President Buchanan appointed Robert J. Walker from Mississippi as territorial governor and Frederick P. Stanton from Washington, DC, as territorial secretary. Walker had served as a US senator and as secretary of the treasury in the Polk Administration. Stanton had been a congressman from Tennessee, and most recently was a successful attorney in Washington. Stanton arrived first in the territory as acting governor and Walker came later. Both made it clear that they wanted to maintain the peace that Governor Geary had established, but they made it equally clear that they intended to do whatever was necessary to ensure that the territorial laws passed by the pro-slavery territorial legislature would be enforced.164
Peace keeping in the territory was not difficult. Whether from having their noses bloodied in battles and skirmishes with free-state forces the year before, or whether they thought they again had the upper hand with the new territorial administrators, the pro-slavery faction concluded that violence would not serve it well. The free-state side was happy for the tranquility, too. The army had successfully disbanded the non-authorized militias on both sides. Further, the Missourians again opened their borders, so emigrants had an easier time coming to Kansas, no doubt believing that no matter how many antislavery settlers entered the territory, they still had the political clout needed to make Kansas a slave state.
There probably was, however, some trepidation on the pro-slavery side about the actual numbers of new residents coming to Kansas in the spring of 1857. The Herald of Freedom reported that between 1,500 and 2,000 emigrants were arriving daily, and nineteen out of twenty new arrivals favored Kansas’s admission as a free state. Rev. Cordley reported similar numbers of new settlers arriving, and he added that many came from southern states but were against slavery. He estimated that three out of four were against slavery.165
While hordes of new emigrants were arriving in Kansas, only a trickle came under the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Company, and for that matter, only relatively small numbers came from New England. A year or so earlier, the Company had shifted much of its focus to providing relief to its immigrants who had suffered from the harsh winter of 1855–56, and to the residents of Lawrence who had lived through the Wakarusa War, the sacking of their town, and the general privations resulting from Bleeding Kansas. The destruction of its Free State Hotel and other company property was a devastating financial loss as well, which prompted its creditors to clamor for payment of debts owed. The role of the company and its officers was evolving, and Amos Lawrence captured the company’s changing role in his resignation letter as treasurer. “The main object for which the association was formed,” he wrote, “the incitement of free emigration to Kansas, has been successfully accomplished. The corporation must hereafter be considered a land company.”166
Even with the shift in focus, the Emigrant Aid Company and Amos Lawrence remained committed to the cause. The members continued doing everything in their power to ensure that Kansas would be admitted as a free state. For his part, Lawrence authorized a substantial donation of $12,696.14 to be placed in trust “for the advancement of religious and intellectual education of the young in Kansas.” Part of the money would come from a fund he had established for Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and the rest from shares he held in the Emigrant Aid Company. He intended for the money to accrue interest, with the eventual dispersal of about half for Sunday schools throughout the future state, and half for educating the young. He stipulated one caveat: that should Kansas become a slave state, the money would be returned to him or his heirs.167
It is difficult to translate 1857 dollars to twenty-first century dollars, but an amount over $12,000 was a great deal of money at that time. As a comparison, a house in a city such as Chicago at that time cost about $500. A skilled craftsman such as a blacksmith earned, on average, $500 a year, and an unskilled laborer earned about $300 a year. Added to the substantial money he had already invested in Kansas, Lawrence had truly put his money where his mouth was.
Peace continued in Lawrence into the spring of 1857, and the town was prospering. Many emigrants came through Lawrence either to stay, or more likely as a passing point to other areas in the territory. If they chose to stay in Lawrence, land was becoming quite pricey. A 1,500-square-foot lot at the corner of Massachusetts and Winthrop sold for $1,250 in cash in May 1857. It had been purchased for $250 eighteen months earlier. As quickly as anyone could build a hotel or lodging house, it was filled. A one-hundred-pound sack of corn fetched the astonishing price of $4; a one-hundred-pound sack of flour went for $5.50. Unskilled laborers demanded and received $2 a day, and that was if anyone could find a laborer who would work for any amount of money.
After enjoying a few months of a newspaper monopoly, George Brown once again had competition. On May 28, 1857, T. D. Thatcher and Norman Allen published the first issue of the Lawrence Republican. At the head of the first page, the publishers quoted from the Declaration of Independence, then went on to state that their sole purpose was to ensure that all citizens in Kansas—black and white—would be equal. It did not take long for the newspapers to start slinging mud at each other. On June 25, Thatcher and Allen asked if “the Herald of Freedom at all times sustained the position and policy of the Free-State Party in Kansas.” The question was rhetorical, and they answered that “the Herald of Freedom can pursue its own course and its own language … but it must not attempt longer to palm itself off as sustaining the position and policy of the Free-State Party.” Two days later, Brown asked his subscribers to renew the subscriptions and sought new readers because “a partisan press for partisan purposes are laboring to crush it [the Herald].” He continued: “[The Herald of Freedom] has been stricken down, but it has risen, and will rise again and again, if necessary, until freedom triumphs, and every occupant of Kansas is truly free.”168
Although Lawrence was growing and—again—beginning to prosper, remnants of the sacking remained. Many residents had lost their crops the previous summer; others had lost their houses and were not able to rebuild. Groups from New Hampshire and New York, hearing of their plight, raised relief money that was distributed to those most in need. On the brighter side, many of the buildings damaged or destroyed a year earlier were repaired or replaced. The sawmill owned by the Emigrant Aid Company was repaired and back in business. The Free State Hotel was still in ruins, but a Mr. Eldridge and a partner purchased the site—which still had a solid foundation and basement—from the Emigrant Aid Company for $5,000. They would soon begin rebuilding a larger and more elegant hotel.169
In addition to rebuilding their town, the residents of Lawrence began looking forward to the elections scheduled later in 1857 for the territorial legislature. But before those elections, the sitting pro-slavery territorial legislature called for elections in the spring for delegates to a convention to draft a Kansas constitution. An article in the Herald of Freedom on May 2, 1857, noted that the free-state men of Kansas had decided to boycott the convention election. For one thing, they were convinced that the convention would produce a constitution that made slavery legal. Further, territorial Governor Walker promised that any constitution would be submitted to voters for approval before it was submitted to Congress. Since a substantial majority of Kansans opposed slavery, Charles Robinson and other antislavery leaders believed they were safe in advising free-state residents to boycott the election for the constitutional convention.170
Robinson and nearly all free-state men indeed did boycott the constitutional convention election, which was held on June 15, 1857. The polls did not attract much interest from the pro-slavery faction either, in that only about 20 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. The areas with the highest turnout were along the Missouri River, but unlike the vote to elect the territorial legislature two years earlier, few Missourians crossed the border to vote.
Sixty delegates were chosen to write the new constitution. But before they began their work, it was clear that a great many were interested in their proceedings, including President B
uchanan.171 The president had hoped that the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision would settle the question of slavery in the territory once and for all. Instead, it unleashed a firestorm of protest in the North, with no end in sight. Dred Scott, an enslaved man, sued for his freedom because his owner had taken him to Illinois, a free state, and to Wisconsin, a free territory. The court could have simply said Dred Scott was a slave and left it at that, but it went much further. It said that because Scott was an African American man, he had no rights as a citizen, and thus had no standing. In a more far-reaching ruling, however, the court also said that Congress could not restrict slavery in the territories, tying the ownership of slaves to the property rights clause of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.172
Since the Dred Scott decision further inflamed the North, President Buchanan turned his attention to Kansas, naively hoping that the constitutional convention would produce a pro-slavery constitution that would be acceptable to the residents of Kansas, and would pass both houses of Congress. He thought the South would be pleased to have another slave state in its fold. He hoped the North would accept Kansas as a slave state to maintain peace. He was wrong again.
The pro-slavery territorial legislature had the power to call for a constitutional convention, but it could not delay the call for an election for the territorial legislature. The election was scheduled for October 1857. The free-state men debated whether or not they should bother to vote, fearing that no matter what the numbers showed, the pro-slavery folks would somehow find a way to rig the election. On the other hand, Governor Walker—of whom both sides still were wary—very much wanted the free-state residents to vote, and promised that he would ensure that the election would be fair. Ultimately, Dr. Robinson and the others concluded that it was in their interest to vote for the territorial legislature. Free-State Party members met in Grasshopper Falls on August 26 to debate this issue, and all in attendance agreed to vote.173 The election took place on October 5, 1857, and true to his word, Governor Walker stationed troops at all polling places in which it was suspected that there might be trouble. The election went off without a hitch, or at least that was how it seemed.
The citizens of Lawrence were jubilant. Eligible voters turned out in force, and it appeared that they had finally elected their people to the territorial legislature. But, up to their old tricks, the sitting territorial legislature had linked Douglas County, where Lawrence was located, with neighboring pro-slavery Johnson County in the election, allowing eight legislators to be elected from the combined district. On the day of the election, Douglas County reported 1,638 votes for the free-state side and 187 for the pro-slavery side. Johnson County was much smaller, and although more residents there voted in a pro-slavery block, there were nowhere near enough votes to tip the balance in their favor. Miraculously, however, two days after the election, the tiny precinct of Oxford in Johnson County reported an additional 1,547 proslavery votes, which would have thrown the election to the pro-slavery side.
The result was miraculous in that on the first day of voting, only ninety-one men had voted in the Oxford precinct. It was later discovered that the instigators took names from the city directory of Cincinnati, Ohio, cast votes in their names, and had them certified. True to his word, Governor Walker threw out the rigged ballots, giving the election to the free-state candidates.174 Across the territory, the free-state candidates won by a wide margin, ensuring that the new legislature would be under their control.
