Whereas indications exist that public tranquillity and the supremacy of
law in the Territory of Kansas are endangered by the reprehensible acts
or purposes of persons, both within and without the same, who propose
to direct and control its political organization by force. It appearing
that combinations have been formed therein to resist the execution of
the Territorial laws, and thus in effect subvert by violence all present
constitutional and legal authority; it also appearing that persons
residing without the Territory, but near its borders, contemplate armed
intervention in the affairs thereof; it also appearing that other
persons, inhabitants of remote States, are collecting money, engaging
men, and providing arms for the same purpose; and it further appearing
that combinations within the Territory are endeavoring, by the agency of
emissaries and otherwise, to induce individual States of the Union to
intervene in the affairs thereof, in violation of the Constitution of
the United States; and
Whereas all such plans for the determination of the future institutions
of the Territory, if carried into action from within the same, will
constitute the fact of insurrection, and if from without that of
invasive aggression, and will in either case justify and require the
forcible interposition of the whole power of the General Government,
as well to maintain the laws of the Territory as those of the Union:
Now, therefore, I, Franklin Pierce, President of the United States, do
issue this my proclamation to command all persons engaged in unlawful
combinations against the constituted authority of the Territory of
Kansas or of the United States to disperse and retire peaceably to their
respective abodes, and to warn all such persons that any attempted
insurrection in said Territory or aggressive intrusion into the same
will be resisted not only by the employment of the local militia, but
also by that of any available forces of the United States, to the end
of assuring immunity from violence and full protection to the persons,
property, and civil rights of all peaceable and law-abiding inhabitants
of the Territory.
If, in any part of the Union, the fury of faction or fanaticism,
inflamed into disregard of the great principles of popular sovereignty
which, under the Constitution, are fundamental in the whole structure
of our institutions is to bring on the country the dire calamity of
an arbitrament of arms in that Territory, it shall be between lawless
violence on the one side and conservative force on the other, wielded
by legal authority of the General Government.
I call on the citizens, both of adjoining and of distant States, to
abstain from unauthorized intermeddling in the local concerns of the
Territory, admonishing them that its organic law is to be executed with
impartial justice, that all individual acts of illegal interference
will incur condign punishment, and that any endeavor to intervene by
organized force will be firmly withstood.
I invoke all good citizens to promote order by rendering obedience
to the law, to seek remedy for temporary evils by peaceful means,
to discountenance and repulse the counsels and the instigations of
agitators and of disorganizers, and to testify their attachment to
their country, their pride in its greatness, their appreciation of
the blessings they enjoy, and their determination that republican
institutions shall not fail in their hands by cooperating to uphold the
majesty of the laws and to vindicate the sanctity of the Constitution.
In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed to these presents.
[SEAL.]
Done at the city of Washington, the 11th day of February, A.D. 1856,
and of the Independence of the United States the eightieth.