United States or Chad ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Other provisions made emancipation difficult by providing in any case for complete monetary remuneration and for the consent of the owners. There were numerous other provisions offensive to free-state men. It had been rightly surmised that they would take no part in such an election and that "the constitution with slavery" would be approved.
In turn, the more rapid emigration from free States filled the Territory with a majority of free-State voters, who quickly organized a compact free-State party, which sent a free-State constitution, known as the Topeka Constitution, to Congress, and applied for admission. This movement proved barren, because the two houses of Congress were divided in sentiment.
The bogus territorial laws were defied by the newspapers and treated as a dead letter by the mass of the free-State men; as much as possible they stood aloof from the civil officers appointed by and through the bogus Legislature, recorded no title papers, began no lawsuits, abstained from elections, and denied themselves privileges which required any open recognition of the alien Missouri statutes.
The revolution, due to David Terry's bullet, brought men like Phelps, Sargent, T. W. Park, and John Conness to the front. Other Free-State men see the victory of their principles with joy. Sidney Johnston is the last hope of the Southern leaders. The old soldier's resignation speeds eastward on the pony express. Day by day, exciting news tells of the snapping of cord after cord.
And as the conflict took decided shape, it is hard to tell which class, the leading southern or northern disunionists, was more stunn'd and disappointed at the non-action of the free-State secession element, so largely existing and counted on by those leaders, both sections. So much for that point, and for the north.
"We came up the river in the first place, on the steamboat 'Black Eagle, and when we got to Leavenworth, a big crowd of Borderers, seeing us and another lot of free-State men on the boat, refused to let us land. We had to go down the river again.
The President's accompanying special message argues that the organic law of the Territory conferred the essential rights of an enabling act; that the free-State party stood in the attitude of willful and chronic revolution; that their various refusals to vote were a sufficient bar to complaint and objection; that the several steps in the creation and work of the Lecompton Convention were regular and legal.
Of the Free-State party, not a few zealous members seemed disposed to compensate themselves for their benevolent efforts on behalf of the negro by crowding the Indian to the wall; while the slavery propagandists steadily maintained their consistency by impartially persecuting the members of both the inferior races.
A few preliminary meetings, instigated by the disfranchised free-State members of the Legislature, brought together a large mass convention. The result of its two days' deliberations was a regularly chosen delegate convention held at Big Springs, a few miles west of Lawrence, on the 5th of September, 1855.
Much more than one third of the 6,143 were proved to be fraudulent, but the residue far exceeded the requisite majority. January 4, 1858, state officers were to be chosen, and now the free-state men decided to make an irregular opportunity to vote, in their turn, simply for or against the Lecompton Constitution.
Word Of The Day