Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 16, 2025
With his authority to control election returns, there is every reason to suppose that Calhoun would have set up a pro-slavery State Legislature, to choose two pro-slavery senators, whom in its turn the strong Lecompton majority in the United States Senate would have admitted to seats; and thus the whole chain of fraud and usurpation back to the first Border-Ruffian invasion of Kansas would have become complete, legal, and irrevocable, on plea of mere formal and technical regularity.
Buchanan's cabinet, in secret league and correspondence with the pro-slavery Missouri-Kansas cabal, aided and abetted the framing and adoption of what is known to history as the Lecompton Constitution, an organic instrument of a radical pro-slavery type; that its pretended submission to popular vote was under phraseology, and in combination with such gigantic electoral frauds and dictatorial procedure, as to render the whole transaction a mockery of popular government; still worse, that President Buchanan himself, proving too weak in insight and will to detect the intrigue or resist the influence of his malign counselors, abandoned his solemn pledges to Governor Walker, adopted the Lecompton Constitution as an administration measure, and recommended it to Congress in a special message, announcing dogmatically: "Kansas is therefore at this moment as much a slave State as Georgia or South Carolina."
The message having been referred to the Committee on Territories after six days' debate, on the 18th of February a bill was reported by a majority of the Committee for the admission of Kansas into the Union under the Lecompton Constitution and Douglas presented a minority report protesting against it.
Fifth, That the present Democratic Administration has far exceeded our worst apprehensions, in its measureless subserviency to the exactions of a Sectional interest, as especially evinced in its desperate exertions to force the infamous Lecompton Constitution upon the protesting people of Kansas; in construing the personal relation between master and servant to involve an unqualified property in persons; in its attempted enforcement, everywhere, on land and sea, through the intervention of Congress and of the Federal Courts, of the extreme pretensions of a purely local interest; and in its general and unvarying abuse of the power intrusted to it by a confiding People.
Walker called an election for a constitutional convention. Again the Missourians participated, and the Lecompton constitution was the result. The Free-State men refused to recognize the convention unless the new constitution should be submitted to a fair vote. This the convention refused to do, and the governor appealed to the President to compel submission. This was denied, and Walker resigned.
Sentences culled here and there suggest not unfairly the stinging rebukes and defiant challenges that accentuated the none too coherent course of his speech: "I am told that this Lecompton constitution is a party test, a party measure; that no man is a Democrat who does not sanction it ... Sir, who made it a party test?
He will claim that not a single Northern State can be carried on a platform more pro-slavery than his. The Democrats of the North have yielded all they will." While Douglas was in Ohio, he was saddened by the intelligence that Senator Broderick of California, his loyal friend and staunch supporter in the Lecompton fight, had fallen a victim to the animosity of the Southern faction in his State.
Resignation and Flight of Governor Geary. Walker Appointed Governor. Promises of Buchanan and his Cabinet. Walker's Kansas Policy. Action of the Free-State Mass Meeting. Pro-slavery Convention at Lecompton. Election of Delegates. Governor Walker favors Submission of the Constitution to Popular Vote. Protests from Southern States. The Walker-Buchanan Correspondence.
While the town of Lawrence was undergoing burning and pillage, Governor Shannon wrote to Colonel Sumner to say that as the marshal and sheriff had finished making their arrests, and he presumed had by that time dismissed the posse, he required a company of United States troops to be stationed at Lawrence to secure "the safety of the citizens in both, person and property," asking also a like company for Lecompton and Topeka.
He proceeded to Lawrence, and there spent the winter in attending the Lecompton Legislature. The remainder of the year he passed mostly at Grasshopper Falls, where he completed his saw-mill. He occasionally visited home under cover of the night, and in the most secret manner; virtually carrying his life in his hand.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking