522

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS.

a country from which the energetic and intelligent masses were excluded would impair its value and usefulness.

It had long been confidently expected that emigrants from Europe and energetic and intelligent laborers from the older States would find homes in the new region; but if the bill should become a law, the blight of slavery would cover the land. Homestead laws which Congress might enact would be worthless, and immigration would cease, for free men, unless compelled by hard and cruel necessity, would not work beside slaves.

The far-reaching consequences of making Nebraska slave soil would be intensified by the relative location of the territory. It would be a continuation of Texas, Arkansas and Missouri extending northward to the national boundary, and dividing the free States of the East from those of the Pacific coast. By compelling the whole commerce and travel between the East and the West to pass for hundreds of miles through a slave-holding region in the heart of the continent, the slave power, supported by the power of the federal government, would be able to extinguish freedom and to make slavery national. The protest against the bill was an appeal for "equal rights and exact justice for all men." It was one of the first applications of the higher law in the interpretation of American politics. It was signed by two Senators and four Representatives, and among the names were those of Salmon P. Chase, Charles Sumner, Joshua R. Giddings and Charles Smith.

While this protest had no effect in preventing the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the economic dangers of which it gave warning, were brought home to the consciences of thousands at the North. The South, too, was

1 January 30, 1854; Congressional Globe, Vol. XXVIII, Thirtythird Congress, First session, part 1, p. 281.

REPEAL OF COMPROMISE OF 1850.

523

active and two streams of population poured in to the Kansas-Nebraska country, one from the North, intent on excluding slavery; the other from the South determined to establish it in the new region. The immediate result was civil war in Kansas.

The repeal of the Compromise of 1850 by the KansasNebraska act reopened the whole subject of slavery. The opponents of slavery extension, organized as a new party, the Republican, opposed the repeal, opposed the extension of slavery to the territories and demanded the admission of Kansas as a free State.1 It nominated Fremont and Dayton for President and Vice-President. The Democratic party nominated Buchanan and Breckinridge, on a platform2 that denied to Congress power under the Constitution to interfere with the domestic institutions of the States; adopted the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions as "one of the main foundations of its political creed" and demanded that slavery in a territory should be left wholly to its inhabitants to permit or to prohibit. The election gave the Presidency, the Senate and the House to the Democrats. Buchanan had a majority of the electoral college and a plurality of the popular vote. Judging from the result, the American people approved the doctrine of non-interference, by Congress, with slavery, in State or Territory, or in the District of Columbia,

1 Republican National Convention of 1856; Johnson's edition, pp. 43, 59.

2 See official proceedings of the National Democratic Convention, held in Cincinnati, June 2-6, 1856; Cincinnati Inquirer Company, 1856, pp. 23-27. (The Cincinnati platform.)

* Buchanan and Breckinridge (Democratic) electoral vote, 174; popular vote, 1,838,169. Fremont and Dayton (Republican) electoral vote, 114; popular vote, 1,341,264. Fillmore and Donaldson (Know-Nothings) electoral vote, 8; popular vote, 874,534.

524

THE KANSAS CONSTITUTIONS.

and also approved the doctrine of '98 as set forth in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions.1

Between 1855 and 1860 four constitutions emanated from Kansas. Their particular history cannot be told here. It is sufficient that their successive provisions on slavery be cited as evidence of the gigantic effort, almost universal in the country at this time, to make slavery a national institution, and to put it beyond the reach of Congress. Kansas, before its creation as a territory, was a region of hostile populations: a northern, favoring free, a southern, favoring slave institutions. The first election resulted in a pro-slavery victory, won by the tactics of pro-slavery conspirators who had crossed the Missouri border to make Kansas secure. The legislature, chosen by fraud, persisted in assembling at Shawnee, and there hastily adopted the code of Missouri and enacted severe laws "to punish offences against slave property."2 Eager to gather the rewards of power, exercised without scruple, the bogus legislature attempted to exclude all free-soil men from office, and to make it practically impossible for them to register their opinions at the polls. But the freeState men were not to be excluded from the exercise of their rights in this summary manner. The legislature had expelled the free-State members. These returned to their homes and began a campaign which speedily bore fruit. On the fifth of September, 1855, the free-soil men met in

3

1 Thirty-fifth Congress, first session, Dec. 7, 1857-Senate: Democrats, 39; Republicans, 20; Americans, 5. House of Representatives: Democrats, 131; Republicans, 92; Americans, 14. Thirty-sixth Congress, first session, Dec. 5, 1859-Senate: Democrats, 38; Republicans, 26; House of Representatives: crats, 101; Republicans, 113; Independents, 23.

