USA > Kansas > Kansas : the prelude to the war for the union > Part 5
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The constitutional convention continued in ses- sion at Topeka from October 23d to November 11th. Lane was elected president, and delivered, on taking the chair, a short address that sketched in outline the nobler Kansas of the future. Wide diversities of antecedents appeared among the members of the convention who represented half the states of the Union. Though convened for a purpose that did not lack much of being revolution- ary, it was a decidedly conservative assembly. Nineteen of the thirty-four members reported themselves democrats, six registered as whigs, while independents, free-soilers, republicans, free- state men, and nothingarians found representa- tives among the remaining nine. The incidental debates, which arose during the session on the merits of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, showed that a majority were friendly to it in spite of all that had happened in the territory.
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The convention put together a fairly good patch- work constitution, which adopted the boundaries of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, prohibited slavery after the 4th of July, 1857, conferred the right of suffrage on "white male citizens," and on "every civilized male Indian who has adopted the habits of the white man," and located the capital temporarily at Topeka. Lane still advocated the exclusion of negroes, pleading for a free white state, and carried the convention with him. Rob- inson fought the " black law " iniquity stoutly, but could make no head against it. A portion of the convention wished to incorporate anti-negro discriminations in the constitution, but the whole matter was ultimately referred to the people, who voted by a majority of nearly three to one that colored men should be excluded from the state. December 15th the constitution was ratified at the polls by seventeen hundred and thirty-one affirmative to forty-six negative votes. The elec- tion of officers for this tentative, empirical com- monwealth took place January 5th, 1856, and re- sulted in the choice of Charles Robinson as gov- ernor. One interesting and noteworthy result fol- lowed - whatever the philosophy of it may be - the sudden and final extinction of black-law sen- timent in Kansas. Silence fell upon its numerous and active champions with the election of an abolitionist to the governorship. That event in its effect was like some great change of climate
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which abruptly revolutionizes the life, customs, and habits of a people.
The elections of December 15th and of January 5th excited no general disturbance. Pro-slavery men sneered at them as silly, scarecrow perform- ances. At two points only did anything like the old time violence break out - Leavenworth and Easton. While the election was in progress at Leavenworth, on the 15th of December, a gang of pro-slavery roughs appeared at the polls and demanded the ballot-box on the ground that the election was illegal. Considering the reply unsatisfactory, the leader, followed by the whole brawling rout, crashed through the window where votes were received, and caused a great panic among the judges of election, who did not relish that style of suffrage. "I was not right well af- terwards," one of them complained. The raiders captured the ballot-box and bore it away in triumph, reducing consequently the majority in favor of the Topeka constitution by several hun- dred votes.
Only a single affray of any importance dis- quieted the January election. In consequence of rumors that the Kickapoo rangers - a pro-slav- ery military company of bad reputation - were planning an attack, the election at Easton did not take place until the 17th. A few armed free-state men from Leavenworth, led by Captain R. P. Brown, were in attendance to lend their
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friends any assistance that might be necessary. At night there was a brief skirmish in which one pro-slavery man was killed. Nobody on the free- state side received serious injury. "I found a shot in my scalp a day or two afterwards," said an Easton man, "but I did not know it at the time."
In the morning Brown and his men started for Leavenworth, but were intercepted by the Kicka- poos, who had been hastily summoned to Easton and were in a rage to avenge the killing of the preceding night. Their fury burned especially against Brown, whose resolution and activity made him very unpopular among the Kickapoos. " We've got him sure," one of them chuckled. They carried him back to Easton and confined him in a store, while an attempt was being made to organize a court for his trial. But some of the savages could not brook the delays of the rudest, most expeditious judiciary. They dis- persed the court and dealt Brown a fatal hatchet- stroke on the head. As he was not killed out- right, they bestirred themselves to take him home - a distance of several miles. It was late in the afternoon of one of the bitterest winter days ever known in Kansas before they set forth. "I am very cold," groaned the dying man, who, iced with gore, was flung upon the floor of a farm wagon and jolted homeward for hours over the roughly frozen roads. "Here 's Brown," the devils blurted out as they drove up to the door of his cabin.
