce denounces the Free-State movement’s extra-legal convention at Topeka, its self-styled constitution, and its attempt to inaugurate a rival state government as revolutionary and insurrectionary. However deep the dissatisfaction with election procedures, he contends, no party may erect a government outside the framework established by Congress. Recognizing the Topeka regime would, he warns, legitimize resistance to lawful authority in every territory and destabilize the Union’s constitutional order.

Assignment of responsibility and call for restraint
While acknowledging provocations from both pro-slavery and anti-slavery migrants and activists, Pierce places particular blame on organized, extraterritorial agitation, especially northern emigrant-aid efforts, for importing conflict and encouraging defiance of territorial law. He urges all parties to abandon coercion and violence, submit to the constituted authorities, and pursue redress within the courts and legislature. He portrays federal policy as impartial in application yet unwavering on legality: the government will neither impose slavery nor permit any faction to subvert the established legal process.

Federal authority and the use of force
Citing his constitutional duty, Pierce declares he will employ all means provided by law to support federal and territorial officers, protect public property, and suppress combinations too powerful for ordinary judicial proceedings. He references his prior proclamation admonishing armed assemblages to disperse and signals readiness, if necessary, to use the militia or regular forces to restore order. The objective, he maintains, is not to decide the slavery question but to secure a fair field under the law.

Path to statehood
Pierce urges Congress to hold firm: Kansas should be admitted as a state only when its people, through a convention authorized by the lawful territorial legislature, frame a republican constitution and present it in the regular way. Any shortcut through the Topeka instrument would reward insurrection and invite national crisis. The prescribed path, lawful institutions, peaceful settlement of disputes, and a duly called constitutional convention, offers the only legitimate route to self-government and lasting peace.