Note 35 — Chapter IX · 1857-1858.

See the President’s message of February 28, 1858, submitting the Lecompton constitution. In describing the President’s views on this subject I have not only relied upon his messages and other official papers, but I have drawn them also from an elaborate private paper in his hand-writing, which is of too great length to be inserted textually in this work. It relates to the construction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, a construction which he felt bound to adopt in consequence of the views taken of the subject of slavery in Territories by the Supreme Court, as he said in his inaugural address that he should do. In this MS., he speaks of “The infamous and unfounded assertion of Mr. ——, that in a conversation with Chief Justice Taney, he [the Chief Justice] had informed him in advance of the inaugural what the opinion [of the court] would be.”