A rather scarce item, with no examples in the trade at the time of cataloging and no offered at auction in 20 years. 

The present speech played a critical role in the history of Kansas and, quite directly, in the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency. Pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces in Kansas battled over political control of the territory from its organization in 1854 until the end of the decade.  No crisis during this period had weightier political consequences than the fight which erupted in 1857 and continued through 1858 over the drafting of a pro-slavery constitution in Lecompton, Kansas. 

Adding to the controversy, when the pro-slavery legislature initially submitted the constitution to a referendum, they offered a "no slavery" option that actually attempted to sneak slavery in the backdoor, earning it a boycott from free soil forces.  The resulting "Lecompton swindle" as Republicans called it had the effect of dividing the Democratic Party because President James Buchanan insisted on accepting the dubious results of the election, while fellow Democrat Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois rejected the fraud.  Douglas was the leading advocate of "popular sovereignty" for the territories and could not bring himself to support a repudiation of this principle, but Buchanan demanded loyalty.  The feud between the two leading Democrats helped set the stage for the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 and much of the subsequent break up of the national Democratic Party. The Congress ultimately rejected the Lecompton Constitution and Kansas entered the nation as a free state in 1861. [Dickinson - House Divided]

[Kansas - Lecompton Constitution - Slavery]. Kansas----The Lecompton Constitution. Speech of Hon. John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky, in the Senate of the United States, March 17, 1858. [Corrected by Himself.] Washington D. C. C. W. Fenton, Printer, American Office. 1858. 16pp

Good + condition in original wraps, removed at some point from a larger sammelband, though complete as issued. Flotsam from previous binding on spine. Tender.