2 Kansas Statutes, 1855, 715.

Demo

3 For the history of this Legislature see Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln, I, Chap. xxiii.

ATTITUDE OF PRESIDENT PIERCE.

525

convention at Lawrence and nominated a delegate to Congress and prepared for a constitutional convention, to which delegates were later chosen in the free-soil districts, and which assembled at Topeka on the twenty-third of October. A constitution was adopted which forbade slavery in the language of the Ordinance of 1787, and also made indentures with negroes and mulattoes, executed in another State, invalid; for there was no more disposition among the free-soil men of Kansas than among those of Ohio, Indiana or Iowa to suffer free negroes in their midst.2 The constitution was submitted to the voters on the fifteenth of December, and its friends claimed that it was ratified by an overwhelming vote. But the fate of the constitution is briefly told. With the petition for admission into the Union, this constitution was presented to Congress and was supported by the Republican members of both Houses. In a special message, President Pierce pronounced it to be "of revolutionary character, devoted nearly half of his last annual message to a review of the slavery issue, and again pronounced the Topeka constitution an effort to erect a revolutionary government. Finally, it was dismissed by the Senate Comnittee on Territories as the movement of a political party to overthrow the government instituted by Congress in

1 Article I, Section 6.

3

2 The hostility towards free negroes put the word "white" into constitutions North and South (excepting New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and New York), as a description of the voter. See my Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850, Vol. I, Chap. xii, and Vol. II, Chaps. xiii, xiv, xv.

3 For it, 1,731 votes; against it, 46. Report of Congressional Committee, p. 22.

4 March 24, 1856; Globe, 1856, 698. For a short history of this Constitution see Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln, Vol. I, Chap. xxiv. 5 Richardson's Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 358. (Special message of Pierce, January 24, 1856.)

• Message of December 2, 1856; Richardson, V. 405.

526

UNSETTLED CONDITION OF KANSAS.

the territory.1 Pierce concluded his review of affairs in Kansas with the announcement of "the peaceful condition of things" there, and this, too, when a civil war was raging in the territory.2

In spite of ceaseless efforts to bring Kansas into the list of slaveholding States, the territory continued in its unsettled condition, claimed by both parties as their special province, but recognized by the pro-slavery party as practically lost to them, although the pro-slavery men had possession of the territorial government. In February, 1857, the legislature passed a bill calling a constitutional convention, with the intention of securing a pro-slavery constitution in this way, by proclamation. The territorial governor, Geary, vetoed it because it did not provide for its submission to the people; but the bill was passed over his veto. A bill, emanating in the Senate, to enable the territory to form a constitution, which should be submitted to popular vote, failed in the House.3 Robert J. Walker, of Mississippi, at the earnest appeal of the President, accepted the governorship of Kansas, Buchanan assuring him that he favored the submission of the forthcoming constitution to popular vote. But this procedure was attacked by the Southern leaders, who advocated sending the constitution that might be framed, directly to Congress, without any reference to the voters.*

1 Senate report No. 34, first session, Thirty-fourth Congress, 32. See also Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln, I, 429-430.

2 The best account of this struggle is given in Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln, Vol. I, Chap. xxv, in which the principal authorities are cited.

3 For a discussion of the question of the authority of a convention to promulgate a constitution, and the conflicting decisions of the courts on the point, see my Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850, Vol. II, 176-177.

4 The best account of Walker's reasons for accepting; of the President's promises, and his late violation of them, is given by Nicolay and Hay in their Lincoln, Vol. II, Chap. vii.