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Updated: June 16, 2025
While he was preaching and printing his sage admonitions about peace and prosperity at Lecompton, and laboring to change the implements of civil war into plowshares and pruning-hooks, the Missouri raid against Lawrence, officially called into the field by Woodson's proclamation, was about to deal out destruction to that town.
It is true that the whole constitution had not been submitted to the people, as I always desired; but the precedents are numerous of the admission of States into the Union without such submission. It would not comport with my present purpose to review the proceedings of Congress upon the Lecompton constitution.
He came in close touch with their leaders, and his open accession to their party seemed probable. Meanwhile in the Democratic party he had a small following in Congress and a large following among the people. The struggle in Congress over the Lecompton bill was obstinate.
The Lecompton constitution, which had been thus recognized at this State election by the votes of both political parties in Kansas, was transmitted to me with the request that I should present it to Congress. This I could not have refused to do without violating my clearest and strongest convictions of duty.
For his action concerning the Lecompton Constitution and the "English bill" Douglas afterward took much credit to himself. Such was the stage of advancement of the slavery conflict in the country, and such the position of Douglas in national and in state politics, when there took place that great campaign in Illinois which made him again senator in 1858, and made Lincoln President in 1860.
"I have reason to believe," wrote one of their prominent men, "that before to-morrow morning the black flag will be hoisted, when nine out of ten will rally round it, and march without orders upon Lawrence. The forces of the Lecompton camp fully understand the plot and will fight under the same banner."
Under the ordinance which accompanied the Lecompton constitution the people of Kansas had claimed double the quantity of public lands for the support of common schools which had ever been previously granted to any State upon entering the Union, and also the alternate sections of land for 12 miles on each side of two railroads proposed to be constructed from the northern to the southern boundary and from the eastern to the western boundary of the State.
But when the antislavery legislature met soon after, they ordered the question, Will you, or will you not, have this constitution? to be submitted to the people. Then the free settlers voted, and it was rejected by a great majority. Buchanan, however, paid no attention to the action of the free settlers, but sent the Lecompton constitution to Congress and urged it to admit Kansas as a slave state.
The differential calculus by which all Washington is computed obtains at the hotels as elsewhere, with this peculiarity, that the differences are infinitely great, instead of infinitely small. While the fronts are very fine, showy, and youthful as the Lecompton Constitution, the rears are coarse, common, and old as the Missouri Compromise.
At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up.
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