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The state legislature met at Topeka March 4th, and Governor Robinson delivered his message - a strong, sensible, cautious paper. With a mix- ture of shrewdness, poetry, and bathos, the legisla- ture after a brief session adjourned to the 4th of July. It attempted nothing beyond the pas- sage of a few laws, the appointment of a codify- ing committee to prepare business for the next session, the election of Reeder and Lane as sena- tors, and the preparation of a memorial praying for admission to the Union under the Topeka con- stitution. Neither officers nor laws were regarded as having anything more than a conditional, ten- tative existence, until favorable and validating action could be secured on the part of Congress. The governor was careful to say that he " recom- mended no course to be taken in opposition to the general government or to the territorial govern- ment while it shall remain with the sanction of Congress. Collision with either is to be avoided."
Thus far an unbroken prosperity had attended the counter-move against Missouri, but in Wash- ington it experienced rough weather. April 7th, General Cass presented in the Senate the memo- rial of the Topeka legislature, asking that the State of Kansas might be admitted to the Union. The appearance of the memorial caused a commotion. " I find," said Douglas, " that the signatures are all in one handwriting. . .. I perceive on inspec- tion various interlineations and crasures. All
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things are calculated to throw doubt on the genu- ineness of the document." Senator Pugh thought the memorial appeared " as if some person who had it in charge had watched the progress of dis- cussion in this body, and had stricken out prop- ositions to accommodate it to the present stage of discussion." "Are we not aware," sneered Benjamin, of Louisiana, "that the men whose signatures purport to be attached to this paper are fugitives from justice ?" The memorial was ignominiously bundled out of the Senate. "I ask leave to withdraw it," said Cass, "with a view to return it to the gentleman who handed it to me."
The gentleman in question was Lane, who, in no wise abashed, immediately began to plan a second ยท effort for recognition. He resorted to the sanc- tities of an affidavit which rehearsed the alleged history of the memorial. It was originally the work of a special committee, was accepted by the legislature, and then sent back for revision as the phraseology needed mending. The committee delegated the editorial function to Lane, who attended to it after his arrival in Washington. The " sets of signatures," executed by members of the legislature, having been " unfortunately mis- laid," Lane's private secretary came to the rescue and signed the names of these gentlemen to the memorial - such was the substance of the affi- davit.
Harlan, of Iowa, presented the memorial with
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the explanatory affidavit to the Senate, but the second reception of it was no more friendly than the first. The shabby, deleted, interpolary con- dition of the document, and the absence of orig- inal signatures, neutralized the force of all ex- planation however adroit and plausible.
Besides, the memorial was silent in reference to the "black law" restrictions, which, though not literally a part of the constitution, would practically have the same effect as if they had been incorporated in it - an omission readily lending color to charges of concealment and dis- ingenuousness. The infelicities of the memorial afforded Senator Douglas opportunities for as- sailing Lane, which he improved to the utmost. You presented to us, he said in substance, an orig- inal document that had no signatures, no mode of authentication, and no date. You attempted to palm upon the Senate an imperfect copy of the constitution of the so-called State of Kansas. You suppressed a material provision of that supreme law. You withheld what you dare not defend - the permanent legislative instructions excluding colored men from the state. In every line of your expurgated and recast memorial evidences of fraud appear !
Lane did not relish the affair, and demanded from Douglas an explanation such as "will remove all imputation upon the integrity of my aets or motives in connection with the memorial," and
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intimated that a challenge would follow in case his explanation should be inadequate. Douglas replied that no exculpatory facts were within his knowledge, and there the episode ended.
At the close of a long discussion the House of Representatives voted by a majority of two in favor of the admission of Kansas to the Union with the Topeka constitution, but the hostility of the Senate could not be surmounted.
The Topeka movement could show but little backing of precedents. State governments had repeatedly come into existence without enabling acts, but never before in defiance of the territo- rial authorities. That was the situation in Kan- sas. Bayard, of Delaware, pronounced the con- duct of the free-state party "incipient treason." But if their action touched, it did not cross, the line of treason. Had there been an appeal to force treason would have been committed. If the people of Kansas chose to supplement me- morials to Congress with a state constitution un- der which officers had been provisionally elected and laws provisionally passed - all a dead organ- ism until federal inspiration should breathe into it the breath of life - they were only exercising the primal rights of American citizens.
