532

THE WYANDOTTE CONVENTION.

1

Finally, in March, 1859, the people voted directly on the question and at Wyandotte, on the fifth of July, a convention assembled which in twenty-four days worked out a free-State constitution. The Leavenworth constitution had given the right to vote to every male citizen of the United States, and to men of foreign birth who had declared their intention to become citizens. The Wyandotte constitution restricted the suffrage to whites. The Topeka constitution had given it to civilized Indians, who had severed their tribal relations, but the new constitution was not so liberal. Slavery was forbidden. On the fourth of October it was ratified,2 and was sent to Congress with the familiar petition for the admission of the territory into the Union. Evidently, Kansas was forever lost to slavery. In spite of a vast and concerted effort to bring it into the Union as a slave State, and thus to carry out the doctrine of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision, and the program of the radical slavocrats of the country, the people of Kansas had interposed their veto; and by the term, "people," meant those who had been described as revolutionists by two Presidents and who had been accused of treasonable pertinacity by one. That Kansas was free-soil was not due to the Courts of 4,346 for to 1,257 against it. Even Kansas Free Soilers were not yet ready to put a clause in a constitution giving the right to vote to "every male citizen of the United States."

1 Art. II, Chap. ii, taken from the constitution of Wisconsin, 1848, Art. III. "The Ohio constitution was by vote" (of the convention) "adopted as the model upon which to frame ours" (the Wyandotte constitution), but, to use the language of one of the members of the convention, who is at the present time upon our Supreme Bench, "the variances are numerous and natural." MS. letter, Ed. Russell to John A. Jameson, Leavenworth City, February 24, 1864.

2 Report No. 255 (Galusha A. Grow), March 29, 1860, House of Representatives, Thirty-sixth Congress, first session, p. 20; 10,425 votes for it, 5,530 against it.

MINNESOTA AND OREGON.

533

the United States, nor to the President, nor to Congress, nor to the wishes of the political party in power at Washington and in the slaveholding States. It was due to the plain people of Kansas, the immigrants from free States who, after the repeal of the compromise of 1850, and after the Dred Scott decision had opened all the territories to slavery, presented themselves as the first barrier to the nationalization of slavery.

While the Kansas struggle was at its height, two free States were admitted into the Union: Minnesota, on the eleventh of May, 1858,1 and Oregon, on the fourteenth of February following.2 Both had been organized as territories while the Missouri Compromise was in force: Oregon, on the fourteenth of August, 1848, with a provision specially applying the anti-slavery clause of the Ordinance of 1787;3 Minnesota, on the third of March, 1849, with no reference to slavery, other than the indirect one that the laws of Wisconsin were to apply to the new territory, subject to change by its legislature. Both territories assembled in constitutional convention during the summer of 1857,-Minnesota, indeed, having two conventions, a Republican and a Democratic, each of which framed a constitution, the two constitutions finally, by conference and compromise, being merged into one and ratified by the people.5 It forbade slavery and limited

1 Statutes at Large, XI, 285.

2 Id. 383.

3 Id. IX, 329 (section 14).

4 Id. 403.

5 For the Democratic Convention see The Debates and Proceedings of the Minnesota Constitutional Convention, including the Organic Act of the Territory, with the Enabling Act of Congress, the Act of the Territorial Legislature Relative to the Convention, and the Vote of the People on the Constitution; Reported Officially by Francis H. Smith, Saint Paul; Earle S. Goodrich, Territorial Printer, Pioneer and Democrat office, 1857, pp. xix-685. See also the

534

CITIZENSHIP TO INDIANS.

the franchise to white men, although in both conventions an earnest effort was made to allow free negroes to vote. But the usual argument prevailed,-that the negro was created inferior to the white; that he could not become a citizen of the United States and that to give him the right to vote would encourage an undesirable population and greatly retard the progress of the State.1 The Minnesota conventions agreed in allowing persons of Indian blood, who had adopted the habits of the whites, to vote, and also in giving the right to foreigners who had declared their intention of becoming citizens.

This last concession was felt to be necessary in order to enable the State to compete with its neighbors.2 There were at this time not above one hundred free negroes, of voting age, in the territory and its climate did not invite an "African invasion." Though willing to prohibit slavery, the people of Minnesota, like all their neighbors in other free States, had no love for the negro; they wished him justice, in the abstract, but preferred that other communities should admit him as a settler. The Journal, same imprint, p. 209. For the Republican Convention see Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention for the Territory of Minnesota to Form a State Constitution Preparatory to Its Admission Into the Union as a State. F. F. Andrews, Official Reporter to the Convention, Saint Paul; George W. Moore, Printer, Minnesotian office, 1858, pp. xviii-624.

1 This is brought out in the various speeches on the elective franchise, the word "whites," etc., in both conventions. The attitude of the free States toward free negroes, the extension of the suffrage to them, etc., see my Constitutional History of the American People, Vol. I, Chaps. vii and xii, Vol. II, Chaps. vii-xiii.

2 See references, last of preceding note.

3 In 1860 the population of Minnesota was 172,123. Of these 259 were free colored, of whom 126 were males. Preliminary report eighth census, p. 267.

4 The attitude of Oregon to the free negro was like that of California in 1849. See my Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1850, Vol. II, Chaps. x, xi, xii.

THE OREGON REFERENDUM.

535

Oregon convention submitted a constitution which the electors could accept or reject; which they could make slave or free, and which might be declared to include, or to exclude, free negroes. This constitution, as it left the hands of the convention, was silent as to slavery and free negroes. The popular vote on it, however, was a sign of the times: 4,093 ballots for the constitution; 5,079 against slavery, and 7,559 against free negroes.1 It was the most complete referendum on slavery and free negroes yet made in any State. The overwhelming vote excluding free persons of color was none the less significant because there were scarcely a hundred of this objectionable class in the territory. Oregon, like other free States, dreaded a negro invasion, if political rights were conferred upon the despised race.2

From whatever point we approach American history, during these years, the terrible truth of Lincoln's words, spoken in 1857, while Oregon and Minnesota were about to assemble in convention and make free-State constitutions, becomes clearer. All the powers of the earth seemed rapidly combining against the black man, to aid in making his bondage universal and eternal. Though the States were increasing in number, they were greatly abridging his rights, by their laws and constitutions, and his ultimate destiny never appeared so hopeless as during the last three or four years.

State constitutions, judicial decisions, laws, State and national, the messages of Presidents and governors, speaking the policy of a powerful party,-all the agencies of

1 The Journal of this convention was published by the State in 1882. The Debates are printed in Vol. VIII of The Portland Oregonian. The vote is taken from that paper for December 19, 1857.

2 See note 4, p. 534.

536

CASE OF DRED SCOTT.

government combined, were hostile to the African race and sedulously devising stronger laws and more elaborate decisions to declare the slave property, and the right of property to be before and higher than any constitutional sanction. And because the guarantees of slavery were not enough, seven States had declared the Union dissolved, and for the immediate reason that a man in Illinois had been chosen President, who had declared that, in his opinion, "this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free," that he did not expect the Union to be dissolved, but that he did expect it to cease being divided. Hostility to the free negro in the North was as great as hostility to emancipation in the South. The vote against free negroes, in Oregon, indicated a racial antipathy that was not suggested by the secession ordinance of South Carolina, three years later.

The Compromise of 1850 was supposed to have settled all slavery agitation forever, but the recent election, and the late repeal of the Compromise itself, indicated that the subject was not at rest. Before the repeal, a case was on its way to the Supreme Court which was to lead to a judicial utterance, supposed by the friends of slavery, at the time, and, perhaps by the distinguished judge who uttered it, to fix forever the status of slavery in the United States. This decision of the Supreme Court was given two days after the inauguration of Buchanan.1

Dred Scott was the slave of an army surgeon, Dr. Emerson, a citizen of Missouri, who, in the course of military duty removed to Rock Island, in the State of Illinois, and later, to Fort Snelling, at the time in a part of the territory of Wisconsin, but now within the State of Minnesota. While at Fort Snelling, Dred Scott, with the consent of his master, married a negro woman who also had 1 March 6, 1857; 19 Howard, 393.