Because the free-state faction won a territorial election, residents of Lawrence and elsewhere paid little attention to the constitutional convention, believing that no matter what it produced, if it included a provision for slavery, it would easily be defeated when submitted to the people for approval. George Brown noted in his Herald of Freedom that the convention met on September 7 and recessed until October 19. There also was a rumor that no money was available to pay the delegates, and that the convention likely might not reconvene.175
The people of Lawrence were overly optimistic that the constitutional convention meeting in Lecompton would come to nothing. It reconvened on October 19, 1857, and wrote a state constitution that—not surprisingly—included a provision allowing slavery in the new state. Section 1 of Article VII stated that “the right of property is before and higher than any constitutional sanction, and the right of the owner of a slave to such slave and its increase is the same and as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property whatever.”176 The delegates concluded their business and submitted the new constitution directly to Kansas residents for a vote on December 21, 1857, bypassing the territorial legislature.
Rather than a vote on the entire document, however, residents were only allowed to vote on one of two options: namely, if they voted for the constitution “with slavery,” they were endorsing the unlimited growth of the institution in the new state. On the other hand, if they voted for the constitution “without slavery,” they were not voting to outlaw slavery, but rather to limit the number of slave owners to the number already in Kansas when admitted to the Union. Slaves already in Kansas would remain slaves, but no new slaves would be imported into the state. In other words, either option made slavery legal. But the language followed the requirement of the Kansas-Nebraska Act that the people of Kansas would request admission as a state “with” or “without” slavery.
Free-state Kansans boycotted the constitutional vote, and in their absence, the pro-slavery faction approved the constitution “with slavery,” by a vote of 6,226 to 569. They then submitted it to Congress for admission. Although it probably was not necessary, since the free-state side stayed away from the polls, the pro-slavery side intimidated anyone it thought might vote against the constitution. Missourians also crossed the border and voted with the pro-slavery side. Governor Walker was temporarily away from the territory, and Territorial Secretary Frederick P. Stanton, who was acting as territorial governor at the time, was concerned with the irregularities of the vote. Stanton also understood that any vote for the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution or, for that matter, any constitution, required the territorial legislature to initiate the process. So he called the territorial legislature into a special session and asked the members to pass a law submitting the Lecompton Constitution to a vote of the people. The legislature complied and scheduled a new election to be held on January 4, 1858. The result was 138 for and 10,266 votes against the Lecompton Constitution.177
Nevertheless, the pro-slavery side went ahead and submitted the Lecompton Constitution, based on the December 21 vote, to Congress through President Buchanan. The president saw this constitution as a gift. Nothing in his first year in office had gone well. In addition to the slavery issues, the nation was in the throes of the Panic of 1857, the most devastating economic downturn in the nation up to that point in its history. Buchanan was not concerned that there were problems with the way the Lecompton Constitution was presented to the people of Kansas; he went ahead and submitted it to Congress. To blunt the potential argument that the free-state faction boycotted the December 21 vote, he argued that they had the opportunity to vote but chose not to, and thus “suffered the election to pass by default.” He further made the case that the January 4 vote was not legal since the December 21 vote had already taken place.178
As he had miscalculated on the Dred Scott decision, Buchanan misjudged how Northern Democrats would view the Lecompton Constitution. Many, including Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who had pushed through the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, were incensed that the president would even consider presenting the document to Congress. Buchanan tried to strong-arm Democrats to support the constitution, and was successful with the Senate but not the House. The two houses eventually came up with a compromise in which the Lecompton Constitution would be resubmitted to Kansans for an up or down vote. But, as part of the compromise, Congressman William Hayden English, a Democrat from Indiana, proposed a desperation measure to sweeten the pot for Kansas residents to support the constitution. In what was called the
English Bill, Kansas would receive an additional 3.5 million acres in federal land if it approved the constitution; nothing if it did not. On the third vote, on August 2, 1858, by a vote of 1,926 for to 11,812 against, Kansas buried the Lecompton Constitution. With the defeat, the issue of whether or not Kansas would become a slave state was decided as well. It would take two and a half more years, but Kansas would enter the Union in 1861 as a free state.
10 Glorious Intelligence! Kansas in the Union!
A FEW WEEKS AFTER THE legislative elections, the newly elected “Free State” territorial legislature began its deliberations. The body convened in Lecompton, but immediately moved to Lawrence, where it met on January 4, 1858—coincidentally, the same day as the second vote on the Lecompton Constitution. The first order of business was to repeal the pro-slavery laws that were so repugnant to nearly all Kansans. That part was easy. The part that was more difficult was drafting new laws. Under the pro-slavery legislature, the members essentially borrowed the legal code from Missouri, substituted “the Territory of Kansas” in place of the “State of Missouri” where appropriate, and that, for all intents and purposes, became the legal code. The exception was the slave code, which was much harsher. It would take several sessions for the new legislature to tear down the old, then build up a new set of laws.
Stark Mad Abolitionists Page 12