The Topeka government taking the field against the Missouri legislature - a veritable, though hy- pothetical Kansas institution warring upon an in- terloper - was erected, as has been already re-
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marked, with a view to national, as well as domes- tic uses. It was an emphatic method of publishing the territorial assembly as hopelessly, intolerably bad, and in this way it made an effective appeal to Northern sympathy. Locally it afforded a rallying point for the anti-slavery party, and presented at least a show of aggressive activity which bespoke nerve and vigor in the leadership. The legisla- ture never passed any laws of importance, and never put in force those which it did pass. It was a disguised mass-meeting - a mass-meeting shrewdly and effectively masquerading as a state government. Whatever savage declarations and threats it may have uttered, it took care to do nothing illegal. The crafty scheme drew the pro- slavery fire and held the free-state men together until they could get possession of the legitimate legislature.
CHAPTER VI.
WAR ON THE WAKARUSA.
WILSON SHANNON, of Ohio, the second gov- ernor of Kansas, was a lawyer of good repute, with an honorable record as governor of his native state, minister to Mexico, and representative in Congress, genial, companionable, his sympathies and instincts naturally gravitating toward what- ever is just and honorable, a tenacious, unwaver- ing Democrat of the old school, but no iron, deci- sive storm-queller able to rule the anarchy let loose in the territory.
The period immediately preceding and the pe- riod immediately following Shannon's advent were not prolific in violence. The political fight - the fence of hostile constitutional expedients, a hy- pothetical state government matched against a legitimatized territorial legislature - got well un- der way.
Now and then the underlying ferment broke out into spasmodic acts of personal violence. The fortunes of Rev. Pardee Butler are among the most notable experiences of discomfort during this interval. The divine so far forgot all max-
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ims of policy as to avow free-soil opinions in the pro-slavery town of Atchison. "I intend." said he, "to utter my sentiments where I please." A local bully had recently fallen upon an estrayed abolitionist who ventured into the region, and had soundly thrashed him. Public sentiment ap- plauded the act, and, as it seemed to merit special recognition, a paper was drawn up gratefully re- counting the bully's devotion to public interests, the signing of which became a test of political or- thodoxy. A bright thought struck the junior ed- itor of the "Squatter Sovereign," a rabid, pro- slavery newspaper published in town. It occurred to him that this paper might be useful in taming the doughty free-soiler, and he presented it to him for his signature, which, of course, was not se- cured. A mob of considerable size, understand- ing the game, and gathered in anticipation of the parson's probable decision, then took him in hand and hurried him toward the Missouri River, ap- parently with the purpose of tossing him into it. After reaching the bank his face was blackened. Then followed a long discussion - the divine be- ing a " target at which were hurled imprecations, curses, arguments, entreaties, accusations, and in- terrogatories." It was suggested that the ends of justice would be sufficiently served if he should immediately and permanently quit the country. These Atchison fanatics offered to point out the very tree on which he would be gibbeted in case
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of return, if he felt their discourse needed the illumination of an object-lesson. He stiffly re- plied that he should certainly return, provided his life were not taken and Providence permitted. The conservators of public peace relented so far as to consent to his remaining in the vicinity with the understanding that he should keep his mouth shut. "I shall speak as I choose," said the incorrigible parson ; "I have done no wrong. I have as good a right to come here as you. I am but one man, you are many. Dispose of me as you think best. I ask no favors of you."
The discussion accomplished nothing in the way of compromise. The mob finally came to a vote on the question - what sort of public honors shall be conferred on the divine ? and a majority gave their suffrages in favor of hanging - a ver- dict that undoubtedly would have been executed, had not the teller tampered with the returns in the interest of humanity and misreported the re- sult. A milder sentence took effect. Extempo- rizing a raft out of cottonwood logs, and placing upon it the clergyman and his baggage -the whole tricked out with derisive placards - the gang thrust the strange craft out into the stream for a down-the-river voyage. After floating five or six miles, escorted a part of the distance by cit- izens of the town who followed along the banks, the traveler made land and escaped.
