The Middle Period 1817-1858 Part 41

The "Free-state" men now had possession of the Topeka "Free-state"

government, of the Territorial legislature, and of the Lecompton "State" government, and had rejected the Lecompton const.i.tution by an undoubted majority of the suffrages of the citizens of Kansas.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEBRASKA & KANSAS, 1854-61.]

[Sidenote: Denver advises the President against the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton instrument.]

As yet the Lecompton const.i.tution had not been presented by the President to Congress, and Acting Governor Denver hastened to give him a truthful statement of the condition of affairs in the Territory, and to urge him not to recommend to Congress the admission of Kansas under this const.i.tution, but to suggest to that body the pa.s.sage simply of an enabling {469} act, under which the people of Kansas might begin again the work of forming a Commonwealth const.i.tution.

[Sidenote: The President's message of February 2nd (1858).]

But the President did not heed this wise warning. On February 2nd, 1858, he sent the Lecompton const.i.tution, with the provision making slavery a permanent inst.i.tution in Kansas, to Congress, and recommended the admission of the distracted Territory into the Union, as a "State," under it. His line of argument was that every step in the procedure of framing and adopting this const.i.tution had been regularly and legally taken, and that all the voters could have partic.i.p.ated in the work if they had chosen to do so. He claimed that the act of the Territorial legislature, after it came under the control of the "Free-state" men, in ordering another vote, and a different sort of vote, upon the const.i.tution, than and from that appointed and required by the convention, was irregular; and he undertook to comfort the "Free-state" men with the suggestion that, Kansas once admitted, they could change its const.i.tution to suit themselves, if they were really in majority.

[Sidenote: The pa.s.sage of the Lecompton bill by the Senate.]

The President's argument carried the Senate with him despite the powerful opposition of Mr. Douglas, who bravely antagonized the Administration, and held firmly that his great principle of "popular sovereignty" required the unreserved submission of every part of the const.i.tution to the free suffrages of the people, in order to establish its validity. He declared that unless this should be done Congress could not know whether the people of Kansas had made a const.i.tution or not, and that without that knowledge the admission of Kansas under the const.i.tution before the Senate was tantamount to making a {470} const.i.tution for Kansas by Congressional act. The honest and manly stand taken by Mr. Douglas upon this great subject certainly presents him in the role of a patriotic statesman, rather than in his usual character of the shrewd politician.

[Sidenote: The rejection of the bill by the House.]

The Senate pa.s.sed the Lecompton bill on March 23rd, 1858, by a substantial majority, but the House promptly rejected it. The House pa.s.sed a measure, instead, for referring the Lecompton const.i.tution back to the people of Kansas, who should vote freely upon it in all its parts, and for admitting Kansas, without further Congressional action, under this const.i.tution, if it should receive the popular ratification; but the Senate rejected this subst.i.tute for its bill.

[Sidenote: The English bill.]

The matter was then sent to a conference committee of the two Houses.

After long deliberation a measure was matured by this committee which appeared to deal with a subsidiary question only, but which, by some sort of an understanding, was held to give the people of Kansas the chance to reject the Lecompton const.i.tution _in toto_ at the polls.

The measure is known as the English bill from its projector, Mr. W. H.

English, a member of the conference committee from the House of Representatives. It provided for a reduction of the land grants from twenty-three millions of acres, asked for by Kansas under the Lecompton const.i.tution, to about four millions of acres, and proposed the submission of this change to a vote of the people of Kansas. If the people adopted the change, they would be considered as having adopted the Lecompton const.i.tution _in toto_. If, on the other hand, they rejected this change, they would be considered as having rejected this const.i.tution _in toto_.

{471} [Sidenote: The rejection of the Lecompton const.i.tution by the people of Kansas.]

The English bill was agreed to by both Houses; and on August 2nd, 1858, the people of Kansas voted upon the measure. They rejected it, and with it the Lecompton const.i.tution, by a vote of more than eleven thousand in a total vote of about thirteen thousand.

[Sidenote: A fourth government for Kansas.]

In the meantime, fearing that Congress might pa.s.s the bill for admitting Kansas under the Lecompton const.i.tution, the Territorial legislature, now in the hands of the "Free-state" men, pa.s.sed a bill ordering a new const.i.tutional convention. The bill was pa.s.sed within a few days of the end of the session, and Governor Denver, thinking that Kansas had about enough governments already, pocketed the measure. The convention was, however, held, and a const.i.tution was framed and submitted to the people which received some three thousand votes in favor of its adoption, while none were cast against it. Officers were chosen under it, and thus a fourth government for Kansas was created.

All of these governments were now, however, in the hands of the conservative men of the "Free-state" party.

[Sidenote: The struggle for Kansas closed.]

[Sidenote: Dr. Robinson.]

With the rejection of the Lecompton const.i.tution by the people of Kansas, on August 2nd, the struggle for Kansas was closed. It was to be a non-slaveholding Commonwealth and a Republican Commonwealth. The record of this struggle is certainly one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of the United States. There is much to admire in it, much to be ashamed of, and much to be repudiated as foul and devilish. The prudence, moderation, tact, and bravery of Dr. Robinson and his friends have rarely been excelled by the statesmen and diplomatists of the New World or of the Old. They were placed in a most trying situation {472} both by their foes and by those who, professing to be their friends, endangered the cause more by violent and brutal deeds than did their open enemies. Their triumph over all these difficulties is a marvel of shrewd, honest, and conservative management, which may well serve as one of the best object-lessons of our history for succeeding generations.

[Sidenote: The general Government.]

[Sidenote: Mr. Jefferson Davis.]

The att.i.tude of the general Government was also honorable and praiseworthy. It did its best to hold the balance even and impartial between the contending forces. It sent out intelligent, honest, and resolute men as Governors; and it used the army to maintain the peace, and protect person and property from violence. Even President Pierce's Secretary of War, Mr. Jefferson Davis, who was considered the very high-priest of the slavery interest, sent a military commander, Colonel E. V. Sumner, to Kansas, whom he knew to be in sympathy with Free-soil principles, and instructed him only to do what was just between all parties; and when Colonel Sumner, fearing that, from personal sympathy with the cause of the "Free-state" men, he might unconsciously act too favorably toward them, really went farther than his duty required against them, in dispersing their legislature, Mr.

Davis expressed the opinion that the United States forces ought not to have interfered with the "Free-state" government until it had undertaken to execute some of its measures. It was said at the time that Mr. Davis' quasi disavowal of Colonel Sumner's act was caused by its unpopularity throughout the North; but Mr. Davis was not to any such degree sensitive to Northern opinion. Personally and officially Mr. Davis was a remarkably upright man, and was accustomed to take counsel chiefly of his own judgment and conscience, and to disturb himself very little about the views of {473} others concerning his duties and acts. Governor Robinson has recently testified to the impartial att.i.tude of the military power of the United States in Kansas, and has declared that "had it not been for the officers of the United States army, the 'Free-state' struggle would have ended in disaster on more than one occasion."

[Sidenote: The beginning of error and wrong.]

[Sidenote: Brown's atrocities.]

Error began, unquestionably, with the repeal of the Act prohibiting slavery in the Louisiana territory above thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north lat.i.tude, and wrong began, just as unquestionably, with the incursion of the Missourians, and their fraudulent voting at the Territorial election in March of 1855. A bogus legislature was thus thrust upon Kansas Territory at the outset. It was a political outrage of the first degree, and it would have justified rebellion against the execution of the enactments of this body. But it does not excuse, or even palliate, the criminal atrocities inaugurated by John Brown at Dutch Henry's Crossing, and the wild reign of murder and robbery which followed in their train. All this was common crime of the blackest and most villainous sort, and the men who engaged in it were cutthroats and highwaymen, who took advantage of the confusion in Kansas to prosecute their nefarious work.

It is often said that the Civil War began in Kansas, and simply spread from there over the country. It is true that violence began there, and in its degeneration into savagery developed those devilish dispositions that carried murder and robbery into Virginia, and thereby helped mightily to create that intensely hostile feeling between the North and the South which resulted in Civil War, but we affront good morals and common sense when we dignify those Kansas atrocities by the t.i.tle of war; and we obliterate moral distinctions when {474} we attempt to justify them by the end which their authors professed to have in view, the extermination of African slavery throughout the country. Such deeds are not means to anything except the establishment of the reign of h.e.l.l on earth, and the maudlin adoration sometimes accorded their doers is evidence of an unbalanced moral sense. It is a source of congratulation that the juristic sense of the last decades of the nineteenth century refuses to place the crank who kills or robs for what he considers, or professes to consider, the welfare of society under any other cla.s.s than that of the most dangerous criminals. It remains for the ethical sense of the twentieth century to sweep the hero-wors.h.i.+p too often accorded such characters out of the world's literature.

[Sidenote: The forerunners of war.]

But if the murders, and robberies, and arson committed in Kansas were not war, they were the forerunners of war. The last expedient which the minds of men could invent for putting the slavery question in the position of a purely local matter had been tried, and had utterly and miserably failed. The nation must now settle the question, by peaceable means if it could, but if it could not, then by force. The record of its attempts, first upon the one line, and then upon the other, will be the chief subject of the next and last volume of this series.

APPENDIX I.

THE ELECTORAL VOTE IN DETAIL, 1820-1856.

ELECTORAL VOTE IN 1820.

PRESIDENT.

| James | John Quincy | Monroe, | Adams, | of | of STATES. | Virginia. | Ma.s.sachusetts.

--------------+-----------+--------------- Alabama | 3 | ..

Connecticut | 9 | ..

Delaware | 4 | ..

Georgia | 8 | ..

Illinois | 3 | ..

Indiana | 3 | ..

Kentucky | 12 | ..

Louisiana | 3 | ..

Maine | 9 | ..

Maryland | 11 | ..

Ma.s.sachusetts | 15 | ..

Mississippi | 2 | ..

Missouri[1] | 3 | ..

New Hamps.h.i.+re | 7 | 1 New Jersey | 8 | ..

New York | 29 | ..

North Carolina| 15 | ..

Ohio | 8 | ..

Pennsylvania | 24 | ..

Rhode Island | 4 | ..

South Carolina| 11 | ..

Tennessee | 7 | ..

Vermont | 8 | ..

Virginia | 25 | ..

--------------+-----------+--------------- Total | 231 | 1