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He dreams at night strange dreams of more brilliant successes. Of a new flag and the triumph of the beloved cause. He will be called as a trusted Southron into the councils of the coast. Will they cut it off under the Lone Star flag? This appeals to his ambition. There are omens everywhere. The Free-State Democrats must be suppressed. The South must and shall rule.
Writing to his wife on April 7, 1856, he said: "We hear that preparations are making in the United States Court for numerous arrests of free-state men. 'Their foot shall slide in due time." This letter of Brown's indicates that the writer was pleased at the prospect of approaching trouble.
Some of these regarded the newcomers with unmistakable hostility, noting which, Sandy and Oscar took good care to keep near their two grown-up protectors; and the two men always went about with their weapons within easy reaching distance. All of the Borderers were opposed to any more free-State men going into the Territory; and many of them were disposed to stop this by force, if necessary.
If, as Republicans asserted, many more free-State settlers than pro-slavery squatters had been driven out, then here was a fair concession. But what they wanted was not merely an equal chance for freedom in Kansas, but precedence. To this end they were ready even to admit Kansas under the Topeka constitution, which, by the most favorable construction, was the work of a faction.
Senator Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free-State constitutions.
In 1856, the House of Representatives which, after a protracted struggle, had elected N. P. Banks Speaker passed a Bill, by a bare majority, admitting Kansas under her Topeka Constitution; but the Senate defeated it. July 4, 1856, by order of President Pierce, the Free-State Legislature, chosen under the Topeka Constitution to meet at Topeka, was dispersed by United States Troops.
The decisive free-State victory, the Oxford and McGee frauds, and the Governor's fearless action in exposing and rejecting them, called forth universal comment; and under the new political conditions which they revealed, created intense interest in the further proceedings of the Lecompton Constitutional Convention. That body reassembled according to adjournment on the 19th of October.
On the 20th July, 1857, General Lane, under the authority of the Topeka convention, undertook, as Governor Walker informs us to organize the whole so-called Free-State party into volunteers and to take the names of all who refuse enrollment. The professed object is to protect the polls, at the election in August, of the new insurgent Topeka State legislature.
Was it for slavery's added domains these glorious lands were destined? Maxime is only a pawn in that great game of which the annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, and California conquest are moves. Wise, subtle, far-seeing, and not over-scrupulous, the leaders of southern sentiment, with prophetic alarm, were seeking to neutralize free-State extension in the Northwest.
This course becomes especially remarkable in view of the fact that the change did not occur until after Walker's rejection of the fraudulent Oxford returns, which action placed the legislative power of the Territory in the hands of the newly elected free-State Legislature, as already related. As it has never before been published, its full text will have special historical interest.