This outrage, which happened August 16th,
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was afterwards reenacted with variations. The Rev. Mr. Butler, undeterred by past experiences, visited Atchison again some months subsequent to his voyage on the Missouri, and fell into the clutches of a company just arrived from South Carolina, who were determined to put him out of the way. It was with the greatest difficulty that the South Carolinians could be prevailed upon to scale down the penalty from capital punishment to a coat of tar and feathers. They finally yielded, and the coat of tar and feathers was administered.
An elaborate pro- slavery reception awaited Governor Shannon on his arrival at Shawnee Mission September 3d. There was a speech by an orator, unsurpassed and unsurpassable in high- flying sentiment, who welcomed him to a land where "the gentle pressure of the hand attests the cordial welcome of the heart; " where no Catilines abound, "no lank and hungry Italians with their treacherous smiles, no cowards with their stilettos, no assassins of reputations." In this recovered Eden "the morning prayer is heard on every hill, the evening orison is chanted in every valley and glen." Doubtless the gov- ernor was glad to learn that rogues were scarce in Kansas, and that the squatters had such a pen- chant for praying. He was in accord with the optimism of the hour. Reported disturbances, like the misfortunes of Rev. Pardee Butler two weeks before, he believed to have been grossly exagger-
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ated for partisan purposes. " There is no state in the Union where persons and property are more secure than in this territory." Whatever irregu- larities may have attended the election of the legislature, he contended that it has been duly recognized by the territorial executive and the president of the United States, and that its laws must be enforced. " I come amongst you," the governor said, " not as a mere adventurer to bet- ter his fortune and then return home, but as one desiring for himself and family a permanent loca- tion."
Governor Shannon fell into an unfortunate er- ror at the beginning of his administration - an error which he subsequently strove to correct - in openly and exclusively affiliating with the Mis- souri party. He found that faction in complete possession of the government. Daniel Woodson, secretary of state, who acted as governor in the interval between Reeder's removal and Shannon's arrival, who signed the notorious laws of the first legislature - a manageable sort of man, easily steered into any port- was in favor with the pro-slavery party. They were indignant because President Pierce did not promote him to the gov- ernorship. For a time Shannon wholly resigned himself to Missouri influence and policy. He unwisely consented to preside at a convention of " the lovers of law and order," which assembled at Leavenworth November 14th, to formulate and
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publish to the world both their principles and their grievances. The conduct of " certain persons pro- fessing to be friends of human freedom " was de- nounced as " practical nullification, rebellion, and treason." The Topeka constitutional conven- tion " would have been a farce if its purposes had not been treasonable." Any instrument which the Topeka government may present to Congress "ought to be scouted from its halls as an insult to its intelligence and an outrage upon our sovereign rights." Governor Shannon made a speech which was received with vociferous enthusiasm. " The
president is behind you," he shouted ; "the pres- ident is behind you." The convention, follow- ing the example of the meeting at Big Springs, formed a political party which was called the " law and order " party, and was expected to gather up all the pro-slavery elements of the ter- ritory. The 14th of November, said " The Kan- sas Herald " on the 17th, " will be a day long to be remembered, for the death-knell of the abo- lition, nullification, and revolutionary party was sounded."
But this mood of exultation soon passed away, and was followed by a sense of disquiet and ap- prehension. There began to be suspicions before long that no decisive victory had been gained when the legislature and the governor were cap- tured. Free-state men managed to ignore the bulky statutes of Shawnee Mission. They dis-
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carded all the civil and legal machineries estab- lished by the legislature - courts, justices of the peace, probate judges, registers of deeds - and resorted to some make-shift. In Lawrence, deeds were recorded by a private citizen who acted with- out authority other than a vague, indefinite public consensus. Then these insurgents were consoli- dating into the unity of an efficient political or- ganization, and that circumstance began to cloud the pro-slavery sunshine. Besides, there was the audacious Topeka movement, an amateur consti- tution drawing upon itself the eyes of the nation, rousing intense passions of friendship and hostil- ity, and actually pushing through one house of Congress.
The Missouri border became eager to try more vigorous and summary measures in the treatment of territorial abolitionism than had thus far been prescribed, to substitute for the policy of legislat- ing the Yankees out, the policy of wiping them out. In the indifferent, waning success of those milder expedients which culminated at the polls, and in the compilation of iron-clad statutes, public opinion steadily gravitated toward an aggressive root-and-branch policy as infolding larger buds of promise. Why not disperse the intruders and have a quick end of the foolishness ? Lawrence, in particular, as the headquarters of sedition, had acquired an evil name that grew blacker with every turn of affairs favorable to the free-state
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cause. There came to be a general conviction that nothing less than the destruction of this op- probrious town would give peace and safety to the border, and naturally enough the passion to ex- periment upon it with the bowie-knife and re- volver cure rose to an almost uncontrollable pitch. Only a pretext was needed to precipitate an at- tack, and the flimsiest would be accepted if noth- ing better offered.
A fatal claim-dispute, November 21st, 1855, at Hickory Point - a settlement ten miles south of Lawrence - furnished the coveted excuse for an appeal to arms. F. N. Coleman, a pro-slavery squatter, assassinated Charles M. Dow, a young neighbor of free-state proclivities, who made his home with old Jacob Branson. Dow was " a right peaceable man," said Branson; "a man that I thought as much of as any I ever got acquainted with."
Five days after the killing, an excited band of armed free-state men congregated about the spot crimsoned by Dow's blood to discuss under its dark inspiration measures of retribution. The assassin and his friends - implicated more or less directly in the crime - took alarm at the earliest signs of mischief and fled to Shawnee Mission. A proposition to fire their deserted cabins was dis- cussed and rejected, though the adverse decision did not save them from being burnt down at night. The talk of the assembly befitted time and occa-
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sion. It was reminiscent, furious, stygian, avenge- ful, but no plans of practical violence were adopted beyond the appointment of a vigilance committee, with instructions "to ferret out and bring the murderers and their accomplices to condign pun- ishment." The committee exhibited more zeal than marksmanship in the discharge of their du- ties if Coleman may be credited. "I was not safe in traveling through the territory," he tes- tified before the congressional investigating com- mittee a few months after the homicide. "I had been shot at more than twenty times by men from Lawrence."
Old Branson is described as " an elderly man of most quiet and modest deportment," yet, ac- cording to the testimony of pro-slavery neighbors, whose evidence should be received with abate- ments, the butchery of his friend stirred him to great fluency of sanguinary talk. They report him as swearing mouth-filling oaths that a certain Harrison Buckley, who egged on the murder, " should not breathe the pure air three minutes," if he could once draw a bead upon him. Buckley, in real or simulated alarm for his life, procured a peace warrant for Branson's arrest, which was put into the hands of Samuel J. Jones, lately com- missioned sheriff of Douglas County.
Sheriff Jones, a prominent figure in coming events, was a mixture of black and white that fairly represented the good and evil of the border
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- a man of great energy, noise, violence, courage, and sincerity. He won his first partisan laurels at Bloomington polls on the 30th of March, when he succeeded in driving off two or three rather mettlesome and plucky election judges. That ex- ploit gave him a very odious reputation in free- state circles.
At a late hour on the night of November 26th a loud, unceremonious thumping saluted Bran- son's cabin door. "Who's there ?" shouted the old man. " Friends," was the reply. So urgent was the haste of these friends that they forced the door before they could be invited to come in. They told Branson to consider himself a prisoner, and to be very careful how he behaved. Slight indiscretions might lead to unfortunate results. Mrs. Branson ventured to inquire of the visitors by what authority they were pouncing upon her husband at dead of night, when her attention was called to a seven-shooter as a warrant singularly effective and constitutional. Jones pulled Bran- son out of bed, ordered him to put on his coat and trousers, mounted him on a sharp-backed mule, and set off for Lecompton via Lawrence.
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